The BEPROACT Strategic Partner Meeting in Lille brought together partners from across North-West Europe to exchange knowledge, showcase progress and strengthen collaboration. For Jean-Paul, who recently joined the Région Bourgogne-Franche-Comté (BFC) project team, the meeting marked his first opportunity to experience the BEPROACT consortium in action.
Reflecting on the three-day event, Jean-Paul described the meeting as a valuable introduction to the project, providing the opportunity to meet partners from across Europe and gain first-hand insight into the progress of the various pilot cases.
During the poster session, Jean-Paul and Tony Sickler presented the progress of the Viotte Smart Building pilot. Their presentation highlighted several key aspects of the project, including:
- The deployed system architecture.
- Sensor deployment using Resense Move technology.
- Installation progress.
- Challenges related to BIM data structuring.
- Key use cases.
- The early implementation of the DTPR protocol.
Beyond presenting their own work, the meeting also offered an opportunity to discover a wide range of innovative developments across the BEPROACT consortium. These included immersive virtual reality training for cybersecurity, AI models for environmental prediction and water quality monitoring, research into robotics, crack detection and digital twins, serious gaming for data-driven asset management, and the latest progress on project deliverables and project governance.
One reflection from the meeting particularly stood out to Jean-Paul:
"If you miss a strategy, your technology may be ready, but your people and organisation may be against it."
For him, this message captured one of the key themes of the Strategic Partner Meeting: successful innovation depends not only on technology, but equally on people, organisational readiness and a shared strategy.
His experience in Lille illustrates the strength of the BEPROACT consortium—bringing together expertise from different disciplines and countries to exchange knowledge, learn from one another and jointly develop innovative solutions for more resilient, data-driven infrastructure management.