Thales CEO Patrice Caine and GA Group Chairman Sébastien Matty have just laid the cornerstone of the Bordeaux Thales Campus in the presence of Alain Anziani, the Senator and Mayor of Mérignac, Marie Récalde, Deputy of the Gironde, and Alain Rousset, Deputy of the Gironde and President of the Regional Council of the Aquitaine region.
This event marks the launch of the future site of Thales in Mérignac, a suburb of Bordeaux.
The 55,000-sq m property complex will accommodate the more than 2,000 staff members currently based on the Thales sites in Pessac and Le Haillan. With a long term potential of 60,000 sq m of space, this capacity is likely to be revised upwards in the next few years.
The campus was designed by the Jean-Philippe Le Covec architectural firm, with a focus on creating a working environment that betters its occupiers’ performance and well-being. It will be made up of:
- Six office buildings interconnected by a common ground floor, in an aim to foster movement and communication amongst Thales employees
- A building that will house the reception area and services, with a company restaurant, a business centre, the works council, a concierge service, a showroom and a large number of meeting rooms
- A building housing all of the site’s technical equipment
- A car park planted with greenery offering 1,700 parking places and another 150 places for bicycles and 2-wheeled motor vehicles.
The ultra-modern campus will boast a high environmental quality. It will be certified with both the HQE® and BREEAM labels for green buildings.
Thanks to the GA Group’s unique construction methods the programme will be completed by June 2016, just 18 months after the start of works, in compliance with GA’s commitment.
The entire work site is being built using Full BIM, a 3D digital mock-up developed by GA. This mock-up is used at every stage of the project, from design to operation, by way of factory production of components. It provides unique knowledge of the buildings. When construction is completed, the mock-up will be handed over to the Thales teams, thereby putting them in possession of an easy to use, highly visual tool containing all the information related to the buildings and their operation.
