At the beginning of November, 23 colleagues from across BESIX Group had the opportunity to participate in the 10th edition of BESIX Potential Academy. This unique initiative is BESIX longest-running training programme, and it aims to identify and promote promising profiles in our Group. The participants of 2023, who represented six different countries – Belgium, The Netherlands, France, The United Arab Emirates, Morocco and New Zealand –were invited to partake in a 7-day residential seminar between the 9th and the 16th of November.
What is BPA?
“Connecting with new people from all around the world and in the meantime learning something.” Lies Vergote (BESIX France)
During the seminar, the participants who are all young talents selected by management based on their performance and ambitions, follow business courses developed in cooperation with Vlerick Business School and tailored to our Group's activity.
During the program, the participants are split into groups. Each groups works on a business case of their choice. At the end of the seminar, they present their innovative ideas to a BESIX Group jury, and a winner is chosen. The courses given by Vlerick during the day give the participants a thorough background in business and help them to prepare their business case. In the last ten years, 242 participants have presented 56 incredible projects.
Like every year, a special team-building day outdoors was also included in the program. The teams navigated various exercises, each member taking a leadership role in turn, followed by insightful debriefing sessions to collect valuable feedback. For this edition, the team-building day was organised in Bierbeek with Outward Bound.
“I liked the session with Outward Bound the most. It was really interesting to see how we work together and what we could achieve as a team.” Jan Wils (BESIX Infra)
And the winner is...
This year, attendees were split into six groups, each tackling a specific business case of their choosing. The winning group was mentored by Werner Vits and composed by Arnaud Declève (EJD), Boris Karenzi (BESIX – BU International), Bert Pyck (BESIX Infra) and Lies Vergote (BESIX France). Their winning presentation unveiled “LAIKA”, a robotic dog capable of autonomously digitizing the reality on site, allowing site superintendents to verify its findings remotely. LAIKA captures 3D point clouds and 2D-images in motion, leveraging the robotic dog’s mobility and agility for real-time, autonomous reality capture. This smart dog not only detects errors at an early stage but also operates in areas that are dangerous or challenging for human access, mitigating costs and time lost. It will allow our teams to use BIM-models even more efficiently, as it will allow regular comparisons between as-is and as-designed.
We couldn’t be prouder of what our talented and dedicated colleagues have achieved during this intense and rewarding seminar. Thank you to all participants and their mentors for taking part in this training week and for working hard on promising projects!
“A great experience that I would recommend to any BESIX colleague.” Hervé Jourquin (BESIX Italy)
Do you think you could benefit from this program? Go ahead and reach out to your N+1 to explore if it’s a good fit for you. Who knows, the next amazing innovation might just have your name written all over it next year!