Cé’SAM : A Competition to Promote Innovative Solutions
Cé’SAM at Elcimaï
What is a “virtuous solution” ? For Elcimaï Environnement, a mission-driven company within the Elcimaï Group, it refers to exemplary initiatives or practices whose environmental, social, or societal performance exceeds the initial expectations of the specifications or the regulatory framework. We are committed to promoting these initiatives to clients through our consulting and design services.
To maintain this proactive approach, we share and highlight these initiatives within our teams. This year, an internal competition within the ELCIMAI Group was launched : the “CéSAM.” This annual competition aims to recognize the ethical, original, or innovative nature of virtuous solutions developed by our consulting, engineering, and architecture teams.
For its first edition, 14 projects were submitted, led by some thirty employees, either individually or in teams !
The examples presented by Elcimaï employees helped share best practices and advance the discussion on what constitutes a virtuous approach.
Our Ethical, Original, or Innovative Projects
Four projects were awarded prizes during the 2023 edition :
- A community heating project was expanded to include a district heating network, even though this was not originally planned ;
- Securing the power supply for sporting events now enables these events to be decarbonized in the long term ;
- A vegetable garden was planted to maintain plots of land on the construction site and encourage biodiversity on the site ;
- or even upholding our ethical standards at the expense of our commercial interests led us to abandon an expensive, low-efficiency energy recovery project, thereby avoiding significant negative impacts on the environment and public finances.
Among the other projects presented, we can mention the implementation of highly optimized bio-waste collection systems, as well as the development of a diagnostic tool to effectively support local authorities in their transition to “zero plastic.”
