Building geniuses! : The competition for smart, sustainable and connected territories

Imagine a future of smart, sustainable and connected territories

A true interdisciplinary approach, the Les Génies de la construction competition! is a great opportunity to promote to young people and make them aware of the diversity of construction and public works trades, which are technical and innovative trades, as well as their cross-functionality and their ability to adapt to support environmental changes, technology and digital.

Young competitors are invited to lead a collaborative and forward-looking reflection, linked to the new challenges of construction and territorial development, to imagine a future of smart, sustainable and connected territories.

In middle school and high school, students are supervised by teachers, who register one or more teams for the competition. In higher education, it is the students who register themselves, either individually or to present a project to several.

Join the priorities of the Ministry of National Education and Youth and meet the challenges of professionals in the construction sector

• Giving meaning and concretizing lessons, through cross-disciplinary and collective work by a team of pupils or students, invited to produce the realization or the renovation of a construction or a development (physical or virtual model, digital production, etc.). The project presented is judged on its feasibility and its ability to be transposed into a concrete and feasible form.
• Include the digital transition in learning, to fully prepare students for a society, for higher education and then for an increasingly digital world of work.
• Contribute to the development of better educational and vocational guidance for young people, in order to better support students in defining their career plan, which can be a source of concern for them and their families.
• Encourage the promotion of the vocational training path as a path of training for excellence and success, to meet the new skills needs of companies in the construction sector, in connection with environmental, technological and digital transitions, and to strengthen the attractiveness of vocational training to train for a building and public works trade.
• Putting education at the forefront of the ecological transition to respond to the desire of the Ministry of National Education and Youth to make schools a field of commitment in favor of sustainable development, biodiversity and the fight against climate change.

Achieve sustainable and civic productions

The young candidates must respond as a team to the issues raised by the evolution of an intelligent, sustainable and connected territory, on one of the following themes:

• housing ;
• mobility and travel in territories (bridge, road, railway, etc.);
• human activities (culture, industry, education, health, trade, agriculture, leisure);
• preservation of the environment, including water and waste management;
• local and renewable energies.

Design an eco-district, facilitate the daily life of people with reduced mobility, produce energy with a road, exploit geothermal energy, identify innovations in materials, robotize a task on a site, optimize the solar contribution on a building, ensuring good management of drinking water, managing the risk of flooding, building modular and reversible housing, promoting biodiversity in the city, soft mobility, intelligent management of space, storing and restoring renewable energies ... are all subjects on which pupils and students can debate and work.

The teams fall into four categories:

• " Middle School " for students in cycle 4;
• “Pro” for students of SEGPA, EREA and 3rd preparatory trades;
• " High school " for students in the final cycle;
• "Up" for pupils and students in higher education (STS, IUT, university, engineering school, etc.).

In order to meet and adapt to the expectations of teaching programs and the needs of professionals in the construction sector, the rules for participation in the competition have been drawn up by teachers and players in the construction sector.

Promote team creativity, diversity and interdisciplinarity

The Construction Geniuses contest! rewards the collective and collaborative work of a team of pupils or students for a production relating to the realization of a construction or development (physical or virtual model, digital production, realization of a project, etc.).

Participation in the competition is an opportunity promote decompartmentalization in general, through:

• cross-disciplinary diversity, by having students from different backgrounds work together;
• interdisciplinarity, by mobilizing knowledge and know-how from several disciplines (technological and general);
• vertical diversity, by involving teams from different school or university levels to carry out a project.

Judge a project on its feasibility

The construction project presented by the young candidates is judged on its feasibility. The project can be represented by a virtual model or other digital production and/or materialized by a physical model.

Participants in the “Sup” category will have to produce a virtual model, so that the solutions presented take into account the BIM (Building information modeling) approach, accompanied by a physical model of all or part of the project presented.

Open badges to recognize the achievements and skills of young people

For the fourth consecutive year of the Les Génies de la construction! competition, open badges will be awarded to winners and participants. These digital images, which provide an accreditation system, make it possible to recognize achievements and skills, formal or informal, acquired during a project. These open badges, which will promote and recognize the commitment of young people in the projects they have led, will also allow them to join the big construction family!

Les Genies de la construction!, a competition organized in two stages

• An academic selection (if the number of candidate teams justifies it) or inter-academic will be organized remotely, with an oral presentation in front of a jury composed of representatives of the Ministry of National Education, Youth and Sports, teachers and construction actors.
• A national final organized on June 7, 2023 in Paris, to allow the teams of pupils or students selected to present their work during a “grand oral” before a national jury.

The closing date for registrations is January 20, 2023.