Resilience—a cornerstone of our property strategy
Summer 2026 brought record-breaking heatwaves and wildfires. Faced with growing climate uncertainty, the property sector needs to rethink how it adapts to climate risk, says Franck Lirzin, SNCF Immobilier’s Director of Strategy, Clients and Project Management, in an interview with Business Immo.
Putting safety first
SNCF Group has a vast property portfolio, with some 25,000 buildings covering 8 million sq m. It includes 100,000 housing units as well as offices and workplaces for 150,000 employees. As a landlord, says Franck Lirzin “it’s our responsibility to provide these occupants with living and working environments capable that can withstand the effects of climate change.”
For the past decade, the property sector has been assessing climate impacts and working to mitigate them. But the extreme events of summer 2026 brought renewed attention to the major risks these hazards pose to people’s health and the safety of infrastructure.
8 M m²
in SNCF Group’s property portfolio
That’s
25,000
buildings
And
100,000
housing units
Adapting to the unknown—what we haven’t yet experienced
For Franck Lirzin, one of the biggest risks today is that regulations are based on past weather events, such as the 2003 heatwave. Yet “climate reality waits for no man and is highly unpredictable. That’s why we need to plan for the worst-case scenario.” Designing air-conditioning systems for maximum outdoor temperatures of 40° C, for example, makes little sense if temperatures are very likely to exceed 44°C within a few decades.
Climate reality waits for no man and is highly unpredictable. That’s why we need to plan ahead for the most extreme risks.
Director of Strategy, Clients and Project Management at SNCF Immobilier
Balancing priorities
“We need to accept that we won’t be able to protect everything,” says Franck Lirzin. Preparing buildings for extreme events can require major construction work and significant investment, making it essential to prioritize adaptation measures.
The first priority is protecting people—at the office, in other workplaces, or at home—followed by protecting critical infrastructure. An electrical substation, for example, may be particularly vulnerable to flooding. As Lirzin points out, “We can’t automate all 25,000 buildings owned by SNCF Group to cope with heatwaves. We need to focus on the most strategic ones.”
Taking an asset management approach to adaptation
Unlike decarbonization, which can reduce energy bills, climate adaptation has no clear economic model. Property managers need to weigh the cost of adaptation against the potential impact on operations when for, example, indoor temperatures simply become too high.
That is why adaptation needs to be built into existing projects—for example by incorporating white paint and greening measures into refurbishment programmes.
Better still, Franck Lirzin recommends viewing adaptation as “a long-term investment that will safeguard the value of our property portfolio.” Just as a building’s energy performance is becoming an increasingly important factor in its valuation, its overall climate resilience is also likely to play a growing role in future assessments.
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