Our Data Intelligence team on setting up smart buildings for success

Julien Gréau: Delivery Manager

Before joining Akkodis, Julien worked in a company producing garden equipment for children. Yet there is a surprisingly close link between kids’ slides and the aeronautics industry: industrialization methods. Julien wanted to apply his skills in the design, industrialization and qualification of products in the aeronautical or automotive sectors for a bigger company.

At Akkodis, he initially worked as an engineer for four years, before moving on to become a project manager and then taking on other managerial roles. After becoming head of an industrial skills center for an aerospace engine manufacturer, he progressed to the role of Delivery Manager at Akkodis’ Data Center.

Today, Julien is responsible for the smooth running and delivery of projects - overseeing quality, deadlines and costs. His past experience as a project manager comes in handy. As he puts it: "When all the projects are up and running, I work more on consolidating our processes and developing our skills. On the other hand, when a project hits a snag, I get more involved to help the project manager bring the activity back on track. “

Having understood the stakes involved in the Building Operating System project, Julien drew valuable insights from other large-scale projects. First, he recognized that the key to a successful data project lies in understanding the specific business: use cases, reporting and process requirements, and data production methods.

"The challenge was to help our clients define their needs, while guiding them towards what is feasible in technical (data availability and usability) and financial terms," says Julien. In this particular case, Akkodis convinced the customer that a use case based on real-time data was far more costly to develop than one based on simulated but stable data.

Building on this experience, Julien's teams are embarking on a host of exciting projects, notably in the naval shipbuilding industry. This is a real turning point for the growth of the Data Center. As the projects ahead open up new horizons, our teams are ready to hoist the sails towards exciting new challenges.

Nicolas Lolmède: Design and Development Engineer

Before joining the Akkodis team, Nicolas was a full-stack web developer, proficient in PHP, SQL and CSS. He spent a few years working freelance, setting up a web agency with two classmates.

Curious and creative by nature, he added other strings to his bow, notably programming in C# and shaders, as well as system administration & devops skills, before taking an interest in Akkodis. He hoped to perfect languages such as Python and work on big data technologies, alongside putting his web user interface skills to effective use.

The Building Operating System project is right up his street. In discussing the highlights, he made a direct link to his two passions: "The first highlight of this project was extracting raw data from five data providers (weather, rail traffic, road traffic, buses, and sensors inside the building), and their optimal transformation for rapid querying. The second was designing an ergonomic and visually appealing interface to present the processed data."

Akkodis gave this multi-talented autodidact a chance that he seized with both hands. He brings his analysis and processing skills to the table, pulling in the necessary data from several web services, then sorting, interpreting and organizing it to generate responsive, always up-to-date databases. He also develops eye-catching and ergonomic web interfaces.

To accomplish these complex tasks, Nicolas was able to draw on solutions previously tried and tested by other colleagues. But he didn’t hesitate to offer constructive criticism, which his management took on board: "When I saw the project, my natural choice would be a Python backend, behind a well-coded PHP/AJAX frontend."

He felt that the Dash platform was too restrictive and better suited to small projects: “Dash uses and overloads React, so that on the backend we only have preconfigured callbacks linked to 1+n elements. However, an application element can only be linked to a single callback. In practice, many elements needed to be linked to more than one feature.”

This project has shown that you sometimes need to question a technology before launching development. "Sometimes, the entry ticket is just too expensive,” illustrates Nicolas. “Maintainability can be complicated - or better, proven technologies already exist."

Such openness, coupled with hard work and creativity, has allowed the team to thrive. "The Data Intelligence Center offers autonomy and the opportunity to interact with colleagues,” he says. “This, I believe, is the key to our success.”

Inspired by the work of Julien and Nicolas? Want to work on engaging, rewarding projects like this? To find out more about our first-class opportunities for career development, get in touch today.