The Soletanche Freyssinet Group, which includes Menard, is committed to Sustainable Technology. The Group leads by example, contributing to sustainability by developing techniques that conserve natural resources and limit CO2 emissions and implementing behaviors and practices that meet these goals.

Environmental Protection
In 2006, the Group calculated the CO2 emissions from its sites (materials and labor), using the carbon count method developed by VINCI Construction. The results showed that the solutions proposed by the Group would reduce carbon dioxide emissions compared with traditional techniques, particularly stay cables, with a service life in excess of 100 years; prestressed concrete floors, which use less materials than reinforced concrete floors; Reinforced Earth walls, which represent average annual savings of 1,500,000 T of CO2 compared with walls cast in-situ; and the Menard Vacuum TM Consolidation process, which reduces CO2 emissions by a factor of 3 or 4 compared with traditional processes.

Innovation
The Soletanche Freyssinet Group invests in the development of innovative solutions that conserve natural resources through Sustainable Technology. Following are some of the Group’s recent technical achievements:

• The Cohestrand cable system applied to suspended bridges guarantees a maintenance-free cable lifetime of over 100 years. Freyssinet’s first application on an industrial scale on the Kanne Bridge (Belgium) won the Grand Prize at the 2005 VINCI Innovation Awards.
• In the field of MSE, Reinforced Earth developed and implemented the Omega connection on a site near Morzine (France). The connection is a synthetic high tenacity polyester-based reinforcement strip made up of a continuous loop. Partly cast into the panel during the prefabrication stage, the new fastener is corrosion-resistant.
• Menard developed a new Stone Column machine equipped with rear legs that enable it to achieve record production rates of 500m per day (compared with 250m with a conventional machine) and establish the columns at depths of up to 16m due to increased thrust, thus improving the quality of the columns.

Social Commitment
The commitment to Sustainable Technology is being implemented in the Group’s activities throughout the world. The Group has defined a series of environmental indicators for water and electricity consumption in the administrative site and office areas, CO2 consumption of the fleet of company vehicles and environmental training record based on numbers of training hours given and numbers of trainees.