bureau_standard_evolutif

Alten

Transformation of 5 500 sq m in Toulouse.

5 500 m²
4 months
2023

bureau_standard_evolutif

Situation

Alten, an engineering consultancy group, consolidated its Occitanie teams onto a single site in Toulouse in 2023. 5,500 m² to transform, 280 workstations to install, four and a half months between handover and delivery. Kytom Toulouse was awarded the assignment under an integrated design and build approach, with a single project manager overseeing all work packages.

Alten’s brief imposed a constraint rarely compatible with a tight schedule: deliver an immediately operational floor plate, yet reconfigurable without reopening the site. For a company whose headcount fluctuates with client engagements, fixing the partitions would have condemned the site to planned obsolescence within 18 months. This initial trade-off, favouring a redeployable grid over masonry partitioning, shaped every downstream technical decision.

5,500 m² to deliver in 4 months on an adaptable floor plate

The challenge lay not in the floor area, but in the pace dictated by Alten’s team consolidation schedule. Four months of works to strip out, re-partition, fit out and hand over 5,500 m² called for tight coordination between design and execution, with no rework phase. Three constraints structured the programme.

First, the fluidity of circulation, for a headcount of 280 employees brought together on a single site. Then acoustic performance, addressed in line with NF S 31-080 in an environment dense with meetings and client calls. Finally, accessibility for people with reduced mobility, integrated from the space planning stage.

The additional difficulty stemmed from the adaptability required by Alten: the floor plates had to be reconfigurable mid-lease without heavy intervention, which ruled out any masonry partitioning outside technical rooms.

Redeployable grid and overlapping work packages to meet the 4-month deadline

Two decisions made the deadline achievable. The first: adopting a grid of demountable partitions with a repeatable setting-out pattern (Bureau Standard Évolutif) across 80% of the floor plate, with fixed partitions reserved for technical rooms and sanitary facilities. This standardisation allowed the modules to be pre-fabricated in the workshop and installed in series, without workstation-by-workstation adaptation.

The second: running the work packages in controlled overlap rather than strict sequence, which the repeatable grid permitted without risk of rework. In practice, floor covering progressed across the delivered zones while partitioning advanced on the following zones, with LED lighting following two weeks behind.

Kytom Toulouse led the operation under design and build, a format that brings together design, costing, works and contractor coordination under a single contract. A project manager held the interface with Alten from space planning (mapping the 280 workstations, validating per-employee ratios) through to snagging close-out.

Office lighting was dimensioned in line with NF EN 12464-1, ventilation and air quality in accordance with the Labour Code (art. R4222-1 et seq.), acoustics calibrated to NF S 31-080. Documentation handed over at delivery: EXE drawings, work-package acceptance reports, consolidated DOE.

280 workstations delivered in 4 months, 95% reusable furniture

The project met all three milestones: 5,500 m² fitted out, 280 operational workstations, delivery within four months of effective works. The wager on the redeployable grid is reflected in the CSR indicators: 95% reusable furniture, 90% recyclable components, 30% materials from recycled sources, a reparability rate assessed at 90%. These figures are not a peripheral environmental statement; they extend the initial trade-off.

A site designed to be reconfigured is only worthwhile if every demountable partition, every LED luminaire, every fit-out element can be dismantled, repaired and reinstalled without breaking the grid or generating waste. For Alten, the operational consequence is measurable: the next reconfiguration of the floor plates will take place off-site, through internal redeployment, with no works tender and no business interruption.

This is what the fixed-to-demountable inversion, decided at the programme stage, has locked in.

5 500

sq m transformed

months of work

280

workstations