PhD Student - "Towards Low-Tech Buildings: Characterizing and Reducing Dependencies Related to Building Maintenance and Upkeep in the Face of Climate Change"

Joining Mines Saint-Étienne means committing to an institution where science and innovation build a more sustainable future. An institution of excellence where everyone has the opportunity to reach their full potential and contribute to meeting the challenges of tomorrow.

Ranked among the best engineering schools in France and recognized worldwide, our school, a member of Institut Mines-Télécom, trains the talents of tomorrow while actively contributing to addressing major industrial, digital, and environmental challenges. With us, you will join a community of 500 employees, 2500 students, and participate in an ambitious project: combining academic excellence, cutting-edge research, and positive societal impact.

Institut Mines-Télécom federates leading French schools around major industrial, digital, energy, and ecological challenges. With its 8 public Grandes Écoles and 2 subsidiary schools, it is the leading public institute dedicated to engineers and managers. Together, we envision and build a sustainable future by training the actors who will shape the transitions of tomorrow.

Digital, ecological, industrial transitions: the major challenges of our time are also those of the Institut Henri Fayol.

Here, Computer Science, Data Sciences, Management, Human and Social Sciences, and Environmental Engineering converge to think about the complex systems of tomorrow: territories, companies, industrial sectors.

📊 Resilience, performance, sustainability… We develop and experiment in close collaboration with socio-economic actors to meet the demands of current transitions.

✨ Interdisciplinary research with high impact, where humans are always at the center.

This doctoral thesis will be attached to the Department of Environmental Engineering for Organizations (GEO), a member of the CNRS UMR 5600 Environment City and Society (EVS) Laboratory. To address the challenges of ecological, energy, and industrial transitions, the GEO department supports territorial actors (public and private) towards better consideration of environmental and territorial resilience issues. It thus strives to provide new solutions for the analysis, modeling, and environmental assessment of industrial and territorial systems in the dual context of future industries and sustainable cities and territories.

🏠 Context

Presentation of the Subject

Climate change highlights, as the COVID crisis did before, the vulnerabilities and generalized dependencies of our lifestyles on infrastructures, value chains, and economic and technical organizational models, elements often disconnected from the end-user, their needs, and the conditions of occupation. For the building sector, Cimerman (2023) speaks of a trend over several decades of "Cartesian simplification" in the design and operation of buildings. This is reflected in particular by the development of an imaginary of the "building-machine," resulting in a superposition of complex technical elements (heating, ventilation, air conditioning), controllable through IT tools and optimized centralized management (Cimerman, 2023).

Faced with the challenges posed by climate change, two opposing paths for adapting buildings are emerging. The first, currently dominant, consists of extending this imaginary of a "building-machine," rationalizable, measurable, and optimizable, particularly through the development of "smart buildings." This technosolutionist approach provides ready-made answers (sensors, centralized control tools, etc.) to building managers and users. Nevertheless, it presents certain challenges for their maintenance and upkeep. We can cite the massive use of new technologies, which are expensive, complex, rapidly obsolete, and whose production relies heavily on finite resources. This also raises central questions about skills, delegation of knowledge, and tools associated with external expert operators.

As a counterpoint to the first path, a second, still marginal approach is emerging: that of a "low-tech building." Popularized in France in recent years by Philippe Bihouix (Bihouix, 2014), low-tech questions our relationship with technology and the various forms of dependency it generates (Tanguy et al., 2023). In the building sector, applying this approach often refers to resource dependency (energy and materials): rethinking uses, the origin of materials (reused, bio-sourced), or the simplicity of the equipment used. While necessary, this work pays little attention to other forms of dependency associated with technology, such as dependency on knowledge and the social and economic organizational forms that condition the adequacy, durability, and effectiveness of the proposed solutions.

