Julien Bahain is the God­fa­ther of the UTC Foun­da­tion for Innovation’s first fundrais­ing cam­paign. A 2011 UTC grad­u­ate, this engi­neer major­ing in the Mechan­i­cal Sys­tems Engi­neer­ing pro­gramme is also an Olympic bronze medal­list in row­ing at the 2008 Bei­jing Olympics

Julien Bahain imme­di­ate­ly agreed to take on the role of Chair­man of the Fundrais­ing Com­mit­tee of the UTC Foun­da­tion for Inno­va­tion and spon­sor of the first fundrais­ing cam­paign. «For me, it’s a way of giv­ing back a lit­tle of what I received dur­ing my time at UTC. I firm­ly believe that it’s by con­tribut­ing a lit­tle here and there that we can make a dif­fer­ence togeth­er. I per­son­al­ly have ben­e­fit­ed from help, finan­cial or oth­er­wise, through­out my career, from reme­di­al cours­es and help in find­ing work place­ments. We all need a help­ing hand to achieve our goals and it’s my turn to give a lit­tle back. I’ve tak­en on stu­dents on tech­ni­cal place­ments (TN05), help­ing them to find place­ments and accom­mo­da­tion. I always take the time to answer stu­dents’ emails, whether it’s for advice or in a job search. I’d like to be one of the voic­es car­ry­ing this mes­sage to the alum­ni com­mu­ni­ty, while also hav­ing the oppor­tu­ni­ty to recon­nect with each oth­er” says the engi­neer, who grad­u­at­ed in 2011 after join­ing the UTC in 2004 as part of the core cur­ricu­lum, fol­lowed by the Mechan­i­cal Sys­tems Engi­neer­ing major course. He dis­cov­ered the man­age­ment of inno­v­a­tive projects (MPI), a spe­cial­i­ty option com­mon to all branch­es, which is where he want­ed to go.

Why raise funds?

The aim of the fund-rais­ing is to pro­vide longterm sup­port for stu­dents and projects in two clear­ly defined areas: inter­na­tion­al mobil­i­ty and social and envi­ron­men­tal projects. «These are two sub­jects that are close to my heart and with which I clear­ly iden­ti­fy, whether in my pro­fes­sion­al or per­son­al life. If you are open to one, you can bet­ter under­stand the oth­er. I believe that these are two fun­da­men­tal sub­jects that our UTC stu­dents need to address and expe­ri­ence in the face of the chal­lenges we face,» con­tin­ues Julien Bahain, who took part in his first Olympic Games in Bei­jing in 2008. He is 22 years old.

It was the UTC that enabled him to con­tin­ue row­ing at a high lev­el. «I always like to make it clear that UTC Sport Elite was a fac­tor in my choice of uni­ver­si­ty, but I’ve always put my stud­ies first. By choos­ing UTC, I broke with the sport­ing pro­to­col of my fed­er­a­tion at the time. Log­ic would have dic­tat­ed that I should be clos­er to a nation­al train­ing cen­tre with the pos­si­bil­i­ty of join­ing one of the INSAs. Com­pieg­ne has a row­ing club with a nation­al and inter­na­tion­al his­to­ry. The club opened its doors to me with­out reser­va­tion and my sport­ing career would have been very dif­fer­ent with­out the uncon­di­tion­al sup­port of Sport Nau­tique Com­piég­nois. In the end, it was an à la carte career path that was the solu­tion for me and I am grate­ful to all those who have accom­pa­nied and sup­port­ed me dur­ing my sev­en years at UTC. As a row­er, I can’t ignore this anal­o­gy about water, because it’s the lit­tle streams that make the big rivers. We can all play a part and con­tribute to our com­mon future.

From the Beijing 2008 Olympic adventure to British Columbia, Canada

Bei­jing 2008 was his first Olympic Games. It was also the first time that a quadru­ple sculls, four row­ers with two oars each, won an Olympic Bronze medal for France. For Julien Bahain, it is con­fir­ma­tion that it is pos­si­ble to com­bine stud­ies and sport, and to do so out­side the tra­di­tion­al frame­work. «It’s a medal that I owe to my hard work, and I think that any­one who has crossed my path on my old bike in the streets of Com­pieg­ne or on the lec­ture the­atres will attest to the fact that it was all down to tim­ing and real deter­mi­na­tion on a dai­ly basis. But once again, with­out the sup­port and hard work of my class­mates, my teach­ers, the UTC Sport Elite staff and the local row­ing club, none of this would have been pos­si­ble. Tak­ing notes dur­ing an absence or a catch-up les­son offered by some peo­ple made all the dif­fer­ence. A per­for­mance is built every day”.

UTC gave him the oppor­tu­ni­ty to adjust his course once the first semes­ter of the core cur­ricu­lum had been com­plet­ed. He was thus able to organ­ise his semes­ters accord­ing to his sport­ing cal­en­dar. This enabled him to light­en the spring semes­ters so that he could com­pete on the inter­na­tion­al cir­cuit. As a result, he was able to com­plete all his cred­its in sev­en years instead of five.

In addi­tion to an à la carte course, the UTC also offers a struc­ture around its ath­letes: UTC Sports Elite. It offers access and per­son­alised mon­i­tor­ing of per­for­mance. This includes men­tal prepa­ra­tion, sports per­for­mance mon­i­tor­ing tools (phys­i­cal and phys­i­o­log­i­cal tests, etc.) and the oppor­tu­ni­ty to share moments with oth­er ath­letes. Julien Bahain now works Julien Bahain now works for Infra­struc­ture BC in Cana­da as a project man­ag­er. He plans major provin­cial infra­struc­ture projects, man­ages the ten­der­ing and pro­cure­ment process­es and their imple­men­ta­tion (project man­age­ment and con­struc­tion con­tract man­age­ment). He loved the CCs GE37, 38, 39 and 40 in project man­age­ment when he was at UTC, and has now made it his pro­fes­sion, man­ag­ing around $2 bil­lion worth of projects, includ­ing $270 mil­lion cur­rent­ly under con­struc­tion. Although UTC engi­neer­ing degree is not direct­ly recog­nised here, it was the MPI course that enabled him to enter the world of work in British Columbia