A School on the move
After the war, the School needed to be increasingly aware of the economic world. Staff numbers increased significantly to meet the growing demand for engineers, for both the state and private sectors. It was a period that really needed engineering skills (Ailleret, Galabru, Hirsch, Vicariot…): technical progress, the considerable advances in sciences and technologies relating to building, urban development and environmental protection, demanded greater curricular diversity, which radically changed the physiognomy of the School.
In 1983, the School began wide-ranging reforms in the recruitment of students, the structure of programmes, teaching methods, links with research and the business world, lifelong learning... Today, this lifelong learning section has become the largest of all the major engineering schools. In the same context, the School created a scientific and technical publishing house in order to contribute to the spread of French technologies and know-how. In parallel, although the research laboratory had separated from the School after the war, the need to link teaching and research re-emerged, and new research labs developed.
Public scientific, cultural and vocational institution
Having being officially declared a Scientific, Cultural and Professional Institution (EPSCP) on January 1, 1994, the School now had the right legal status to facilitate initiatives that would reflect the dynamism of its development. In 2000, under the direction of Pierre Veltz, the School introduced its most recent reform. Today, Ponts et Chaussées engineers have to be able to manage multidisciplinary projects. For this reason, the reform emphasised a strong scientific culture and fundamental specialist fields, for engineers trained to contribute to the resolution of complex sociotechnical problems and able to work in an international context.