This thesis therefore offers a concrete immersion into the issues of adapting the building stock to climate change through "low-tech" at the interface between engineering sciences and human and social sciences. The skills and experience acquired will find particular resonance in a sector undergoing rapid transformation, where managing technical, economic, and organizational dependencies is becoming a central issue for the sustainability of buildings and their operation.

Scientific Context

The literature on low-tech has been structured in recent years around a critique of the technological arms race and the dependencies it generates (Bihouix, 2014; Tanguy et al., 2023). Applied to buildings, however, this literature remains predominantly focused on the design phase and resource dependency: energy sobriety, choice of bio-sourced or reused materials, reduction of technical equipment.

Two blind spots result from this. The first concerns the operation phase: maintenance and upkeep, which nevertheless account for the majority of a building's lifespan and condition the real performance of installed solutions, are rarely treated as a research object in their own right. The second concerns the very nature of the dependencies studied. Beyond resources, conducting maintenance operations mobilizes knowledge and skills, diagnostic tools, spare parts, service providers and supply chains, as well as contractual and regulatory frameworks. These cognitive, organizational, and economic dependencies remain largely implicit and underdeveloped in existing work.

Characterizing these dependencies also raises a question of scale. Analyzed solely at the building level, maintenance appears as a sum of technical operations; placed at the urban scale, it reveals networks of actors, sectors, available or absent local skills, and shared dependency effects.

Operational Context

On the institutional and economic actors' side, numerous tools currently support the technical management of the built heritage. We can mention:

• Computer-assisted maintenance management (CMMS) tools and building management systems (BMS);

• Building Information Modeling (BIM for operation, digital twins) approaches and labels associated with building connectivity;

• Outsourced operation and maintenance contracts, and energy performance guarantee schemes;

• Initiatives and feedback from the low-tech movement (demonstrator projects, practitioner guides, associative networks).

These systems share a common orientation: they aim to optimize maintenance operations, rarely to question the dependencies they establish. Low-tech approaches, conversely, carry this inquiry but remain at the stage of occasional experimentation, without a shared evaluation framework or the capacity for generalization across a portfolio or territory.

Consequently, based on the current state of both scientific and operational knowledge, there is no method available to make visible and qualify the dependencies associated with building maintenance and upkeep, nor to assess the extent to which a low-tech approach would reduce them.

🎯 What we expect from you

Thesis Approach

The main objective of this thesis is to characterize the contributions of a low-tech approach to mapping and managing, if not reducing, the various forms of dependencies associated with building maintenance and upkeep.

The dependencies analyzed will be based on the techniques, practices, tools, and networks related to maintenance that will be highlighted in the other two theses of the PERENNIS project. This thesis is therefore in complete continuity with these two works.

Firstly, it will involve constructing a framework for analyzing dependencies related to building maintenance, linking four registers: resources (energy, materials, spare parts), knowledge and skills, actors and their contractual relationships, and technical and logistical networks. This phase will be based on a review of scientific and "grey" literature, a benchmark of existing maintenance practices and tools, and interviews with stakeholders in the sector (property managers, landlords, maintenance technicians, design offices, local authorities).

Secondly, this framework will be used to characterize and make visible the dependency patterns at the urban scale, in one or more study territories. This will involve identifying available data sources to objectify these patterns, qualifying the points of fragility, and assessing their variability according to building typologies and actor configurations.

Thirdly, prospective low-tech maintenance and upkeep strategies will be proposed and analyzed. This will involve constructing contrasting scenarios, evaluating their capacity to reduce the technical, economic, and social vulnerability of maintenance operations in the context of adaptation to climate change, and discussing their feasibility and acceptability with the relevant stakeholders.

Scientific Challenges:

• Definition and operationalization of the concept of dependency applied to building maintenance, beyond resource dependency alone (knowledge, actors, organizations, networks)

• Characterization and representation of dependency patterns at the urban scale, using heterogeneous and partially unavailable data

• Prospective evaluation of low-tech strategies in the absence of consolidated feedback and established metrics

• Interdisciplinary articulation between engineering sciences and human and social sciences, and the capacity to replicate the approach while aiming for "parsimony" in methods and models

Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Addressed:

SDG 11 – Sustainable Cities and Communities ·

SDG 12 – Responsible Consumption and Production

SDG 13 – Climate Action.

