Welcome to the PropTech Podcast. It's Kylie Davis here, and I'm delighted to be your host as we explore the brave new world where technology and real estate collide. It's so great to have you here and to share stories of innovation and opportunity across real estate, property, and building services.

And the aim of each episode is to introduce listeners to a PropTech innovator who is pushing the boundaries of what's possible across how we design, build, buy, sell, rent, and invest in property, and all of the associated behaviour and activities around that.

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My guest in this episode is Chris Polin, founder of the very new Australian construction tech startup DLP Manager.

DLP stands for defect liability period, and it refers to the legal period that builders must repair any defects on a new build, which can be anywhere up to around 10 years depending on the defect.

Now Chris himself has 16 years experience in the building industry, including time at Lendlease and the New South Wales government, and has personal firsthand knowledge of the work, stress, and reputational damage that defects can cause to a building company and the emotional trauma that they create for new owners.

Now, DLP Manager was launched in April, 2022 after Chris did work for a client that involved a defect list on an Excel spreadsheet that was over 900 rows long. Eek.

So here to tell us all about it, Chris Polin. Welcome to the PropTech podcast.

Chris Polin:

Thank you, Kylie. Thank you very much for having us. Very excited.

Kylie Davis:

So look, it's great to have you here. We always start off with the hardest question first, and that is, what is DLP Managers elevator pitch?

Chris Polin:

So it's in the name really. So DLP is the defects liability period. So DLP Manager is a specific post-construction technology that provides construction teams with connections between all stakeholders from handover of the project. So this ensures a smooth, efficient, and effective management, and mitigates any risk of any building warranty claims against a builder or developer.

Kylie Davis:

Right, so tell me about defects in building. How big are they? And are you residential only? Are you commercial or does it not matter?

Chris Polin:

No, well, we focus on residential because of the emotional connection as we've seen in New South Wales with the building commission. You're trying to build that consumer confidence around defects. So we focus on residential, but our clients quickly use it as a post-construction management technology.

So we're in age care, commercial, industrial, and so it's an extension of the construction software they use and it allows them to manage any building warranty claims the end user, the property owner feels they have against the builder or developer.

Kylie Davis:

So how long is that defect liability period? Tell me a little bit more about that.

Chris Polin:

With residential, it's two, six, and now 10 years as well. So two years is a minor defects warranty period. So an example of a defect at 24 months is a crack in the plaster board greater than a millimetre, and then six years are structural defects. So what's deemed structural is a waterproofing fire or concrete structure.

Again, so that is a six year. And a 10 year is a design issue. So if there's a greater design issue. So look, it's a massive warranty period, it only takes three or four years to build a building and then you've got to look after it for two, six, and 10 years.

And so we've just provided a software around that to ensure that those builders can mitigate that risk around those warranty periods. But for industrial and smaller items, it's a 12 month warranty period. So just as important, we want to make sure, and all the people I work with make sure that their product they've built, very proud of it, so want to deliver it and then make sure they did what they say they were going to do and hold those warranties up.

Kylie Davis:

So how does the tech work? If I'm a typical builder, how does it fit into my workflow?

Chris Polin:

So if you're a typical builder, it's a nice, clean line. So anywhere from handover. So you buy the platform, we give you a login. And it's a very easy setup of a project. So using 100 unit block as an example I suppose. You put in all your stakeholders and they all get logins to the platform. So owners will be logging defects, it's all permissions based.

So the builder can manage the owners and can manage the subcontractors through a workflow. So that's how they manage that warranty period. So they come in the morning and someone might have logged the defect, and they can qualify the defects. So assess the defect and then issue it to the right people.

Kylie Davis:

So how big an issue is defects in building apart from the long period that it goes for?

Chris Polin:

Defects is a big issue. I came from Lendlease where I managed their reputation maintenance they call it, which is exactly what it is. It's about the reputation of the product the builder and developer have built. So I managed that for 18 months, and then went off to start my own company and ended back up in managing defects.

And it is a really hard project after construction. Information's lost over the handover from the construction project, and engagement with the subcontractors and the owners. So we've identified, to change a light bulb in an apartment building, it's four to six people just to get involved. And then there's eight steps.

Kylie Davis:

That sounds like a bad joke. Hang on.

Chris Polin:

I use that sometimes as the opening icebreaker.

Kylie Davis:

How many people does it take to change a light bulb in an apartment building?

Not a joke, sorry.

Chris Polin:

No, not, and very frustrating for owners and developers and builders. Just have to manhandle at the moment, and they just have to manhandle that workflow. Phone calls, emails, chasing. So what we've done is put it all on one platform with automation and notifications. So it's really intuitive. So doing the work, doing everything that they thought they were going to do getting done for you by the software.

Kylie Davis:

So you mentioned before about how emotional it is. Talk to me a little bit about that.

