The need for data collection & personalization will boost technology adoption in AEC domain.

Vijay Gupta, Founder and CEO, SoftTech Engineers Limited

“With the emergence of concepts like Big Data, Machine Learning (ML), Artificial Intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT), the industry is moving towards a strong technology future,” says Vijay Gupta, Founder and CEO, SoftTech Engineers Limited. Excerpts from the interview…

What is your outlook on the critical role that will be played by construction software and digital technologies?

With the emergence of concepts like Big Data, Machine Learning (ML), Artificial Intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT), the industry is moving towards a strong technology future. I foresee a lot of data-driven decision making and heavy reliance on the data collected remotely from sites. I believe that online software and systems to digitally manage construction projects will be considered imperative by business owners for monitoring and decision making for their projects. The Building Information Modeling (BIM) to virtualize the construction projects, and monitoring through Virtual and Augmented reality (AR/VR) technologies without physically being present on to the site will be a boon to address the industry challenges brought by Covid-19. I believe the industry should start learning and adopting this sooner than later for the survival and growth of the business in this industry.

Do you expect any policy or regulatory support from concerned authorities?  

Yes, definitely. The policy or regulatory support is a must to facilitate faster technology implementation in the AEC domain. Of late, the government has been pro-actively pushing 'Digital India' and 'Smart Cities Mission' initiatives. This, in turn, will encourage domain players to implement technology. As the focus is moving towards data collection and data personalization, the relevant and timely government guidelines will take the technology implementation to the next level.

From the ease of doing business perspective, more and more states are adopting online building plan approval system. The government should formulate policies and guidelines for all citizen centric services through online mode and provide budgetary impetus through their specific initiatives. Things will be much better with such government support.

What is your road map in for the year 2021?

Our Artificially Intelligent (AI) enabled product AutoDCR aids significant values to architects, consultants and building owners to upload their building proposals online on the cloud of approving authorities; enabling them to track the progress on a real-time basis and get automatically generated compliance report reading drawings. This eliminates human subjective interpretation errors thereby bringing speed and uniformity.

Our zeal for innovations in construction permit will continue and we are quickly moving towards BIM and GIS as next steps to leverage them for construction permit. Our Next 2 years' goal will be to focus on the power of Building Information Modelling (BIM) and Geographic Information System (GIS), integrate our products successfully and leverage these excellent technologies for providing smart city solutions. We have started working on use of AR/VR technology for remote inspection of construction sites. Our research team is working on leveraging AI/ML more deeply in construction permit automation space.  True to our tagline, SoftTech will constantly keep working towards empowering transformation in the AEC industry through continuous innovation.  We are committed to take our technology to US and UK and have already started participation in international opportunities allied to our expertise. We have started moving towards a platform approach and have designed a common platform solution for AEC industry named Civit (http://www.thecivit.com) connecting all our products on a single cloud platform. This is going to be focus of 2021.

Hits: 145