GRAPHISOFT Names Huw Roberts as Incoming Chief Executive Officer

GRAPHISOFT, the leading Building Information Modeling software solution provider for architects and designers, has announced that they have appointed Huw Roberts CEO (chief executive officer).

Viktor Várkonyi, the former CEO, will depart the company to take up a new Chief Division Officer role for the Planning & Design Division within Nemetschek SE  (aka: Nemetschek Group). Várkonyi also serves as Executive Board Member at the Nemetschek Group.

New CEO Adjustments at GRAPHISOFT

Mr. Várkonyi, during his 27 years at the company, has contributed to several technological innovations that bolstered the widespread growth of BIM in the industry. During his 10-year tenure as Chief Executive, he tripled the company’s revenues and helped consolidate GRAPHISOFT’s position as the global leader in BIM for architects and designers.

 

 

 

 

“GRAPHISOFT has been a central part of my professional career,” says Mr. Várkonyi. “I was lucky to have been a part of its extraordinary growth during the past three decades. Looking ahead, I believe that 2019 will be a transformative year for both GRAPHISOFT and the Nemetschek Group, enabling great synergies between our sister brands. Huw Roberts brings to GRAPHISOFT exceptional business and leadership skills, deep industry experience, and a true passion for helping AEC professionals benefit from technology-driven transformation. I am confident that the company is now in the right hands to achieve its ambitious targets!”

Strong Growth Trajectory

Capitalizing on a strong growth trajectory spanning the past decade, GRAPHISOFT sought to appoint an industry-savvy, energetic leader whose skill set and experience would quickly dovetail into the opportunities at hand and help catapult the company forward. The selection of Mr. Roberts, an accomplished industry veteran with three decades of leadership experience in both the software industry and architectural profession, reflects GRAPHISOFT’s determination to make a significant strategic push toward the next inflection point in its market leadership.

Huw Roberts

Mr. Roberts, an architect by profession, has held executive roles in product management, marketing, and business development during his prominent career, guiding the maximization of market impact and business value for leading technology companies. Highlights of his career include 17 years of leadership roles at Bentley Systems, a global developer of software solutions for the management of infrastructure assets, and the Chief Marketing Officer role at BlueCielo, a Netherlands-based company recently acquired by Accruent. As he assumes the top role at GRAPHISOFT, Mr. Roberts, who is a native of Philadelphia, USA, will relocate to Budapest, Hungary, the site of the company’s headquarters.

Relocation to Budapest

“Throughout my years in this industry, I have been impressed by the passionate loyalty of GRAPHISOFT customers and the inspiring architecture they produce around the world,” says Mr. Roberts. “I have been equally impressed by the depth of commitment the team brings to serving our customers and partners through product innovation, industry know-how, and personal dedication.”

 

 

 

 

Commenting on why he believes the company is poised for success, Mr. Roberts observed, “The combination of technical excellence and innovation, a uniquely strong corporate culture, and consistent business success provides a rock-solid platform for the next chapter of GRAPHISOFT’s growth. I am proud to join the team as we expand our capacity to provide solutions for, and advantages to, our users worldwide. I would also like to thank Mr. Várkonyi for his great work in leading the company’s growth to its current strong and financially healthy state, which is a prerequisite to achieving our ambitious growth plans in the years to come.”

For more information on Mr. Roberts, please visit GRAPHISOFT’s leadership page. For background on the Nemetschek Group’s new leadership structure, please visit the official Nemetschek press release. For additional information, or to schedule an interview with Mr. Roberts, please contact our media relations at press@graphisoft.com.

Architosh Analysis and Commentary

GRAPHISOFT gained Huw Roberts, as VP for the Americas, back in the early fall of 2018. In our news and analysis report then, we noted two key advantages to his appointment. The first is Huw’s long and distinguished tenure at Bentley, leading numerous marketing and product strategy initiatives. Having served at Bentley, Huw brings with him knowledge of how to serve multiple segments of the AEC market, particularly the engineering and infrastructure segments that Bentley is known for. Back in Kyoto, Japan, at the KCC for GRAPHISOFT, Várkonyi suggested that GRAPHISOFT would move in the direction of better serving the construction side of the market. 

To do so, he stated that GRAPHISOFT’s industry-leading BIMcloud would be opened up via an API (application programming interface) so that specific solutions serving new segments (like construction) could be integrated. Back in Kyoto, he also said BIMx, its award-winning mobile solution, would also become more open via an API. Várkonyi ended his talk by saying that “teams will eventually build a real construction model,” and noted earlier that the era of multiple federated BIM models was going to be over.

The concept of GRAPHISOFT as a data platform was essentially what was in the air. Between its industry-superior BIMcloud (a BIM server in the cloud) at the central repository level and its award-winning BIMx running on Apple’s iPad Pro, for example, as the superior edge solution, what seemed to be missing was the ability to run more types of models from this cloud server to the field. And the ability to query data in this environment from multiple tools from open APIs. 

With GRAPHISOFT essentially targeting the larger AEC market as a whole, Huw’s experience at Bentley becomes that much more valuable to the company.