A new dimension…

Our broad range of activities means we can position ourselves more effectively to meet the challenges facing the regions of today and tomorrow! This is why the Colas Group, through Aximum, wanted to join forces with the Parkki start-up, to develop solutions for intelligent and connected mobility, and thus gain a foothold in the Smart Mobility market.

Created in 2016, smart mobility start-up Parkki joined the Group at the end of 2022, becoming a subsidiary of Aximum. Its well-known and recognised expertise, particularly with the major players in the retail sector (over 50 customers, including Auchan, Carrefour, Leclerc, Leroy Merlin, etc.), convinced the Group to work together to develop solutions to optimise mobility in local areas. 

It is a great opportunity for the Group to increase its expertise in this field. The project brings together the complementary expertise of Aximum, a specialist in security, signalling, traffic flow and mobility management and optimisation solutions with a strong local presence, and Parkki, which is developing a range of parking, traffic flow and counting services. 

This collaboration enables us to respond to the strategic challenges faced by managers, by supporting them in the rapid evolution of uses and Smart Mobility. By combining our expertise, local authorities will benefit from new service solutions to optimise mobility, tailored to local needs. 

Parkki’s strength lies in its ability to centralise and manage all the information from various sources in a single tool, the hypervisor. This tool can then be used to create unique travel assistance services for users. 
With a hypervisor solution, Parkki’s teams do away with using a multiplication of business platforms, for better mobility management. This solution can communicate with virtually all sensors and panels on the market. This development and our monitoring of new technologies means we can offer our customers the latest, most relevant technologies to match their infrastructures and needs: 

  • Parking sensors and cameras,
  • Pedestrian counting and counting sensors,
  • Flow analysis cameras,
  • Plate reading cameras,
  • Bicycle and soft mobility counters. 



Together, our strengths!

  • The complementary nature of our activities and expertise
  • Market synergies
  • Shared vision
parkki


 

TWO EXAMPLES
 

Challans
 

The town of Challans, in the Vendée (85), wanted to set up connected car parks in its town centre, displaying parking spaces on signs and on the town’s mobile application. 

This new collaboration between the Aximum and Parkki teams thus came into its own in this first project! They responded as co-contractors, to provide a concrete solution for the car park guidance system in Challans town centre, and thus improve the quality of life for users.

In concrete terms, the Aximum teams, through the Nantes Mobility team led by Stéphane Morillon, were able to set up an intelligent car park guidance system proposed by our start-up Parkki, and deploy a LoRa* network throughout the town. 

This dynamic management of all parking areas, 117 spaces to be precise, has been made possible by 2 technologies: 

  • Counting via sensors on the ground
  • On-site analysis, with a camera that carries out on-board analysis, enabling the number of spaces to be deduced in real time, without being able to retrieve images. 
     


Each space is then connected via a sensor on the ground, which detects the presence of vehicles, or via a detection camera. The information is then relayed on the city’s mobile application and on variable message signs on site. 

Variable message signs have also been installed to guide users to available spaces in other car parks. 

Our teams were able to meet the customer’s needs by offering them a system that allowed them to determine, in real time, how many parking spaces were left in the car park! 

Behind this success lie 3 key services:

  • The hypervisor, which analyses the data to help the local authority understand how its car parks are used, so that it can modify the existing infrastructure,
  • Provide physical guidance via dynamic route signing,
  • A mobile application integrated into the town’s mobile application for the connected car park section. 
     


 

Velizy
 

As with the town of Challans, Parkki in collaboration with Aximum was able to provide an intelligent parking solution for the car parks of the Vélizy 2 shopping centre (91), with the installation of a parking analysis system for all the outdoor car parks. 

Thanks to a network of 22 intelligent cameras, it is now possible to analyse all the outdoor spaces. This installation was achieved in partnership with Parguery, a Swiss company specialising in image analysis. 

The project has also enabled Parkki to integrate the existing Afapark indoor guidance system in its entirety, to provide a global view of parking in the shopping centre’s indoor and outdoor car parks. 
In particular, this solution unifies and simplifies car park management, with Parkki acting as a single point of contact for its entire car park management system. 

There are 1,400 equipped outdoor spaces
and a total of more than 4,200 parking spaces on the site. 

Parkki is responsible for the complete maintenance of the guidance systems at the Vélizy 2 centre, both indoor and outdoor, as well as all the signs on the site, in partnership with the Aximum team from the Ile-de-France mobility centre.

This combination of expertise and skills in engineering and construction means that everyone can find their place. With Parkki’s contribution, Aximum and the Colas Group as a whole can position themselves more effectively in new private markets. As for Parkki, with the support of Aximum, it has gained access to public markets in which it was not previously present. 

By investing in the start-up Parkki, the Colas Group, through its subsidiary Aximum, is in line with the Bouygues Group’s strong commitment to developing and exploiting the full potential of connected, smart and sustainable technologies. 

We wish Parkki all the best for their adventure with Aximum, and our teams all the best for the future. 

To find out more about Parkki solutions: https://parkki.fr/

Together, let’s develop our regions and meet the challenges of mobility and the Smart City!