The engineer: How Gaëtan Lefèvre keeps risk relevant at John Cockerill

In 1817, a Liege-born engineer named John Cockerill founded a mechanical engineering works in what is now Belgium. The company he built has since survived two world wars, the collapse of the European coal and steel industries, and successive waves of industrial reinvention.

Today, it employs thousands of people across six divisions, from hydrogen electrolysers and steel processing to defence vehicles and energy infrastructure, with record order books of €1.7bn in 2025.

Gaëtan Lefèvre has spent the past 18 years managing risk, insurance and ethics for this company. In career terms, that is a long tenure. In John Cockerill terms, it is roughly 8% of the company’s existence. The same proportion at Tesla would be about 20 months.

“The business can survive without risk management,” says Lefèvre, the head of risk, insurance and ethics. “But risk management needs a business to support. So it is important to follow the development of the company closely and to be sure that the solutions you propose are up to date.”

Lefèvre trained as a mining engineer at the University of Liege before spending five years in the limestone industry, eight years at an insurance company learning the business from the carrier side, and another eight years as risk manager at AB InBev, the brewing group, before joining what was then CMI, the forerunner of John Cockerill, in 2007.

He has also served as president of the Belgian Risk Management Association BELRIM and sits on the board of FERMA, where he chaired the 2024 Forum committee. He knows the profession from the inside out, both within his own organisation and across Europe.

Selling risk, not buying insurance

His experience in insurance changed how Lefèvre thinks about risk transfers. Where many risk managers describe themselves as buyers of insurance, he sees the relationship the other way around.

“I am not buying insurance. I sell the risk of John Cockerill to the insurance company. It is not the same way of thinking,” he says. “You identify a risk, you estimate that it is too important for the company to retain, and you transfer it. Insurance is the result of a risk assessment and a transfer. It is not buying insurance for the sake of buying insurance.”

The distinction matters because it puts the analytical work first. The coverage follows from the risk picture, not the other way around. At a company that designs and builds unique, one-off industrial equipment, from solar boilers to defence turret systems, that sequencing is especially important.

“I am not buying insurance. I sell the risk of John Cockerill to the insurance company.”

“Our equipment is unique. It is not a series. You do not produce 10 boilers the same. It is always specific, linked to the technology imposed by the client,” Lefèvre says. “When it is totally new, it is important to give some solution to limit the potential impact in case of a major problem.”

He gives the example of a new solar boiler developed by the company a few years ago. The firm’s president asked him whether there was a way to limit its risk exposure.

He put in place professional indemnity coverage, which until then had not been used inside the group for new technology. It has since become standard practice for novel equipment.

“It is somewhere back to the roots of insurance,” Lefèvre says. “Insurance was created centuries ago to support the development of business. As a risk manager inside the company, I try to follow the same principle.”

The ethics brief

Twelve years ago, Lefèvre took on additional responsibilities around professional ethics. It started with an ethics policy and an ethics committee that included board members, senior managers and representatives from the business units. Over time, the function grew.

Pressure came from multiple directions, such as client requirements, the UK Bribery Act 2010, France’s anti-corruption Sapin II law, and internal demand from younger managers who expected clearer guidance on conduct. “We saw that sometimes it was necessary to develop this part because there was a demand from management; certainly from young managers,” he says.

For Lefèvre, the connection to risk was natural. Ethics failures are reputational risks. And the committee gave him something that most risk managers lack, which is regular, direct contact with board members.

“Sometimes it opens your eyes to situations you did not think about before.”

“Board members gave me their experience, and explained what was done in the past,” he says. “It was very interesting because it opened the discussion to aspects of the business I would not normally be in contact with.”

The ethics committee also forced the company to think through questions that had no obvious answers, particularly once John Cockerill moved into defence. What are the limits of weapons system development? Where does the company draw the line on which clients and conflicts it will serve? These are not insurance questions. They are questions about what kind of company you want to be.

“It increases sensitivity to some aspects of the business,” Lefèvre says. “Sometimes it opens your eyes to situations you did not think about before.”

Last year, John Cockerill hired a dedicated compliance officer to take on the day-to-day case management that had previously sat with Lefèvre. The ethics and compliance committee continues, but the operational load has moved to a specialist. He sees that as a sign of maturity rather than a loss of territory.

The daily fight to prove yourself

When asked about the biggest challenge facing the risk management profession, Lefèvre does not reach for a geopolitical headline. He goes for something much closer to home.

Previously he has stated that “recognition of the added value of risk and insurance management is one of the big challenges”, and on this, he has not changed his mind. “You always need to prove to your hierarchy the added value of the function. It is daily management,” Lefèvre notes.

He is specific about this threat. When risk managers are seen primarily as insurance buyers, procurement departments can argue that the function belongs under their roof. It has happened before, and it will happen again. “The process to buy insurance is not the same as to buy products or raw materials,” he says. “But sometimes you have the risk to see [of] the function [coming] back under procurement because you are buying insurance.”

“You always need to prove to your hierarchy the added value of the function. It is daily management”

His advice to risk managers facing this pressure is twofold. First, be open and honest with your hierarchy. Second, get out of the office. “It is a transversal function, so you need contact with a maximum of people inside the company. If you stay all day in your office and see nobody, you cannot do your job correctly,” he says.

At John Cockerill, he sits on the commitment committee, which reviews every significant new project. He receives all the reports and participates in the analysis of potential risks linked to each contract. It is a position that keeps him connected to the business rather than isolated in a support function.

“Just to listen to your colleagues presenting a project and the challenge given by the president of the commitment. It is important to be sure that you understand the different businesses of the company.”

On the horizon

Two things occupy Lefèvre’s future thinking. The first is geopolitical instability. He does not see a return to the old order any time soon, and for a company operating across continents in sectors as sensitive as defence and energy, the consequences are practical and constant.

The second is talent. The war for skilled people is already real, and AI is about to reshape it.

“I link artificial intelligence to talent because the impact is on talent,” he says. “It could be positive because it gives the opportunity to develop yourself. But it is also a risk, because some parts of your job could be replaced.”

Lefèvre jokes that his eventual retirement is also on his horizon.

But in a company that has been reinventing itself since 1817, knowing when to hand something over is its own kind of risk management.