Meet the 9 BE Innovators that are reshaping our built environment

By BCA

Nine pitches, three themes, one goal. The Built Environment (BE) Demo Day on 10 September saw promising innovators and start-ups putting their capabilities on display, all in an effort to build a more sustainable and resilient BE sector for Singapore.

Competing under the thematic pillars of “digital”, “automation & robotics”, and “sustainability”, each innovator had just three minutes to present their capabilities and technology solutions, and four minutes to field questions from a judging panel of three venture capital heavyweights.

Three winners emerged in this quick-paced and dynamic elevator pitch contest. Relive the excitement here ↗ (opens in new tab)!

Let the pitches begin!

The nine innovators and start-ups that participated in BE Demo Day 2021.

[Digital]

VRcollab

Building Information Modelling (BIM) has transformed the way firms in the industry work and collaborate with one another, but not everyone on a project team is fully proficient with BIM.

VRcollab aims to democratise BIM coordination by making it more collaborative, usable, scalable and accessible to everyone. Through its Virtual Reality (VR) software solution, stakeholders can easily collaborate with their teams remotely and make design changes within a collaborative BIM Common Data Environment (CDE) like BIM 360.

Doxa (Rising Star Award Winner)

Keeping track of procurement, payments and financing are a pain point for many companies. It prompted the founders of this fintech start-up to create a cross-industry trade platform that seamlessly connects buyers, suppliers and financiers through an innovative enterprise collaboration ecosystem.

Leveraging the power of hyperledger fabric, companies can automate their procurement and payment processes with full tracking and visibility – saving them considerable time and money.

Novade (Impact Award Winner)

Bid adieu to tedious paperwork and manual processes with Novade’s innovative construction management platform, which has been disrupting the way construction companies process their submissions to authorities and share their documents.

By digitalising existing processes, the flexible all-in-one platform allows companies to customise their workflows and reduce the manual operations required in processing drawings, documents, forms, people and assets.

[Automation & Robotics]

Operva.AI

With automated smart drone inspection, Operva.AI adopts cutting edge AI and robotics technology that is set to revolutionise building audits. It also offers AI-driven insights that are faster, cheaper and safer than manual methods.

The early-stage start-up is currently working on expanding beyond smart inspection by developing a new construction management platform.

Oceania Robotics

Oceania Robotics has been developing smart and fully integrated solutions to combat common pest control problems in a variety of settings with their fleet of robots.

Among them are a mosquito-control robot and a small robot that can navigate around false ceiling spaces to inspect for rodents and other activities that are hidden from view.

Argyle

Ceiling voids are often neglected spaces that lack accurate as-built drawings or 3D Building Information Modelling (BIM) models. This is the gap that Argyle’s autonomous and remotely controlled robotic survey kit seeks to fill.

Its scanning equipment and software deliver affordable and fast 3D models from existing physical spaces that are hidden from view. The accurately generated digital models are harnessed for a myriad of uses – from generating 5D animations to constructing digital twins.

[Sustainability]

Widuz (Innovation Award Winner)

Having pioneered a new class of fast-renewing engineered bamboo with twice the strength-to-weight ratio of existing alternatives, Widuz offers a hard-wearing, low-maintenance wood that is resistant to insects, fungi and water.

With its promising preliminary results, Widuz’s novel material is on the road to obtaining further durability, fire safety and other international standards and certifications for use in structural load-bearing functions.

All these ideas and technologies are poised to take the industry by storm, showcasing a spirit of creativity and innovation that will reimagine the future of Singapore’s Built Environment.

BtrLyf

As the world moves towards digitalisation and decarbonisation, the BE sector remains disjointed and fragmented in its digital approach. BtrLyf introduces a digital built environment ecosystem platform to help building owners, consultants, green financiers and product suppliers co-create sustainable buildings on a digital platform.

Combining the powers of building physics, machine-learning and collaborative technologies, the Software as a Service (SaaS) tool is geared towards accelerating sustainable development of the built environment ecosystem.

Digital Blue Foam

The team of architects, urban planners, software engineers, data scientists and sustainability enthusiasts at Digital Blue Foam developed a user-friendly early-stage building design platform that leverages cloud computing and data to help architects, developers, and planners easily design sustainable buildings and districts.

Its innovative and generative design tool enables a new way for architects to discover unexpected, novel design ideas through artificial intelligence-generated models.

Built Environment Accelerate to Market Programme

BE Demo Day was the crowning event of the Built Environment Accelerate to Market Programme (BEAMP) ↗ (opens in new tab), which brings inventors and companies together to fast-track the innovation process and solve real-world industry challenges. The BEAMP was jointly launched in 2019 by Building and Construction Authority, JTC Corporation and Enterprise Singapore.