A New Way Forward: Presenting Core Market Ideology
Gurgaon based Proptech start-up BuildSupply is changing the way India builds, comprising with the founding team- Sameer Nayar, former Asia-Pac Head for Real Estate at Credit Suisse; Nipun Yadvinder, previously worked with Snapdeal and PayU India and Sarit Sethi, a former executive of German EPC firm M+W Group.
The wide array of features and modules that BuildSupply offers intends to map the entire project lifecycle right from initiation/conceptualization to closure/handing over. This facilitates accurate and agile decision making, thereby saving significant time and cost at every critical stage. A few examples are listed below-:
Due Diligence or Initiation
BuildSupply’s automated cost plan module allows its users to create accurate and comprehensive estimates using limited or no design information. The module is designed to ensure the estimates can evolve with the progress of design and projects details. BuildSupply’s cost plan feature seamlessly integrates with its bill of quantities (BOQ) module to provide an deep level of granularity at a very early stage. This in-depth knowledge helps plan better and thereby enable substantial savings.
Concept to Detailed Engineering
As the design of a project moves from concept to detail, the scope moves from fluid to definite. This process is simplified by BuildSupply’s in built standardized database of cost line items with associated rate analysis and technical specification documents. The BuildSupply BOQ functionality provides a collaborative platform to project stakeholders like design, engineering and estimation to refine budgets into well defined scope items.
Procurement
In an ideal case scenario, the completion of engineering phase of projects tends to overlap with beginning of the procurement stage. Procurement is a very broad term for various strategic decisions that confront project teams at this stage. The e-tendering and material management modules help project teams graduate from procurement planning to strategic sourcing. Strategic sourcing gives project teams the ability to manage purchase and procurement of work packages, materials, capital equipment with discrete and well-defined work flows. The e-tendering functionality with integrated bid clarifications, tender addendums and automated bid comparisons expedites the procurement process while at the same time identifying any anomalies in the submitted prices. The material purchase module goes a step further assimilating the entire supply chain with internal stakeholders like store manager and quality managers, mechanizing the entire process from indent to delivery to payment. This loop of strategic sourcing closes end to end with BuildSupply vendor management modules that allow users to prequalify various external stakeholders and rate their performances over time.
Planning, Scheduling and Execution
BuildSupply team believes managing time independent of Cost Management is a wasted exercise. With its scheduling, planning and execution modules the product aims to break the silos that planning, estimating and execution teams work within. The BuildSupply list of construction activities is by default linked to its cost database thereby unifying the iron triangle of cost, time and scope. The BuildSupply platform makes it extremely easy to build bottom up project plans with apt associations of scope, productivity and resources. The execution tracking module empowers real time reporting on all the above thereby closely monitoring the physical and financial progress.
What Matters and What’s Perceptible
A construction project is a living organism, growing evolving and ever changing. Eventually what matters to a promoter or an investor is the ability to analyse the health of their projects. BuildSupply analyses project data to derive industry established key performance indicators like cost performance index, schedule performance index, earned value analysis to mention a few at the click of a button. These metrics keep decisions makers well informed and enable them to think on their feet and adapt to change. Case studies of construction projects across diverse industries like residential, hospitality and healthcare show cost plans created on BuildSupply are 15 to 20% more accurate than traditional excel sheet cost plans.
Live tenders conducted using BuildSupply have shown a time reduction of 2 months in the overall procurement lifecycle of large value work contracts.
BuildSupply claims, end to end integration of its platform can reduce construction costs by 8 to 10%, giving its customers an enormous return on investment.
The Aspiration
Technology is the new engine and data the new oil. As the BuildSupply universe expands technologies like block chain and data science would together make us a more intelligent industry. Giving us the opportunity to tap into efficiencies far above and beyond what is possible or plausible today
