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| Vinci Innovation Awards Vinci, the world's leading concessions and construction group, has been organising the Innovation Awards competition every two years since 2001. The competition invites all the Group's employees throughout the world to present their innovations in order to reward them, make them known and facilitate their dissemination. All the Group's employees compete in 11 regions: seven in France (North, West, South-West, South-East, Rhône-Alpes, East, Paris Region), three in the rest of the world (Northern Europe, Central Europe, International Europe) and one centralised region (Central Activities). The 2009 competition was highly successful, with almost 1450 projects presented by over 3,500 employees from 34 countries (i.e. 33% more projects than in 2007). The competition timetable is organised in two stages: the projects submitted are first examined in each region and later at Group level, where three to five regional prize-winners compete in the final stage. The competition categories (Materials, Processes and Techniques, Marketing and Services, Equipment and Tools, Management) reflect an open and pragmatic approach to innovation, over and above its purely technical dimensions. These categories are supplemented by two other prizes, "Sustainable Development" and "Safety", together with "Special Prizes" that reward original innovations on a case-by-case basis: "Resourcefulness", "Prevention", etc. To capitalise on the legacy built up since the creation of the competition in 1994, the 2009 competition for the first time highlights use of previous innovations through creation of a Dissemination prize. Symbolised by the robot mascot, built up from innovations submitted or rewarded in the six previous competitions, this prize acknowledges both the creators and the users of the innovations most widely disseminated within the Group and illustrates the priority that VINCI places on effective implementation and sharing of innovations in all its companies. This year, a "technology leap" prize was also created to reward a breakthrough innovation, that is, an innovation that radically modifies conditions of use of a tool and/or a process and that represents a technological breakthrough. This year, the Grand Prize in the final stage of the competition was awarded to Vinci Concessions for its Pirandello software, which aims to assist public decision making by simulating choices in terms of population and employment as a function of urban transport. write your comments about the article :: © 2010 Construction News :: home page |