This paper describes work in progress to develop a component-based software infrastructure, called Padico, for computational grids based on the CORBA Component Model. The objective of Padico is to offer a component model targeting multi-physics simulations or any applications requiring code coupling (simulation or visualization) within a high-performance environment. This paper addresses mainly two issues. The first issue is the encapsulation of parallel codes into components. We propose GridCCM, an extension to the CORBA component model. The second issue addresses the communication between components. We propose PadicoTM, a portable runtime able to efficiently support communication in a heterogeneous networking environment.