May 6, 2025
Comfort and Energy Efficiency: La Poste Partners with Equans for Its Innovation Center in Nantes
On April 30, 2025, La Poste Group inaugurated the Maison de l’Innovation, its new digital hub located in the heart of Île de Nantes. This 15,375 m² building, constructed primarily with a wood-frame structure, houses 1,200 employees from its IT teams. Designed to combine digital technology and innovation, Equans France, through its Ineo division, contributed to the construction of this sustainable building by implementing solutions aimed at optimizing its energy efficiency.
Smart building management at the intersection of performance, comfort, and safety
At the heart of the Maison de l’Innovation, the equipment deployed by Equans —in particular, the building’s technical management system—offer every La Poste Group employee working in the building the ability to adjust in real time, their work environment via a dedicated app: adjusting lighting, activating air circulators, setting the temperature, positioning sunshades, or booking meeting rooms. More than 1,200 control units have thus been integrated and installed in this state-of-the-art infrastructure.
In addition, to ensure fire safety, nearly 500 smoke detectors have been installed. This equipment serves three purposes: it helps tooptimize the building’s energy consumption, to enhance safety and ensure smart, centralized management of all systems.
All of these services were performed as part of an electrical contract—including high-voltage and low-voltage work, fire safety, and building management systems (GTB)—awarded to Ineo, a subsidiary of Equans France, in a joint venture with another industry player.
In a regulatory context reinforced by the BACS decree, which mandates the installation of automation systems in commercial buildings, building management systems (BMS) are emerging as a key lever for achieving the decree’s energy efficiency targets: –40% energy reduction by 2030, –50% by 2040.
Ineo’s teams handled half of the site’s electrical installations. The work, which began in April 2021, involved approximately 30 employees, with final acceptance scheduled for October 2024.
A wooden structure and advanced technical management
Open space at the Maison de l’Innovation in Nantes
Photo credit: Equans France
The eight-story building is 75% wood-frame, with the first two floors constructed of concrete. This design choice, combined with a high-performance building management system (BMS), reduces the site’s carbon footprint while improving user comfort and autonomy. However, this choice also poses unprecedented challenges. Indeed, since the building is composed of combustible bio-based materials and reused materials, the project required specific adaptations to the technical systems, particularly with regard to fire safety. This innovative design exemplifies La Poste Group’s commitment to modernizing its real estate portfolio by integrating sustainable and high-performance solutions, in line with its commitments to social and environmental responsibility.
“We are very proud to have partnered with La Poste Group on this technically innovative project, particularly given the unprecedented scope of the building’s technical management. The success of the Maison de l’Innovation illustrates our commitment to ever more sustainable infrastructure that enhances user comfort. In fact, this is the largest commercial project completed by our teams in Loire-Atlantique and Vendée over the past five years,” says Thomas Druais, Branch Manager for Loire-Atlantique & Vendée at Ineo, a division of Equans France.
