We expect a sharp recovery in 2021driven by the government efforts to boost the industry.

Alexandre Pommier, Country Manager - India, Novade

“The adoption of seamless mobile-based solution will ease the automation of workflows and bring the visibility needed to fasten decision process for managers, says Alexandre Pommier,  Country Manager - India, Novade. Excerpts from the interview…

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

Having suffered a historic collapse in construction activity during Q2 2020 amid widespread disruption caused by restrictions imposed to contain the spread of Covid-19, there are signs that the global construction industry is poised for a recovery. With the distribution of vaccines on the horizon, the risk of a repeat of the severe disruption that occurred in 2020 has diminished.

In India, we expect a sharp recovery in 2021driven by the government efforts to boost the industry with large infrastructure investments. In August 2020, the Prime Minister announced that INR111 trillion (US$1.5 trillion) will be invested on 7,000 projects across various sectors during FY2020-2025, which will enable the faster revival of the economy and aid in boosting employment and in turns strengthen the residential and commercial market.

The usage of mobile technology is very popular across India and we have seen
dozens of new consumer services flourishing online during lockdown. Since the global restrictions came into effect in March 2020, companies and service providers are increasingly realising that it is possible to run most of the operations without mandatory physical presence on the construction site. The adoption of seamless mobile-based solution will ease the automation of workflows and bring the visibility needed to fasten decision process for managers.

Do you expect any policy or regulatory support from concerned authorities for faster and deeper adoption of digital solutions?

In Asia, we noticed increasing technology adoption in countries that offer productivity grants for digitalisation. For example, Singapore's Building and Construction Authority (BCA) has done a terrific job to encourage the adoption of new technologies to streamline and digitalise the entire construction lifecycle. BCA recognises that construction software can not only help to streamline work processes, but also to reduce rework arising from mistakes, and improve safety. Digital implementation of health and safety measures digitally helps to effectively enforce safety compliance by conducting digital safety inspections and assigning corrective actions on the spot. Incidents, near-misses, and employee records can also be recorded automatically in real time.

What is your road map in for the year 2021?

With technologies gaining more prominence in the construction landscape, we strongly believe in avoiding the silo approach where different information is kept in separate systems. At Novade, we work hard to simplify the collection of data from the job site and make information easily accessible to various stakeholders.

Design processes, cost control, supplies, QA/QC process and progress must be integrated in order to offer a real-time overview of the project status. Our APIs can integrate with most industry partners to participate in our clients' digital transformation journey.

In 2020, we have also worked hard to minimise set-up and implementation of our solutions. We are now able to deploy our solution on any job site in a matter of weeks and this timeline will shorten with the introduction of more technologies and IoT.

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