Equans France engineering at the service of public lighting in Epinal
Energy savings for city lighting
By Paul Martinet, Public Lighting Engineer at Equans France
Can you tell us about your business and the challenges involved in renewing a global public performance contract?
My job is to respond to calls for tender. These are global public performance contracts based on public lighting.
Our aim is to provide the offer best suited to the customer's needs in order to win the tender and, once won, to ensure that the contract runs smoothly and respects the customer's proposed response.
In 2023, the town of Épinal organized a call for tenders to meet its public lighting and urban planning needs, with a particular focus on energy savings. Ineo Réseaux is therefore fully committed to winning this high-stakes contract and continuing the work undertaken by its teams over the past 11 and a half years.
Can you describe the challenges of a call for tenders, particularly with the town of Epinal?
The challenge of a call for tenders is to fully understand the customer's context, expectations and needs, and to propose a long-term, high-quality solution that reduces the customer's costs. The challenge is therefore global. It's about maintaining the trust between the customer and us.
We previously won the Épinal contract, a Public-Private Partnership (PPP). It was a great contract involving the renovation of the lighting, which also enabled us to renew the contract with them.
In this way, the customer's confidence in us, combined with our expertise in this specific market, enabled us to make them an attractive and appropriate offer.
Can you tell us about the Ineo Réseaux teams, their commitment and their ability to offer turnkey solutions?
Our partners in Epinal know our teams in the field, our way of working and our know-how. We maintain excellent relations because they know they can count on us. That's where our strength lies.
What's more, they've been very satisfied with our work on the old contract, both in terms of the well-renovated public lighting and the LED lighting, as well as the maintenance and responsiveness of our teams in the field.
One last thing I'd like to add is that we're also here to propose innovative solutions that meet the customer's needs.
Our knowledge of the customer and the market has enabled us to achieve our objective.
Mission accomplished, Ineo Réseaux has won the tender! What's next?
It all begins. Indeed, we may think we've won and are "in the clear", but no!
There's still a lot of work to be done: our entire response to the invitation to tender needs to be deployed.
To do this, I may need to talk to the teams in the field who have a technical problem, for example, or the legal teams, and at the same time, with the business manager with whom I do the financial follow-up. So I talk to all parties in order to produce reports and frame the project.
Executing a contract as large as that of the town of Epinal requires know-how and a good knowledge of the field. Paul, can you tell us about your background?
I started out with a geothermal and energy DUT (technical diploma), then went on to study engineering at ENSAM on a sandwich course. I then worked for 3 years in an agency, culminating in a position as a public lighting engineer. I was offered the job because the work-study scheme had enabled me to work on the subject with my colleagues. They asked me if I was interested in the job, and I told them I'd be delighted to accept. In fact, I got on very well with them.
Why do you like working in street lighting at Ineo Réseaux so much?
On the one hand, I like the energy savings that our solutions will deliver thanks to assistive technology.
Our aim is to maximize them as much as possible. Secondly, I like the increasing integration of respect for biodiversity and the reduction of intrusive light pollution into our offerings.
For example, since we internalize lighting studies, we can adapt luminaire models to suit different zones (streets, parks, waterways, etc.) and temperatures. The light will therefore be more orange when we observe that biodiversity is negatively impacted by blue light.
Speaking of biodiversity, it seems to me that your passion is closely related to your profession. Can you tell us more about it?
Indeed, I love photography!
I always have a camera with me: when I go out, in the woods or hiking. I'm not looking to become famous by posting my pictures everywhere. I want to take photos that bring back memories and that I can share if I feel like it.
I like landscapes, because they give us an overall view, and macro shots, which emphasize the details: a flower, an insect, an animal, etc. I'm not interested in becoming famous by posting my shots everywhere.
Knowing how to switch between wide-angle and macro lenses. Now that's an essential skill for managing a tender!
Paul, we'll leave you with the last word:
The film Invictus quotes "I'm the captain of my soul", which, as in rugby, puts a premium on always going forward, even if the passes are made backwards.
We can make mistakes, suffer defeats, but that's no big deal. We're here to play as a team and achieve our goal, which is to score tries.
