Ekium OVER 25 YEARS OF ENGINEERING EXPERTISE E XCELLENCE IN L YON

Transcription

1

2 Ekium OVER 25 YEARS OF ENGINEERING EXPERTISE A company created in 1990 under the name of Cira Concept, Ekium has become a nationally recognised player in the fields of industrial and tertiary engineering and automation. Based in Bron, the group now has numerous branches in France and abroad, with 750 employees and a turnover of 70 million euros. In the beginning, there were three schoolfriends, Philippe Lanoir, Laurent Perrin and Jean-François Aznar, who decided, at the instigation and on the instinct of Richard Sebag, their first employer, to launch themselves into the adventure of enterprise and create Cira Concept, a company specialising in industrial process control. We were 25. We didn t ask each other many questions, all three of us had our own areas of expertise and each of us fell into place naturally, recalls Philippe Lanoir, now Chair of the Ekium group. Although the group s capital has been largely held by an investment fund since 2007, 3 of its founder members are still directors and still have a significant shareholding. After achieving a turnover of 63 million euros in 2015, which was 15% up on the previous year, Ekium reached 70 million in 2016 (11% up). With the signing of big contracts, in particular some that will span several years, the group continues to perpetuate its activities, and can maintain its development without fuss, approaching new markets like those of Smart Industry and Smart City. Ekium plans to recruit more than 100 people per year, to be able to manage the resultant workload. Our growth relies on four complementary approaches: mastery of a piece of work in its totality, all-inclusive delivery of a project, keeping our leadership in automation, and development of our share of the international market, explains Philippe Lanoir, and he continues, To take up these challenges, we count on our raw material, our colleagues. We follow a responsible human resources policy to guarantee the excellence of our services. 2 > Our engineers and technicians pool their knowledge to take up the challenges of a high-performance innovative industry

3 25 years later, we re still committed to working with the fi rst customers we ever had. > Life sciences, one of the main elements of our DNA > Faced with ever more complex industrial issues, automation allows these challenges to be confronted > Smart City: the BIM (Building Intelligence Modelling) at the core of new models of construction A human adventure, a relationship based on trust Philippe Lanoir, Jean-François Aznar and Laurent Perrin met in 1981 in the classrooms of the Lycée Edouard Branly in Lyon, where they were following the same technical training course. They went their separate ways when they first left school, then their paths crossed once more at the end of their higher studies. With their BTS certificates in hand, the young graduates worked at first on the books of a temp agency specialising in industrial process control, directed by Richard Sebag. In 1990 the three friends went into partnership with him to create the Cira Concept company. The name appeared as self-evident, the acronym for Automatic Regulation of Control Instrumentation (in French). The business developed and soon had to expand, and was established then in its own premises, still in the heart of Chemical Valley, to the south of Lyon. It had the advantage of being close to the engineering centres of a number of large groups of international dimensions. The local and regional industrial fabric played a big part in our development, along with the training available, which gave us, and still gives us, good conditions for recruiting, observes Philippe Lanoir. Their first partnerships soon bonded and confidence took root in even the most demanding customers. We forged partnerships over the long term, comments the company Chair. Now, we re still committed to working with the first customers we ever had, such as EDF, Rhône Poulenc Silicones, which is now Bluestar Silicones, and Rhône Poulenc Research Centre, now Solvay. The business took off so well that within 5 years the company was the leader in control and command systems in Rhône-Alpes and was already looking beyond its frontiers. During the year 1995, a threshold was crossed with the creation of a subsidiary, 2C services. At first, this new entity was dedicated to consultancy, but it quickly developed skills in general installation and pipework, as well as electrics and instrumentation, which was ideal for offering a complete package with what the company was already doing. In 1997 the group commissioned the building of a new company headquarters in the commune of Bron, where almost 250 people work. The advent of the Ekium group In 2000, the company landed its first master-contract in the field of electrical engineering, instrumentation and automation. The new partnership forged with bodies that would later become Ineos and Petroineos was the justification for setting up a new Mediterranean subsidiary at Martigues, in Bouches-du Rhône. In 2002 a symbolic boundary was crossed when Rhodia Research Centre, which has since become Solvay, entrusted the group with its first ever project worth over 1 million euros. From then on, bigger and bigger contracts have followed. Considering the methods, organisation and expertise that were brought to bear, these projects gave us structure and prefigured the Cira Concept company s transformation into an all-inclusive engineering group, Philippe Lanoir points out. Nowadays, master-contracts allow Ekium to guarantee regular activity, with around 500,000 hours of engineering work invoiced each year. In 2016, after 158 > Smart engineering is a major development approach for Ekium > One of our mobile teams brings its expertise for supervision of a construction site

