The technology investment has to go hand-in-hand with process re-alignment

We develop and deliver nPulse™  - our integrated project controls solution.

- Kalyan Vaidyanathan, Co-founder & CEO, Nadhi Information Technologies

How do you assess the scope of transforming the construction industry more automated and digitalized?

In the last 3-4 years, we have seen a perceptible shift towards automation and digitization in the real estate, capital projects, and infrastructure space. This is driven partly by real needs on the ground, rooted in the desire for faster project delivery and an increased focus on improving profitability by optimizing costs. The shifting tech landscape in terms of cloud computing, mobility, and a new breed of collaboration and controls solutions is also fuelling the desire to attain more greater levels of system level automation and digitization.While the overall winds of digitization that are blowing in the enterprise world, the whole world is talking about Industry 4.0.  

As far as technology trends go, all the large companies are looking to mobile enable and digitize their various business processes. Interest in analytics is picking up and a lot of clients are looking to use past performance data to predict future trends. We are also witnessing a surge in things such as IoT enabled project management, 3D visualization, AR / VR for site coordination, etc. More and more clients are getting comfortable with cloud deployments of solutions for project controls, implying that the old days of standalone desktop-based systems and spreadsheets are definitely over.

What about Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Language (ML)?

No discussion on technology today is complete without at least a passing reference to Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Language (ML). I think that construction is trying to come to grips with exactly what industry problems may be amenable to these exciting new techniques, and everyone is trying to 'pluck the low hanging fruit' in areas such as image recognition, safety etc. We expect AI and ML might take a little more time to mature and for practical use cases to emerge.               

What do you think are the major pain points for this transition? 

The trend nowadays is that it is not too difficult to convince clients about the differentiators of technology like nPulse™. There aren't too many people out there who will dispute the need for better technology and solutions in this industry. And with the maturity of the nPulse™ solution, clients are quick to recognize its value proposition and ease of deployment strengths.  The real challenge is perhaps in convincing them of the pace at which their organizations can absorb and use the technology meaningfully.            

We recognize that change management is absolutely critical in ensuring adoption and realizing returns on tech investments. Creating a technology solution for integrated project controls that brings together all the various business functions (within the organization) with the various stakeholders (outside the organization) means that businesses have to now think of all the stakeholders as partners. The technology investment has to go hand-in-hand with process re-alignment and as a top management mandate. Without a clear end goal, mere adoption of technology is likely to not fully succeed.             

From the construction / infrastructure perspective, the global macro challenges remain the usual - political and economic uncertainty arising from the changes and policies in the US, Europe and closer home in India. With Covid-19 thrown into the mix, everyone is rethinking how the industry will pull itself out of the current situation. While as a technology player in the space, there is not too much we can do to combat those other than continuing to offer clients value at a reasonable price even during macroeconomic troughs. Once we move beyond that, the challenges become more tractable. Ensuring adoption and assuring customer referenceability by delighting client users is the tried and tested way forward. Nothing succeeds like success and we feel that momentum is really on our side. In order to take our growth to the next level, we are also seriously looking at “inorganic” growth options via debt and/or equity. 

What contributory role your company has been playing for this transition?

We have two areas of focus at Nadhi. On the technology side, we develop and deliver nPulse™  - our integrated project controls solution that allows for mobile data collection, for integrated project information analysis and real time decision support for the engineering and infrastructure projects industry. We also provide Lean Construction consulting services where we help clients institutionalize collaborative planning processes and improve the productivity of their processes (whether it be actual construction or even in areas such as design and procurement) through proven, quantitative methods. These two strengths complement each other when we deliver solutions to our clients making us trusted partners for our clients to realize improved operational efficiency in delivering projects.               

nPulse™ is a platform for integrated project controls.  It has been designed and built from the ground up for the infrastructure, construction and real estate industry. It is a decision support platform that is mobile enabled and sector agnostic in which it has been applied with equal success to a variety of different projects including residential and commercial real estate, and infrastructure projects like roads, railways, power plant, solar, bridges, marine facilities, power transmission, substation, oil & gas etc. nPulse™ is unique wherein rather than treating the project as a number of silos of information, it looks at the project as a whole and is geared towards maximizing efficiency of the whole delivery process. While it has very deep capabilities in each of the functional areas it addresses, the true strength comes out in the cross-linking and interdependencies across different areas.

Could you brief us on the benefits it provides to clients?

Integration and seamless collaboration across different areas of the project such as schedule management, budget / cost management, document management, issue management, quality control, snag list management, checklists and claims processes.         

• It bi-directionally integrates with all ERP systems, scheduling systems, and 3D BIM authoring solutions increases the value of investments in existing systems while providing a strong platform for digitized project controls
• Has differentiated IP for forward looking time and cost analysis using classic earned based techniques
• It automates many processes and workflows, reducing the manual burden on project stuff. Reports and alerts are automatically generated, customizable dashboards and KPIs are delivered right to the client
• It makes the data collection at the “last mile” at the sites easier via native mobile apps that work as effectively in remote locations as in urban locations

As a company that is incubated from the Civil Engineering Department at IIT Madras, Chennai, we are an R&D-led company that is continuously looking to innovate solutions for construction technology automation and push the boundary on construction technology solutions. In fact, we are currently researching how to provide planners and decision makers how to model and perform what-if scenario analysis to model pandemic episodes like Covid-19 and understand its time and cost impact on projects and portfolios.           

With an install base in over 20 countries across India, Middle East, Africa, and South East Asia on more than 250 projects, across multiple sectors, the solution is mature to handle the tough challenges of construction today
and tomorrow.

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