Dassault Aviation officially launched Tuesday the construction of an office building on its site in Mérignac, France, as a step of its "Leading our Future" transformation plan. The building will accommodate design, development and after-sales support teams for the firm's civil and defense activities. "This ambitious project reflects our aim to bring together some of the teams who design and support our aircraft and those responsible for producing them. It fosters collaborative working as part of the rollout of our extended design office concept. The principle is to integrate even more and whenever required, from the design phase, all the trades involved in the product life cycle," said Eric Trappier, Chairman and CEO of Dassault Aviation. "This building will not just house offices but will be one of the means to reframe the interactions between Mérignac and Saint-Cloud. We are expecting better links between technical competence, product knowledge and customer services," he noted.