4 Over 9 years, we have tripled our workforce and turnover. the CEA (French Atomic Energy Authority), Ekium notably landed a contract with Total, with a potential annual turnover of 10 million euros. At the same time as the company was endeavouring to structure a complete range of expertise in automation and engineering, the quest for closeness to the customer became a major issue in the development of the company. From then on, the group extended its network of branches all over France. At the same time, in 2007, a significant change in the shareholding came about with the entry of the Platina investment fund. This development was good in a number of ways. Firstly, it allowed us to optimise our management and give structure to the company by reinforcing our support functions, particularly with the appointment of an administrative and financial manager, a human resource manager, a marketing manager and so on. That also allowed us to strengthen our strategic vision and accelerate our rate of growth, Philippe Lanoir highlights. Several takeover operations followed, including the engineering company Atecas, which led the burgeoning VSE to form a group of 6 companies, which then employed 320 people. In 2008 the different entities were merged into one, so as to consolidate their being able to work together All that remained was to find a name that everyone could identify with Ekium! Confirmed growth division has enjoyed a parallel increasing success, as a number of big names have signed contracts with the group in the course of 2016, like the Printemps Hausmann department store in Paris. To satisfy demand, the Ekium teams implement a method of working based on a BIM (Building Intelligence Modelling) digital model, which is at the core of new models of construction. Smart Engineering, and in particular the Smart City and Smart Industry, also constitute new levers of growth for the group. A perfect illustration of this new dynamic is the flagship project at the Paris Town Hall, which is giving Ekium the chance to demonstrate its expertise in Smart City and the Internet of Things (IoT), within the framework of an assistance mission in phased project management for the design and realisation of an ambitious project. In concrete terms, It s all about setting up the supervision of 1,300 heat production centres to heat 2,200 buildings (including schools, creches, town halls and so on). That includes innovative experiments with IoT to capture field data such as the temperature of premises,which is read from energy meters, while emphasising cybersecurity, Philippe Lanoir details. This is confirmed by Laurent Perrin: Our engineers at the automation centre are geared up to use new automisation technologies, cybersecurity and data processing. In fact, the industry of the future will have to exploit its Big Data and put an emphasis on its mobility as well as its agility. What is more, Ekium is positioned to support manufacturers in improving their energy performance. > Ekium takes its customers towards the industry of the future the borders of France continued with the arrival in spring 2016 of the Mauritian company Consultec in the group, a company Ekium had been working with for several years. As well as giving us an opening into Africa, Australia, Eastern Europe and middle-eastern countries, Consultec has brought a recognised knowhow in engineering and project management to the group, as well as complete mastery of 3D laser scanning. which allows us to to make digital models of existing installations, explains Jean- François Aznar. So what is the aim for the future? We ve achieved the objectives of our 2012 strategic plan, so from now on we can invest in new smart Industry and Smart City projects. Digital processing in the industrial and tertiary sectors is a sizeable issue that we have the appetite for, as well as the expertise we need to position ourselves for it, concludes Philippe Lanoir, chair of Ekium. Watch this space. In 2010 the tertiary engineering company GLI joined the group, with its 40 experts in technical building fluids and safety systems. While Ekium now makes 70% of its turnover from industrial engineering, the tertiary engineering Ekium s growth has now reached the point of international development. An acceleration in this was felt in 2014 with the launching of the Ekium Benelux activity, with offices established in Luxembourg. This development beyond In the context of industrial and services sector digital processing, we are maintaining our growth by a reliance on four approaches: mastery of a piece of work in its totality, all-inclusive delivery of a project, automation, and development of our share of the international market. > Ekium capitalises on over 35 years experience in storage activities in France and abroad > Ekium puts its energy at the service of innovations for the future of nuclear power > Thanks to 3D laser plotting, we are able to integrate industrial projects of the future with existing ones Staff: 750 employees Turnover: 70 Million euros 17 branches in France and abroad

5 Éditions du Signe - 1 rue Alfred Kastler - BP Eckbolsheim STRASBOURG CEDEX Tél : +33 (0) Fax : +33 (0) info@editionsdusigne.fr Offprint from "Excellence in Lyon - Companies' Expertise".