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Auxitec strengthens its skill sets and regional footholds

While the oil crises had a real impact on industrial investment, they also required players to improve
the productivity and profitability of their facilities, which drove an increase in the need for engineering
and revamping services. In response to these growing demands, Auxitec regularly reinforced its skills
and raised its level of service.
Focused originally on pipework systems, the company turned its attention to the structures that support
and house them, electricity, instrumentation and logic controllers. Auxitec therefore progressively
integrated new business lines, by recruiting specialists and purchasing design offices in the fields of
buildings and civil engineering, metal frameworks and mechanical construction. Consecutively, we
opened more branch offices and were thus able to provide high-quality, locally-based engineering
services to the oil and petrochemical industries all over France. By 1987, Auxitec had a workforce
of 600.
Information technology is the other area in which the company made great inroads from 1980 to
1990. Like all companies, we used it internally for accounting and office work, but we also developed
automatic pipework drawing software. Having thoroughly tested these programmes and ensured that
they were reliable, we released them onto the market. The initiative was a success and we progressively
widened our range. Information technology also became more important with the increase in use of
programmable logic controllers in factories. We therefore began to design customised software and
offer bespoke IT developments.

Pierre Michel
CEO of Auxitec until 2017

30 I ARTELIA, 10 YEARS OF EXISTENCE, 100 YEARS OF EXPERIENCE