Building a sustainable future with SMART-Z

Smart-Z: An entirely new building & an impactful remodeling, at the same time and almost the same place! If you visited our location in Hengelo recently you surely noticed the construction works in and around our Z building. Under the project SMART-Z our colleagues and partners are putting in great efforts to ensure the system testing and integration facilities are completely up to-date and future-proof. And, those results of those efforts are almost ready!

This April, it is a year ago that construction started for our new testing facility. By now, our partners and us have made great strides of progress, which brought us to the 6th and final phase of the transformation. Large parts of the current Z building have been remodeled and the new building next door has been raised from the ground. Project manager Tom Geerdinck fills us in “We expect the transformation and construction to be delivered by the end of July”.

“Once all construction is finished, we have the ambition to create a garden in between these buildings. A nice place to enable everyone in this area of our Hengelo site to have a quick breath of fresh air, with or without their colleagues” our Real Estate colleague continues. A key aspect of the garden design are the impact on our environment and how it can contribute to the existing ecosystem to increase biodiversity. But… The garden is by no means the only “green” aspect of the project.

Sustainability for us & our surroundings

Sustainability is an obvious and constant feature during the construction and remodeling. We take every opportunity to reuse materials and systems, actively chose sustainable alternatives and materials for what has to be replaced and older, untenable installations are replaced when possible. “Of course, we have also employed quick wins such as window and frontage isolation and installing heat pumps. Even during construction our contractor focusses on ecological sustainability.” Tom looks forward to the effects of these measures; “We expect, that even with more testing, our energy consumption and CO2 emissions will decrease.”

And extra testing is necessary for our organizational sustainability. The project SMART-Z is part of how we build a secure future for Thales Netherlands. The project does not only offer extra room (which we will need to handle our growth and deliver our systems), but also to ensure we have facilities fitting that future. To ensure that our facilities fit our vision of working together, with each other and our customer. To work pleasantly and efficiently and deliver our solutions in time and on quality our facilities have to work with us to test more and make the process more effect, so we can deliver and meet our expectations.

A great compliment to our colleague’s

One of the reasons the entire project runs completely on schedule is the cooperation of our colleagues in building Z. “Because of that, they deserve a great compliment. Everyone continued their work during the entire transformation and that had an impact on them. Thanks to their flexibility and solution focused mind set we were able to do this while keeping the shop running.” Most of the approximately 150/200 colleagues have found their “new” flexwork-spot. And, of course that takes some getting used to, we have to regain familiarity with something new. “It may take some time, but by working together, with each other, the customer and new colleagues the building will soon be business as usual.”

New colleagues

Currently at Thales Netherlands, we are still looking for about 400 new colleagues, some of which will be working in system testing and integration. According to Tom the new building offers a strong selling point “Everyone will want to work in the new building, the view from the first floor is incredible”. Are you or any of your friends or family looking for the view? Check www.werkenbijThales.nl for our vacancies.