Groupe DAO: design for vocation
[CONTENU PARTENAIRE] Specializing in the field of mechanical engineering, office design and building services, DAO Group has been supporting its clients since 2003. Interview with David Jemin, CEO of DAO Group.
In a few words, can you tell us more about your company’s area of expertise?
The DAO Group is a family business that celebrates its 20th anniversary this year. Our expertise revolves around three main activities, namely mechanical engineering, the provision of design office services, and the building division.
In reality, our work consists of designing, drawing, and manufacturing all the objects, machines, and production tools that surround us. The heart of our business today is based on industrial design in particular, but also building design, by updating existing plans after reading through 3D scans or designing new buildings. In this sector, we have been supporting our clients for several years in setting up the “BIM” (Building Information Modeling) design process: this includes the drawing of digital models that contain all the building information which have been collected from various professional bodies.
Exactly who are the clients for whom the different types of expertise are aimed?
The fact of working around three main different poles allows us to collaborate with actors from different sectors of activity; within the same division, customers also often come from diverse backgrounds.
In the field of servicing a mechanical design office, for example, we bring flexibility and skill to our customers by making our draftsman collaborators available within their own design office. We work both with SMEs with 5 to 10 people and for large international groups operating in the automotive industry, food-processing, agriculture, or even aeronautics, to name just a few.
Generally, the moment an actor wants to do something, it needs to be drawn, and we are definitely there to give him the skills required according to his project and his specifications.
The DAO Group also has several agencies in France.
We really benefit from a local network with several agencies to be closer to our customers, mainly in the large northwest area: in Angers, Rouen, La Roche/Yon, Le Mans, Rennes or Lille; but also in Canada, in Montreal and Quebec. Our employees present at the DAO Group in France can develop in a new environment and work, if they wish, across the Atlantic during their career within the group.
In general, what are the challenges facing your group today?
There are some major issues now. The manufacturers’ perfect knowledge of their production tool and their infrastructure is one of them. If mechanical engineering and building were originally two different activities, today there is a tendency to bring these two activities closer together. With dual capabilities, we are increasingly requested by customers to answer a need for modeling a mechanical device for installation within their factory. DAO Group thus enables its customers to better identify its facilities to optimize their decision-making in infrastructure-related matters.
Can you explain to us how BIM also represents a major challenge in the building sector?
This represents a real process change in the building sector. By being able to model, provide information and centralize building information, this process guarantees the correct design of infrastructures, saving time during construction and optimizing building maintenance actions.
In fact, BIM consists of “assembling” a digital model through software, to go from a 2D drawing to a 3D model, where all the actors involved in the construction or renovation of a building places their elements in this digital model, so that all parts of the site are referenced there. This makes it very precise to know the location of each element digitally even before the start of the construction site; it is this element that is a revolution in the way of working in the construction sector. Therefore, there is a real convergence in these working methods with those applied in mechanical engineering.
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