🔍 What we are looking for

Education: Master's degree (Bac +5) in general engineering, environmental sciences, building civil or energy engineering, geography/urban planning, or a related discipline. A background or sensitivity in human and social sciences (sociology of technology, STS, functional economy) would be a plus.

Required Skills:

• Qualitative methods: conducting and analyzing semi-structured interviews, field observation, analysis of documentary corpora.

• Systemic and prospective analysis: ability to represent a socio-technical system, to construct and analyze scenarios.

• Knowledge of buildings: understanding the technical functioning of buildings and their equipment, and the logic of operation and maintenance.

• Data processing: proficiency with heterogeneous data from various sources; mastery of processing tools (R, Python) or GIS (QGIS) would be appreciated.

• Project management: ability to structure and lead project phases autonomously, in coordination with two other PhD students in the project.

Language: Fluent French and operational English (ability to read technical and scientific publications in English).

Profile sought: Responsible, proactive individuals with an analytical mindset, capable of scientific rigor. Dynamic individuals, motivated by environmental issues and critical questioning of technology. Adaptability, taste for interdisciplinary and collaborative work with diverse stakeholders.

📩 Apply Now!

Application Deadline: 11/15/2026

🔗 Application files (CV, cover letter, academic transcripts for the last two years, contact of at least one reference person (e.g., master's internship supervisor), research work (master's thesis, academic publications, etc.), one or two letters of recommendation) should be submitted on the RECRUITEE platform:

https://institutminestelecom.recruitee.com/o/doctorante-vers-un-batiment-low-tech-caracteriser-et-reduire-les-dependances-liees-a-la-maintenance-et-a-lentretien-du-bati-face-au-changement-climatique

or send your application to Jonathan VILLOT (and put in the email subject: "Candidature thèse 2026_PERENNIS_ LASTNAME")

Expected Start Date: February 1, 2027

As part of its Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion policy, Mines Saint-Etienne is an employer committed to fair treatment of all applicants.

ℹ️ Additional Information

Thesis Director: Jonathan VILLOT

Co-supervisor: Audrey TANGUY

Associated Project: PERENNIS

Location: Mines Saint-Etienne, Institut Henri Fayol, Department of Environmental Engineering for Organizations. ED SIS 488. 158 Cours Fauriel, 42023 Saint-Etienne.

Affiliated Laboratory: UMR 5600 Environnement Ville Société

International: International mobility of 3 to 6 months is expected during the thesis period

Salary: gross monthly salary of €2600

📞 Contacts

· On the content of the position:
Jonathan VILLOT (· On administrative/HR aspects:
Amélie HUCHET – HR Manager
Email:
Tel: +33 (0)4 77 42 93 05

🌍 Why join Mines Saint-Étienne?

We support each of our employees on the path to excellence, with the conviction that together, we can have a lasting and significant impact on our world.

Joining Mines Saint-Étienne means the opportunity to find:

· A stimulating environment: state-of-the-art experimental facilities, a strong international network (T.I.M.E., EULIST) and human-sized campuses with an urban environment

· A real impact: contract research projects worth €11 million/year, mostly with industrial partners, a scientific culture center, La Rotonde, which has been engaged in science mediation for 25 years with over 50,000 visitors/year

· An incomparable quality of life: between 46 and 49 days of leave and RTT, partial remote work, 75% coverage of public transport costs, financial support for carpooling and cycling, and a social barometer where 83% of employees praise the quality of work life

Let's build a more sustainable future, through science, engineering, and meaningful projects.

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Institut Henri FAYOL

School:

https://www.mines-stetienne.fr/

https://www.imt.fr/

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