The Veolia Campuses : a training vision which has become reality

In an attempt to make its core business areas of waste disposal, cleaning, and boiler maintenance more attractive, and to improve its practices, the Veolia group initiated an intensive in-house training programme in the mid 1990s with the aim of awarding officially recognised degrees. Veolia's first campus was near Paris. The construction of this site was accompanied by implementing the necessary working arrangements as approved by the French national education system, and enabled its founders to overcome internal resistance. Because of successful results from this first site, Veolia decided to expand this operation, and created campuses in other French regions, and even tried to establish training centres abroad, near its foreign subsidiaries. Owing to the diversity of educational cultures and educational systems in different countries, the Veolia Campus company management had to identify the nature of its operation extremely precisely, and to be clear about the degree of freedom it intended to give local, on-site campus managers. Today there are eighteen Veolia campuses throughout the world. This whole process demonstrates the relevance of this approach and the ability of a programme based in France to become a major asset to the group, and to enhance its global presence.