Construction Tech

“There’s a storm coming, Mr. Wayne. You and your friends better batten down the hatches, because when it hits, you’re all gonna wonder how you ever thought you could live so large and leave so little for the rest of us.”

Many of you will recognise that to be a quote from Selina Kyle in The Dark Knight Rises.

It could, however, just as easily be the prelude to the changes on the horizon for the construction industry over the next few years, with Mr. Wayne being one of the many old white guys in the industry hoping to stave off innovation just long enough so they can retire without having to evolve or learn anything new.

Construction is an industry run by centuries-old institutions and self-serving policy makers.

An industry where the old and the established is accepted as ‘the best’ and where ‘because we've always done it’ is the answer to most why’s?

The sort of industry where profits are almost always put before a customers needs or actually solving problems and where good enough is a job well done.

But it feels like a change is finally on it’s way…

SpecifiedBy

When we launched SpecifiedBy 18 months ago, our aims were simply to help architects and other specifiers carry out their building product research a little more efficiently, and provide product manufacturers with a sustainable, affordable lead generation platform.

Fuelled by the frustrations of working in an industry so at odds with the digital world, today our aims are much bigger and more significant — we are now part of a small but growing number of startups who want to drag the industry into the 21st century.

And I believe we are at a point where three key elements are coming together, which will lead to a real disruption of this industry.

• Big problems that need solving.
• Startups with the technology and ambition to solve them
• Investors keen to exploit a massive, old-fashioned industry

Big Problems

The construction industry has problems. Massive problems. Both in terms of complexity and costs to deal with. Due to the sheer scale of the industry, even the smallest problems offer massive opportunities.

Waste. Complex supply chains. Health & Safety concerns. Complex project management. Complex procurement processes. Document management issues. Designed versus as-built performance gaps. Material shortages. Energy inefficiency. Reworked tasks. On-site co-ordination. Poor collaboration. Poor communication. And lots more…

None of these are new, which only goes to highlight the lack of innovation and change within the industry, but they’ve yet to be solved.

Add to that the demands for industry to collectively adopt a new (for most!) way of working called BIM (Building Information Modelling), which brings a whole new set of problems and challenges, and the opportunities for technology startups to create sustainable companies that positively impact a massive industry are huge.

Startup Focus

And we’re not the only one’s who have noticed…

Whilst there are still not many, there is definitely a growing number of technology startups focusing on problems within the construction industry.

(ConTech? ConstrucTech?)

Construction may be one of the last remaining industries yet to be really disrupted by digital technology.

Perhaps due to its sheer size, it’s old-fashioned, cumbersome reputation and closed group mentality, it has been pretty low on the list of interesting industries for technology startups, but that is changing.

And the rate at which startups are created and the lack of barriers to get an idea off the ground, mean that surely it is only a matter of time before we see an influx of startups with a focus on construction based solutions.

Investment

Finally, and very importantly, the construction industry seems to be starting to grab the attention of investors too.

In the last 6 months alone, we have been contacted by multiple private investors — not with sacks of cash — but with a growing interest in what is happening (or not happening) within the construction industry.

Investors are aware of this sleeping giant. They see an industry that is not only of enormous scale, but one that is ripe for disruption.

They are actively looking for technology startups solving interesting and challenging problems within the industry. One VC recently told me that they have a data scientist that analyses various sectors for potentially interesting companies, and that they had specifically been doing a lot of research into the construction industry.

More money available in this sector will lead to more startups being given the platform to bring their solutions to market.