Back in 2019, ALICES Plus® was little more than an idea. By the time the product was released in 2025, a lot had happened! With three years of active development and a few unexpected twists and turns along the way, ALICES Plus® took CORYS into completely new territory.
Jean-Christophe Blanchon, Head of R&D, Energy, and Adrien Tenand, Product Manager, took us on a trip down memory lane.
Ask any SimTech 2023 attendee what they remembered most about the event, and you’ll be sure to hear about the automatic cocktail mixing machine run by ALICES Plus®! We brought the attraction back on the first night of SimTech 2025 — and put ALICES Plus® right back to work the next day for a more “professional” demonstration! We ran ALICES 8 on an EPR2, highlighting how a gradual migration would look, and on an SMR-plus-electrolyser combination, illustrating the new software’s even more flexible architecture.
“We wanted to make an impression,” said Jean-Christophe Blanchon. “But we also had a message to get across: ALICES Plus® is not just another version of ALICES®; it’s a completely new product. Users can now work with Python, APIs, and standards like QT. Plus, the graphics have been completely redesigned, and the UI/UX overhauled for a seamless experience. We wanted to create something that would last for 20 years.”
Six years of R&D, one CapEx investment
Design work began in 2019. The R&D team had to make a tough decision: The ALICES® graphics component was becoming obsolete, but an upgrade was not an option. The entire thing would have to be rebuilt from the ground up.
“We had to go all in, and we had to find a way to pay for it,” said Adrien Tenand, Product Manager.
And the cost was substantial: six years of the usual R&D budget.
CORYS CFO Éric Mortier proposed using a CapEx investment to amortize the project over several years, and the shareholders approved it. Once the funds were available, the project took off.
Framatome receives an early delivery
“The way the project was set up and financed, we were able to get started in early 2022 with a team that grew to as many as seven people,” said Jean-Christophe. “Some were recent software development graduates. And they were young! Some were only 22! During the project, the UI/UX specialists at Kaizen helped CORYS model different use cases. “We wanted to get a fresh perspective on the software.”
The project team also gathered feedback from actual users. An ALICES Plus® UI/UX workshop was held in 2023 with Framatome, whose people were really excited about the improved experience. CORYS then developed SimFD, a tool for entering and running command-control diagrams, especially for Framatome. “Framatome asked us to port the tool to ALICES Plus®, which was still being developed,” said Adrien. “And we were more than happy to take on the challenge.”
Agile development, successful software
Users within CORYS also tested the software and provided feedback during special workshops with the development team. Their regular input was integrated into the project’s three-week agile-style development sprints. At the end of each sprint, the product was released for evaluation, avoiding “tunnelling”, a common pitfall in development projects.
Jean-Christophe explained, “The project required us to keep moving forward, step by step, gathering feedback along the way. Agile sprints were ideal. We used a similar approach to determine priority development work to be completed for the planned release in 2025. Non-priority items will be finished afterwards.”
Agile methods have kept the project on schedule, and ALICES Plus® will soon be delivered to Edvance and TechnicAtome. A new version of the DRAC Plus thermal-hydraulic code will be released in 2026.
“Sometimes, product innovations take project management innovations,” explained Adrien.
The integration of Unreal Engine for the software’s 3D images was another breakthrough that illustrates CORYS’s ability to lead major technological transformation projects.
