A former submarine builder now wants to disrupt the construction industry

From a condominium to an entire subway system, building and constructing anything is as herculean as it is messy. There are materials to procure, contractors to appoint, workers to hire, permits to secure – the list goes on. With so many strings to pull at the same time, you want a simple, centralized way to keep track of it all – or at least that is the dream.

The reality, however, is a nightmare. Most construction operations still run on emails, spreadsheets, and paperwork. This leads not only to fragmented communication but also to oversights and unnecessary processes. In short, it wastes time, money, and effort.

Cutting through all that mess is the goal for Novade, a one-stop solution with communication, tracking, and analytic tools all in one digitized platform.

Novade is mobile-optimized, making it easy for users to update progress and monitor operations at construction sites / Photo credit: Novade

Tech in Asia finds out how the startup is changing the building and construction industry, as well as why its co-founder and CEO, Denis Branthonne, went from building submarines to founding a startup for the very first time.

When Branthonne was Autodesk’s vice president of channel sales in emerging markets, his job was to sell the company’s engineering and architecture software to various clients. While the clients were impressed, one question kept cropping up: Do you have something that we can use to manage construction sites?

That question inspired Branthonne to build the first version of Novade. But when he outlined the early concept to property developers, another question arose: “That’s cool, but do you have something we can use to manage the handover process?”

“It is the biggest headache for developers,” says Branthonne. Homeowners everywhere understand the pain in taking over a newly purchased property. They need to inspect the entire house, mark out defects, list them all down in a form, and submit it to the developer.

For developers, many of them are still manually recording defects in massive spreadsheets before sending them to contractors and sub-contractors.

Novade’s dashboard makes it easy for developers and builders to gather and analyze data from the backend / Photo credit: Novade

If the issues are not solved, homeowners and developers will have to repeat the entire process – and that is just for one housing unit. When there are hundreds of units knocking at your door at the same time, the problem can escalate very quickly.

“Then, there is social media. Homeowners started to post defects online, and it really impacted the [developer’s] brand,” Branthonne explains. “So clients like CapitaLand and City Development Group took a bet on us, and we went to work.”

Finding a cure

Commercialized in 2015, the first version of Novade targeted the handover process. New homeowners could download the Novade app on their smartphones through which they could take photos of and report defects, as well as schedule inspections.