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<\/em><\/p>\nThe construction industry is famously slow to change. In recent decades, the desktop computer and the Internet drove significant innovations. But both technologies pale in comparison to the impact of the smartphone, which has utterly revolutionised field management.<\/p>\n
Denis Branthonne saw this change coming in mobile technology and knew what it meant. In 2014, he left his role as vice-president at Autodesk in Singapore, where he\u2019d overseen Asia and emerging markets for more than a decade, and launched Novade, which is billed as a \u201cnext-generation digital solution for site management.\u201d The iPhone 5 was then dominant in the market and costs had fallen to the point that it was finally practical to equip key workers in the field with their own mobile devices to capture and share information.<\/p>\n
\u201cDesktop computers and the Internet didn\u2019t mean much for someone in the field. The mobile phone meant something,\u201d Branthonne says. \u201cFrankly speaking, this is what had always been missing in this industry.\u201d<\/p>\n
The concept took off and Novade today employs 140 people in 20 countries\u2014the app is available in eight languages and can easily be configured for more\u2014while counting around 200 enterprise clients.<\/p>\n
From the beginning, and somewhat to Branthonne\u2019s surprise, clients tended toward large general contractors and real estate developers, as opposed to the SMEs he\u2019d been expecting. \u201cWe don\u2019t necessarily have a lot of clients, but most of them are very large companies,\u201d he says, noting that 90% of the projects that use Novade are blue-chip affairs that are worth above USD100 million.<\/p>\n
In April, the company released Novade Lite, a new version of the app designed for small- and medium-sized projects and aimed at specialist contractors, homebuilders, and service providers.<\/p>\n What is Novade designed to do?<\/strong><\/p>\n It\u2019s all about digitising field operations. First, it helps companies be compliant with health and safety rules and regulations, environmental regulations\u2014which are becoming more important\u2014and comply with quality control. It reduces the cost of compliance because there\u2019s a lot of paperwork. Second, it helps track progress and improves performance in the field.<\/p>\n For example, every time our clients use Novade for permits to work, they save USD40 per permit to work on average. That\u2019s the amount they save in compliance and administration. I\u2019m not talking about all the things you can do with all the data and improvements\u2014just blunt cost reduction on compliance. On some very large sites, you\u2019re talking about 50 to 60 to 100 permits to work per day.<\/p>\n Desktop computers and the Internet didn\u2019t mean much for someone in the field. The mobile phone meant something. Frankly speaking, this is what had always been missing in this industry<\/p><\/blockquote>\n That\u2019s a lot of paperwork.<\/strong><\/p>\n It\u2019s incredibly time-consuming. If you get 100 papers coming in with hundreds of subcontractors involved, it\u2019s very messy. If you don\u2019t do it right it could be dangerous and you could be legally exposed if you haven\u2019t done your job. We\u2019ve completely digitised this. We currently do around 100,000 permits to work per month in Singapore.<\/p>\n What is interesting is that when you start collecting such a large amount of data, obviously you can start applying machine learning and try to understand what\u2019s going on. Humans can\u2019t make sense of these patterns. But that\u2019s where AI starts to kick in. If you standardise enough of the inputs you can start detecting stuff.<\/p>\n Tell us more about the AI component of Novade.<\/strong><\/p>\n Here\u2019s another example. We\u2019ve fully digitised the handover process for residential properties. Imagine an apartment in a building where you have 500 units. Traditionally, a buyer receives the keys and is handed a piece of paper to write down any problems. Someone who works for the developer then creates an Excel spreadsheet and sends information by WhatsApp to the subcontractors who do the job.<\/p>\n We\u2019ve completely digitised this. If you find a problem, you take a picture that\u2019s sent in real-time to the developer, who assigns it to a subcontractor. He knows exactly where to go. When the job is done he takes another photo and you can check that it\u2019s done sufficiently and say whether you\u2019re happy.<\/p>\n But now imagine that I\u2019m a real estate developer and I\u2019ve done numerous projects with Novade. If you have, on average, 20 defects per home, and 500 units per condo, you\u2019re talking about 10,000 defects. Data done on multiple projects like this is gold because developers can analyse and understand the trends. For instance: Which subcontractors are creating more problems?<\/p>\n Who is your main competition then?<\/strong><\/p>\n Excel, paper, and WhatsApp. In every country, you\u2019ll have three or four startups and 20 to 30 employees trained to do this, but it\u2019s tough. The big boys\u2014the big U.S. companies\u2014like Autodesk are trying to come, but the standards here are different. We collaborate with them. But there\u2019s no other homegrown company in Asia with more than 50 employees working in multiple countries. We\u2019re the only ones.<\/p>\n Are there areas where you\u2019re looking to expand the functionality?<\/strong><\/p>\n There are three areas we\u2019re investing in heavily. The first is in analytics and AI. The more data we capture, the more our clients want to analyse and understand that data to gain insights.<\/p>\n The second is connectivity. As the system is more adopted and you analyse data, you also want to compare field data with contractual or design information. So we\u2019re working on engaging with companies like Autodesk, Procore, Microsoft, and others, so people can easily plug in data from Novade to other systems.<\/p>\n And third, we have invested to make it easier for clients to get started on smaller projects. We have just launched a lighter version of the platform: Novade Lite.<\/p>\n The original version of this article appeared in\u00a0Issue No. 172<\/a>\u00a0of\u00a0PropertyGuru Property Report Magazine<\/a>. Write to our editors at\u00a0propertyreport@propertyguru.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" With his app Novade simplifying site management, Denis Branthonne is leading digital transformation in Asia\u2019s construction industry <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":31549,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[86,97],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interview","category-magazine","news_author-bill-charles"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.asiapropertyawards.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/shutterstock_162343148.jpg\")
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