This month, RoviSys Building Technologies, a global provider of building automation services and solutions for industrial, commercial and mission-critical applications in existing facilities and new construction, celebrates its 10-year anniversary. Co-Presidents, Derek Drayer and Craig Lechene, founded the company in 2012 as an expansion of RoviSys with a specific focus on building automation technologies. Over the past ten years, RoviSys Building Technologies has experienced consistent growth and expansion, developing key partnerships with hyper-scale data centers, pharmaceutical manufacturers, hospital systems, college & university facility operations, and large scale commercial- industrial general contractors.
"In 2010 and 2011, it became clear that the building automation market was going through what the process automation market went through in the 1990’s," said Derek Drayer, President, RoviSys Building Technologies. "Customers were starting to demand openly programmable control systems as opposed to the proprietary, locked down versions that had dominated the BMS landscape for years. Because RoviSys was a leader in helping the process control industry adopt open systems, it was natural to get organized in a way that would help the building control industry do the same. So, we paddled our surfboard out in front of the tidal wave and got into position."
During 2012, RoviSys Building Technologies landed its first major customer account, a hyperscale datacenter owner/operator based in California. Expected business plans and growth plans were set aside because the scope and demand of projects from the datacenter account were all-encompassing. This led to growth at a pace five times greater than originally planned.
In 2015, RoviSys Building Technologies had grown enough to secure additional large accounts and began to diversify. An office location was established in the Netherlands to capitalize on market conditions and customer demand in Europe. By 2017, RBT had teams of engineers working across four continents and in multiple segments of the building automation market space: datacenters, life sciences/pharmaceutical facilities, industrial/manufacturing facilities, and commercial buildings.
Looking ahead at the next decade, RBT will continue to contribute significantly to overall system integration revenue for RoviSys, which ranks first on Control Engineering’s 2022 System Integrator Giants list. As the enterprise strives for the $1B annual revenue mark, RBT will sustain growth by capitalizing on momentum in the datacenter, pharmaceuticals, and electric vehicle markets and with customers who operate globally.