A successful marriage of engineering and management accounting

“My talent is translating technology into financial language,” says Claude-Bernard Lévesque, CMA, Chief Operating Officer and Vice President, Finance, at SmartSoil Energy, a young Montreal SME with approximately twenty employees that specializes in converting gas from landfills into energy.

Claude-Bernard Lévesque can claim this talent thanks to his rare combination of training - there are only 23 people in Quebec who have his qualifications. He first became an industrial engineer by earning a degree from the École Polytechnique de Montréal. Then he obtained an accounting degree from McGill University, which eventually led him to the CMA designation. This rather exceptional double-degree training has shaped the extremely unusual career of Claude-Bernard Lévesque.

Upon his arrival at SmartSoil Energy in 2004, the company was in its start-up phase and having a hard time executing its business plan. “There was no connection between the added value of the product and the economic activity of the company,” he explains. He corrected this problem by applying the knowledge he acquired from twenty years’ experience at big multinationals, especially Nortel, Bombardier and Pratt & Whitney. “My intrapreneurial side motivated me to take on the challenge at SmartSoil Energy, a challenge that in all honesty could not have been met by a CMA or engineer alone,” says Claude-Bernard Lévesque. “Because generally speaking, an engineer does not understand finance and a CMA does not understand technology.”

After much hesitation, he decided to try it, a decision that he has never regretted. “I really like working in business and believe the key is to land lucrative contracts abroad,” he says. “Exporting a product is a reliable indicator. It confirms that there is interest in and a future for the product developed. A business that does not export is threatened by collapse.”

Today, the SmartSoil Energy order book has four huge contracts, including one in Mexico. “We are like Gaz Métro, but a little smaller,” explains this 46 year-old CMA while showing me around SmartSoil Energy’s large warehouse and explaining in great detail the characteristics of a unique new patented technology that can be used in extreme environments, both in the freezing cold of the arctic and the stifling heat of a desert. The warehouse contains many large bright green containers, one housing a control centre for the compression stations, the others modulators used to ensure a constant concentration and flow of methane, which is treated and then compressed before delivery to the energy production centre.

The energy produced from landfill gas is far from insignificant: one million tons of waste can generate 4.8 megawatts. “That is an excellent performance, especially since the competition can produce only a third of that amount at this time,” says Claude-Bernard Lévesque. “We succeeded in taking the lead by making a technological leap based on controlling the production of methane through software and not a passive system. We are proving that a small landfill can produce a lot of energy. I believe that the future is in this type of production.”

A passionate pianist who perfected his scales at the renowned Vincent d’Indy School of Music, Claude-Bernard Lévesque nevertheless opted for industrial engineering. “Music requires an ongoing creative effort which I am incapable of,” explains this manager, who escapes the vagaries of business by avidly pursuing hobbies like gardening, renovation and writing techno-style music. In fact, he has often thought about making an album one day. Although his two sons, aged eight and five, are die-hard fans of his music, his wife is definitely not, admits Claude-Bernard Lévesque while laughing. And that has nothing to do with the fact that she is a CA!

His career began at Nortel in the golden years of the technology stronghold of the 80s. But after five years, in 1990, he went back to school to obtain his CMA designation. It was an unexpected change of focus that Claude-Bernard Lévesque explains as follows: “I had been selected from a group of about twenty employees to study the competition and understand why the company was setting itself apart. That is how I had access to senior management, and we traveled all the way to Japan. I was transformed by that experience and actually needed some time to come back to Earth and reconcile the difference between what I had observed in Japan and the reality here. I wondered what would give me added value and boost my career in the long term. I wanted depth and the possibility of a broad reach.” The answer was the CMA designation, which in time turned out to be an excellent and profitable choice.

Developing a long-term vision of his career was not necessarily easy in a business world increasingly focused on the short term. Claude-Bernard Lévesque acquiesces: “I paid the price for it, but decided to take the Japanese approach by making latitudinal changes rather than joining the MBA culture, based on a star system, and letting myself be be influenced by Fortune 500, where performance is measured in quarterly results. But there are businesses that are aware of the necessity of maintaining balance between the long-term strategy and short-term tactics, especially in the aeronautics sector.” That is why Claude-Bernard Lévesque spent more than ten years in it.

However, the management style and philosophy of Claude-Bernard Lévesque, which he describes as consensual, does not espouse Japanese culture where no one may stick out. On the contrary, he believes in the virtues of difference as an indicator of balance. “I let people breathe, and I accept that not everyone is the same,” he explains. “I focus on what each and every individual can contribute to the company.”

Over the years, Claude-Bernard Lévesque has built a reputation of being one of the best activity-based managers. To the extent that one of his employers, Pratt & Whitney, sent him to San Diego to give speeches on the topic to managers of various American firms. “As I see it, it is the ideal tool for supporting decisions,” explains Claude-Bernard Lévesque. “Activity-based management makes it possible to interface between operations and the chart of accounts, and it requires you to have a thorough knowledge of operations and computers. Currently, not many managers are using this approach, since the trend is forcing most of them to focus more on governance regulations than the market.”

With so much training and experience, it would not be surprising if one day Claude-Bernard Lévesque started his own company. “That is not out of the question, but at the same time, I am not rash,” he admits. “My latest obsession is that Quebec must continue to develop products with a lot of added value that can be exported so that it will be in a better position on the world economic stage. Now more than ever, we need businessmen and women with leadership.”

The other Claude-Bernard Lévesque, in a few words …

His wildest dream

Decidedly an artist at heart, Claude-Bernard Lévesque would like to devote himself to metalworking to make all those creations in his head.

What particularly outrages him

The injustice that millions of Indian women suffer in becoming widows, when condemned to the status of outcasts by society.

His habit that makes others smile

The noise he makes when he is happy and that apparently sounds like a bird call!

The historical figure that inspires him

Charles De Gaulle, the visionary who believed in Europe long before it became a reality and was right about many aspects of international geopolitical development in the past 40 years.