We’d like to thank everyone who came to our first Startup Construction event last week, in association with The Bartlett School of Architecture and Capital Enterprise. The feedback we’ve had has been phenomenal. Please keep it coming!
We were incredibly fortunate to get Prof. Tim Broyd, Chair of Built Environment Foresight at the Bartlett School of Architecture and Vice President of the Institution of Civil Engineers, to MC the event despite his insanely busy schedule.
Prof. Broyd kicked off the evening with a fascinating introduction about the need to innovate the construction industry. He gave an overview of the major trends that effect the construction industry. He talked about the growing population, the ageing workforce (particularly in construction), the rate at which we are using the worlds resources, the need for more cost effectiveness during economic hardship, the ageing infrastructure in Britain and finally, the increase in computer connectivity- with mobile to mobile data flow on computers growing at 90% per year cumulative.
The introduction was fitting considering all the startups that presented are doing amazing things to deal with some of these problems.
Jozef Dobos, CEO of 3D repo, provided a visual feast with his 3D modelling software that offers version control- especially exciting given the new BIM standards that are being drawn up as we speak.
Heba Bevan from the University of Cambridge showcased a new form of tunnel sensor that feeds data about leaks, cracks, temperature and pressure impacts, is set to drastically change maintenance in tunnels and could save millions.
Matthew Holloway from Q-Bot has designed an actual robot that can detect where heat losses in buildings are occurring and fix them. Watching his presentation was literally like watching an 80s movie vision of the future, but unlike Back to the Future, Q-Bot is the real deal!
If you think that’s cool, Laurence Kemball-Cook’s presentation would blow your mind. His company, Pavegen Systems have developed flooring technology that converts kinetic energy from footsteps into electricity. He asked all of us to get up and jump on the count of three and told us that the energy generated from just that one jump could power a street lamp for a whole night.
Following on from Laurence was Alex Green from HandsHQ, a company that has made the laborious process of filling out Health and Safety forms easy. Those of you in the construction industry know that Health and Safety is number one priority on-site and anything that makes it quicker and easier to do can only be a good thing.
Finally, our very own Alex Siljanovski took to the stand to tell the audience about BaseStone. He talked about the mission to capture data lost between the site and the office, so that whenever something happens on-site (say a problem gets snagged or a drawing marked up) the data gets saved and can be analysed. “The big hairy audacious goal”, said Alex, “is to reduce abortive work to 0.”
The evening ended with a not-so-healthy amount of beer being drunk, whilst we all watched England live up to reputation and get slaughtered by Uruguay.
At least people went away feeling there is hope for the future of tech innovation in the Built Environment, if not for English football.
