As part of the company Eirenea ⁽¹⁾, Bouygues Construction has won a public-private-partnership contract for the financing, design, and construction and the maintenance and management for thirty years of 63 works and maintenance centres. The contract worth a total of 355 million euros (155 million euros for the works and 180 million euros for operation and maintenance) was signed with the Directorate General of Infrastructures, Transport, and the Sea of France's Ministry of Ecology, Energy, Sustainable Development, and the Sea.

The project consists in building and maintaining 63 centres throughout France (see map overleaf) for interdepartmental roads departments. The centres will be for the personnel and equipment necessary for managing and maintaining the country's network of publicly-managed roads.

In terms of sustainable development the project features three aspects in particular:

Environmental impact of the project
An environmental impact assessment was carried out at the earliest stage of design, covering operation and maintenance as well as construction, to enable technical and architectural adaptation of certain aspects of the projects as part of a whole-life-cost approach. All 63 centres will be to the standards required to obtain HQE^® high-environmental-quality and BBC low-energy-building labels. For example, they will have photovoltaic panels, a rainwater recovery system, a supply-and-extract ventilation system that will generate major savings on heating, and a self-regulating artificial lighting system controlled by natural light levels (daylight harvesting).

Integration into local economic fabric
The project will create close to 2000 jobs, many of which will be with local tradespeople and small businesses.

Wellbeing and safety of occupants
The design phase devoted a great deal of concern to the safety of people working in the centres (separation of pedestrian and vehicular traffic, plant washing stations, etc.) and to their wellbeing (comfort, furniture, etc.).

The works, which will start in the last quarter of 2010, will run for 18 months and will employ up to 1000 people at peak times. 

⁽¹⁾ The company Eirenea is made up of DV Construction and Exprimm, both of which are Bouygues Construction subsidiaries, together with Dutch Infrastructure Fund and Fideppp.