CEO, GRAITEC Group
Graitec Introduction Video
At Graitec, our mission is to empower construction and manufacturing professionals to digitize and industrialize their processes to improve performance and build a sustainable tomorrow." Who are we? What is our mission? Our CEO, Manuel Liedot's description of what Graitec is, and where we're heading!
About Manuel Liedot
Manuel Liedot, CEO of Graitec, has described the company as a global player in construction software with approximately 700 employees across 14 countries and around 300 million euros in revenue. He stated that following the 2022 acquisition of Applied Software in the U.S., about 50% of the company’s business is in North America and 50% in Europe, with less than 10% of revenue coming from France. Liedot said Graitec is an Autodesk Platinum partner and that its mission is to help construction professionals digitize and industrialize processes to build with less environmental impact. He noted that the company is investing in the steel industry and plans to release a new version of PowerPack for Advanced Steel in 2024. Liedot has also spoken about his personal history with the company, saying he joined Graitec shortly after co-developing the structural analysis software Arche in the early 1990s. He described himself as a defender of the "right to fail" as long as there is commitment and effort, and compared Graitec’s trajectory to a relay race and a second half of a match where the team is "boosted" and aims to achieve multiples of past performance. He cited the 1998 FIFA World Cup victory as a memorable sporting moment and named Yannick Noah as a coaching inspiration for his ability to instill engagement and a will to succeed.
Transcript (13 segments)
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Manuel Liedot0:03
Hello everyone. I am Manuel Liedot, the CEO of GRAITEC. This year has been a particularly exceptional year for GRAITEC, with a real focus on internationalization and growth, allowing us to take our company to new heights. I would like to take this time to remind you what GRAITEC's mission is, but also to show you why BIM is a truly transformative technology allied to a truly important cause: sustainability.
At GRAITEC, our mission is to empower construction and manufacturing professionals to digitize and industrialize their processes to improve performance and build a sustainable tomorrow. We address our clients' needs through customer-centric design, products, training, consultancy, and personalized support.
First, we are an historical Autodesk partner, Platinum in Europe and North America, thanks to the recent acquisition of Applied Software in the USA. And by the way, we are also an authorized developer since 1997. This shows we know how to take care of our customers everywhere and in the best way. Secondly, we are a software company helping customers to digitize and industrialize their processes in the construction space. Our motto is: create — create data-rich models enabling the best possible design decisions to be made; simulate — simulate their behavior to make them perform better; fabricate — fabricate as automatically as possible, driving down the cost of time and resources; and manage — manage data all along this process.
Thirdly, to make sure our clients fully leverage the power of BIM, we offer dedicated consultancy services to educate all audiences in identifying opportunities created by new technologies, to facilitate BIM adoption across all teams, to foster collaboration amongst organizations of all sizes, and to finally ensure top-quality services and satisfaction to all clients.
Finally, to guarantee lasting impact, we offer training, transforming our clients into experts of BIM modeling, digital simulation, optimization, and so on. Our trainings are delivered by product- and industry-experienced experts in well-equipped, first-class facilities. We deliver around 12,000 training days a year, either in training or on-site from one of our 29 branches. This ensures you'll find the answer you need close to you, in a way that is 100% fitted to your needs, whether you are a small or a large company.
To make sure we can always address customers' needs in an efficient manner, we always look at what GRAITEC can do better. Recently, we operated a double transformation. Firstly, we are rearranging and transforming our internal organization to better fit a world that is constantly changing. This is to say, we are transforming the company to become more global and more agile. For instance, we have hired more than 100 new employees in 2021, and the trend will continue.
We are also on target to become one true GRAITEC, fielding the best players internationally, to make sure we can be your partner on global projects, your partner to deliver BIM-compliance projects faster, better, and with less impact on our environment. On top of that, we also took a big step to expand internationally this year with the acquisition of Applied Software in the US.
We are securing a leader position worldwide, becoming world leader of AEC and manufacturing systems integration. Originally founded in 1982, Atlanta-based Applied Software is an historic Autodesk partner with 130 employees located in more than 20 states. Applied Software has helped thousands of customers to digitize their processes in the construction and manufacturing space all across the US. Today, Applied Software is one of the largest American Autodesk Platinum partners.
I met with extremely talented new colleagues with impressive skills in architecture, MEP, fabrication, or process plant, and combined with the historic GRAITEC structural skills — structural steel or rebar design, for instance — this will allow us to deliver absolutely unique value to our customers. Of course, with Applied Software joining GRAITEC Group, we become a true global player, able to serve our customers on both sides of the Atlantic.
One point of focus, by the way, will be PowerPack, an innovative and result-based set of productivity tools allowing customers to maximize their use of Revit, Advance Steel, Inventor, and Vault. Whether you are a BIM expert or starting the journey, we want to be your partner and challenge together with you how to bring your performance to the next level.
Finally, we at GRAITEC believe in corporate responsibility. We also believe that opposing sustainability and productivity is an outdated way of thinking, and that's why I'm talking about performance and not just productivity. With building emissions responsible for more than 28 percent of emissions annually, and an additional 11 percent being attributed to material and construction, the need for sustainable construction has never been more urgent. This is becoming all the more imperative in countries such as France, for instance, where the recent regulation RE2020 stipulates a range of sustainability-challenging requirements for new buildings. And indeed, in several countries in Europe, in Brazil, in Canada, the US, everywhere in the world, BIM implementation is also becoming mandatory because of its environmental benefits.
With BIM, teams can unlock a whole range of innovative strategies to improve their energy savings. The sustainability of a building can be calculated by taking into account the environmental impact during the construction phase and its energy performance once it has been built. BIM helps teams make more sustainable decisions by increasing their ability to analyze, to evaluate, to simulate the performance of their design. We all have the capacity to design better with less impact for our planet, and sometimes a few minor adjustments to your design are doing the difference.
At each step of the building process, BIM saves time, improves efficiency, enhances design, and reduces errors. This results in large reduction in the building's lifelong environmental impact and in productivity gains. At GRAITEC, we have solutions and counseling to work with you every step of the way, so that you can not only build faster, but also build cheaper, and more importantly, build better.