Operating through 35 offices across 11 countries worldwide, and backed by private equity fund Isatis Capital since 2015, Graitec consolidates its position in the United Kingdom, through the bolt-on acquisition of Opentree, based in Middlesbrough, northern England

After Arma Plus (France), Procad (Canada), Total CAD (United States), HPC (France), Robobat (Poland), Microcad (United Kingdom), Integer (United Kingdom), Civil Design (Canada), Opentree acquisition is the 9th external growth operation advised by DDA for Graitec.

The acquisition of Opentree, software publisher of EDM solutions for the management of the entire document lifecycle of projects (conform to BIM standards and BS1192 workflows), will help Graitec’ clients to effectively manage internal W.I.P (Work in progress) project documentation from the outset.

This acquisition reinforces Graitec’s offering, and complement the Group’s strategy to become the leader in global BIM software solutions. Graitec will now offer Data and W.I.P. management to all customers worldwide. By making them to adhere to data standards and deliver consistency, the Group is at the forefront of helping customers manage their data and projects effectively, enabling them to achieve time and cost savings, as well as improving internal and external data quality processes.

Francis Guillemard, Graitec President comments: “With Graitec’s recent acquisitions, coupled to the fact that we are an extremely large Autodesk partner, and a software developer in the BIM area, our solutions in the BIM arena provide many ’000,000’s of models, documents and ancillary information, this acquisition will be pivotal in helping our customers with the day to day management of their project documentation from initial conception and tender, through to project delivery!”

Andrew Frank, Opentree Managing Director comments: “By joining Opentree and Graitec, our customers will further benefit from being owned by a company with a long history in design & collaboration, who have the skills and expertise to push Opentree even further into the market of W.I.P management, we see this a key strategy for all customers to manage this process better than they do today.”

The DDA & Company team, composed by Alexandre Odin and Clément Darcourt, advised Graitec in this operation.

About DDA & Company

Founded in 1995, DDA & Company, LLC is an independent corporate finance advisory boutique, based in the USA and in France with a strong presence in Europe, advising French and international firms in acquisitions, sales, fund raisings, and fairness opinions. DDA & Co’s expertise covers the whole spectrum of strategy and financial engineering.

Overview of DDA & Company:

  • Over 120 closed deals in the past 10 years
  • A specialization in deal sizes ranging from €5M to €100M
  • Founding member of the Alliance of International Corporate Advisors, a network comprised of over 50 corporate finance advisors in 40 countries and 5 continents

About Graitec

Founded in 1986, GRAITEC is an international group helping construction and manufacturing professionals achieving successfully their digital transfor

mation by providing BIM and Industry 4.0 software and consultancy. Graitec is a developer of high performance BIM applications as well as an Autodesk Platinum Partner in Europe and Gold Autodesk Partner in North America and Russia.

Operating through 35 offices across 11 countries worldwide, GRAITEC offers its clients an extensive range of established software solutions combined with the full portfolio of Autodesk products which help address the most demanding project needs and maximizing productivity, efficiency and performance. GRAIT

EC is an innovation focused company whose products are used by more than 60,000 construction professionals worldwide.

About Opentree

The company was established in 1992 as tsaADVET Ltd selling networked PC based CAD solutions from Intergraph, Bentley and Autodesk. The focus was on large engineering companies who had hundreds of thousands of drawings to control across very large facilities. The company introduced a third party Electronic Document Management Software (EDMS) system (Falcon/DMS) to enable the tight management of the CAD data.

As the business continued to grow, in 2000, the company developed its own EDMS, CAB-i-NET (now Cabinet). It was first adopted by Tata Steel (formerly British Steel) and Siemens (formerly Westinghouse Rail Systems) in 2003. Thanks to partnership approach with various multinational blue chip companies, Cabinet evolved to manage all forms of office documents as well as CAD drawings.

Following a decade of success, a management buyout enabled the company to strategically plan for its future growth. This resulted in the opening of a dedicated development office in Sheffield, followed by a complete rebrand to Opentree in 2014.

Deal details:

Buy-side Parties & Advisors

  • Management: Francis Guillemard, Manuel Liedot, Steve Houlder, Isabelle Bouyenval (Graitec)
  • M&A Advisory: Alexandre Odin, Clément Darcourt (DDA & Company)
  • Legal Advisory: Richard Cox, Sian Harrison (Browne Jacobson LLP)

Sell-side Parties & Advisors

  • Manager: Andrew Frank
  • M&A Advisory: Richard Firth (Park Place Corporate Finance)
  • Legal Advisory: Jonathan Priestley (3volution)