Serving the Teesside Business Community | 23
“It will save £millions”
Tees Business co-editor Dave Allan talks to Applied Integration
director Garry Lofthouse about ArchiTrack
Prof Nashwan Dawood, KTP
academic lead, Teesside University
“The new approach developed
by this KTP to identify changes in
design of buildings using natural
language processing and game
engine technology will be a massive
leap towards efficiency in the design
process.
“This should contribute hugely to
reduction in costs of rework by
identifying and resolving clashes
earlier on before construction starts.”
Dr Vladimir Vukovic, KTP supervisor,
Teesside University
Keeping track - Applied Integration’s Jonathan Siddle (left) and
Garry Lofthouse are excited about the potential for ArchiTrack.
You believe ArchiTrack could revolutionise
the construction industry. That’s a big
claim. Tell us more.
ArchiTrack will save time, confusion,
miscommunication and, ultimately, millions
of pounds within the construction industry.
We firmly believe this will revolutionise the
industry and we were excited to discover the
reaction from the sector’s experts when we
presented them with details of the concept
at the conference in Auckland.
We always believed this had far-reaching
potential within the industry but the progress
the KTP with Teesside University has made
in its development means we’re now
anticipating an even bigger impact than we
initially believed possible.
Can you give us an example of the issues
within the construction industry?
Yes, as an example, many of the delays in
the construction of Wembley Stadium would
have been vastly reduced had ArchiTrack
been in place as an automated design and
planning platform. A series of long delays
in the construction of the stadium resulted
in initial construction cost estimates of
£300m to treble to £900m. At the heart of
the problems were claims that there were
at least 11,000 individual revisions to the
scheme’s original drawings. When you look
at Wembley and the amount of lost value
caused by the delays and the knock-on
impact they had across the industry, it is
ridiculous really.
The truth is that the handling and
communication of change within the industry
is generally poor. In fact, up to 23% of total
contract values are attributable to rework or
changes on delivery.
But ArchiTrack can accurately track the
complex architectural changes to a building
during the construction process, highlighting
and categorising changes to help avoid the
sort of costly delays the industry frequently
suffers.
The KTP with Teesside University has
come to an end but it’s clearly been a
fantastic success?
In many ways, this is an alien marketplace
for us but the university’s academics were
convinced from the start that it was a major
step forward for traceability within the
industry.
The system’s original concept was
purely for the in-house benefit of Applied
Integration but Jonathan’s commitment to
the project, together with the university’s
support, means we’ve taken ArchiTrack
well above and beyond where we initially
anticipated.
So what happens next?
The university will continue to provide
advice and guidance but it’s now up to us
to take the development into production.
Our plan is for Jonathan to see this through
from design and development right the way
through to marketing and delivery to the
customer, building a team around him as the
project progresses.
We’re eager to get ArchiTrack to market
because there are potentially massive
rewards for Applied Integration and the
entire construction industry. We’ve already
received much positive feedback from
potential customers but, through feedback
from the industry’s movers and shakers at
the Auckland conference, we’ll spend more
time refining and enhancing the software
ahead of launch.
“It was a privilege working with such
an innovative company as Applied
Integration which recognised the
immense potential in the ongoing
digital transformation of the
construction sector.
“I hope the software for automating
change detection in digital
construction that we helped to
develop during the course of
our KTP will contribute to cost
reduction, quality and productivity
improvements in many construction
projects.
“I’m looking forward to seeing in
practice the prospective futuristic
features of automated model
updating based on voice recognition
and natural language processing.”
Ian Blakemore, Knowledge Transfer
adviser, KTN, representing Innovate
UK who provided funding for the KTP
“The project has meant a quantum
leap in the accessibility of technology
and a novel product being brought
to market. It’s an excellent example
of academia working closely with
business to generate significant
commercial impact from the
application of knowledge.”
Dr Huda Dawood, KTP academic
co-supervisor, Teesside University
“ArchiTrack is a standalone
software, therefore the user is not
restricted by using specific and
expensive construction design
software and there are no issues
with interoperability.”