Gauthier Van Damme

Chief Operating Officer at Pepps

Brussels Metropolitan Area

About

Experience

  • Chief Operating Officer at Pepps
    May 2025 - Present · 1 yr 3 mos

  • Transurb (11 yrs 1 mo)
    • Managing Director
      Jan 2023 - May 2025 · 2 yrs 5 mos

      As the managing director overseeing a staff of 110 employees and 10-12M€ of yearly turnover with branches in Belgium and Algeria, we are currently rebuilding the service department of Transurb from years of underinvestment back towards profitability and brand recognition while consolidating the simulation department as an established player and leader within its market.  Directing team of 5 C-level executives  Managing multi-shareholder board  Director of sales department (11 FTE)  Overseeing international presence & projects on 5 continents

    • General Manager
      Sep 2018 - Feb 2023 · 4 yrs 6 mos

      As the general manager of the simulation department of Transurb the key challenge withing my tenure was to grow the team and products from a challenger position with less known customers towards an established player with big customers such as Germany’s DB, France’s SNCF and the Swiss SBB-CFF-FFS.  Growing from 4 to 7M€ yearly turnover with full P&L responsibilities  Deploying structured sales and innovation strategy (6 FTE)  HR organization and growth towards 65 high qualified FTE  Establishing a “Learning” organization for continuous improvement at every level (skills, trainings, process, ...)

    • Head Of Projects
      May 2014 - Aug 2018 · 4 yrs 4 mos

      Operational management of the simulator projects. Going from the specification to the installation and maintenance of medium-sized hardware and software projects all around the world (5 to 10 projects per year, each between 500k and 2M€ within a 15 months delivery on average).  Growing project management team from 1 to 5 FTE direct reports  Growing engineering, development and graphics designer team on projects from 10 to 40 FTE  Implementing operational excellence through process and reporting tools, maximizing team empowerment and project ownership while mitigating risks  Overseeing and managing multicultural software & hardware development projects in Colombia, Australia, Singapore, Morocco, Egypt and Europe/UK

  • Engineer and project management at NMBS-SNCB
    Sep 2011 - Apr 2014 · 2 yrs 8 mos

    Timetable Planning - Application development.  Optimizing the railway timetables to respond to evolving customers demands by solving complex and interdepartmental constraints while limiting costs (rolling stock, infrastructure, personnel)  Developing BI interfaces to gather, merge and analyse various datasets as input for future timetable improvements

  • Researcher at COSIC at KU Leuven
    Sep 2008 - Sep 2011 · 3 yrs 1 mo

    Research on lightweight symmetric cryptography (IWT Grant) and Java & .NET development for innovative industry-related projects.  The world’s first practical & secure NFC mobile payment system published in 2009 in collaboration with Proximus and Edenred/Accor.  Internship at Giesecke & Devrient in Munich in 2010  Collaboration with the Belgian government on the integration of the Belgian e-ID card on smart phones, winning the Agoria e-government innovation award in 2010.

  • Groepsleider & leider at Scouts Savio
    Sep 2003 - Sep 2009 · 6 yrs 1 mo

    Volunteer work in the youth movement