Chris Polin:

Well, the emotional. For a homeowner who's just spent call it a million dollars on an apartment, and then comes in the first big rain event, they're getting water leaks or their taps leaking. For a builder, building 100 units, that's what, 200 bathrooms. Construction's a really hard process and involves a lot of touchpoints from a lot of different people.

And these owners just pay a lot of money. It's their biggest investment so they want to make sure that they're looked after. So that's where the emotion comes in. A lot of these people are mortgaged to get this first apartment or second apartment, and that's what the developer and builder, they want to make sure these people are looked after as well.

So it's a really hard process with a lot of touch points. So that's where the emotion comes in. So when you buy an apartment, you get a water leak from a dishwasher, it can get really frustrating. We have issues where sinks drop out because the wrong installation methodology's been used. And can really snowball for a builder as well if it's a systemic, if you've used the wrong detail on 100 sinks, that's 100 sinks.

Kylie Davis:

And look, it is a really big drama, isn't it? Because you buy something new, you expect it to be perfect. Like anything that you buy new, you buy a new car. If you buy a secondhand car, you understand it might have something that's a bit lived in. But if you're buying a new dress or a new car or a new house that's brand new, you expect all the bits to work.

Chris Polin:

That's right. And when you're involved in a construction project, the amount of bits it takes to put these apartments together, the products and the people. And managing that, it's really complicated. You see how many touchpoints there are. So there are points of failure you'd call it, I suppose, that need to be addressed.

But the people we work with are more than happy to go in and get it rectified. But again, the builder has contracted a subcontractor to supply and instal that line. So it's really the subcontractor's defect, if that light's gone out, that's his defect. So we want to minimise the amount of work for everybody else around trying to get that light bulb changed.

Kylie Davis:

So using your system, how does it speed that up? Because there's two things that I'm thinking of right now. On one hand, the way that you're explaining it, okay, I understand why defects happen. On the other hand, I don't care, because if Henry Ford could build a model to make 99 and a half out of 100 Toyotas go through the system properly with all of the touchpoints that are inside a Toyota, why? And he did that in 1901 or whatever, why are we in 2022 still handcrafting and pushing responsibility down in building?

Chris Polin:

Well, they're always going to be handcrafted. If we did a modular building, we'd all live in jails and it'd look like a [inaudible 00:10:17].

Kylie Davis:

Oh, I don't agree with that Chris, but all right.

Chris Polin:

But the place where the cladding, which is a different feature on the building, comes together with a glass balustrade or an aluminium balustrade and a window. And those details are different on almost every project.

Kylie Davis:

Yeah, true.

Chris Polin:

So these are handbuilt as construction teams try to mitigate risks around all these details, and that's where the design practitioners, actors come in from the building commission to try and really get these details sorted out in design before it gets to construction.

So look, I think we're on the way to doing it and he's doing a great job making that happen. But we still want to make sure that if there is any building warranty claims against the builder, to mitigate that risk around legal risk and ending up in court, the owner logs straight into our system, it pops up into the builder's platform. Then what they do is they assess it and can get it to that subcontractor in 15 seconds.

And during this time they're collecting critical data as well about what that defect is.

Kylie Davis:

Tell me about that.

Chris Polin:

So we've got an intuitive system that collects some data, and then by just following our workflow and getting into that subcontractor, we're getting data around if it's a product failure, an installation methodology, is it a design issue? We're also collecting some commercial information to make sure that the commercial managers in the construction company can close out their contracts.

So there's a retention period, which is where the builder holds money. The developer holds money on the builder and the builder holds money on the subcontractors. And the only thing that needs to be finished to get that retention back is are your defects finished.

Kylie Davis:

Right, got it.

Chris Polin:

And currently there's no one source of truth for that subcontractor or that builder or that developer to say, push a button and here it is. So we're providing that one source of truth, which is so critical during the construction process, but I've just identified after construction it gets a bit lost. So I want to pull that, my experience during construction into that post-construction and really manage it.

Kylie Davis:

Just step me through. So am I able to take a photo of the defect or do I just describe it, or how does that work as an owner, as a new property owner?

Chris Polin:

And that's another part, the customer-facing part of the platform. For a builder, we like management platforms. It's actually a traffic light system. It's well-organised and structured. For a customer who are not in the building game, you need to make sure that there's a customer-centric side of it. So that customer-facing part is all your details are pre populated. All you have to do is tell us what is the defect, where is the defect? And take photos. Photos, photos, photos.

The photos tell us a lot more information. We don't expect you to say, "Oh, the water is leaking because of here." We just want you to say there's a water leak and here are the photos. On that photo, a builder can then qualify that defect and go, "Well, I can see from that construction what's going on there."

It gives them a lot more information to say, right, and get that to the right person quickly. And then from there it coordinates access between the right people. So that's another big pain point. Access and chasing subcontractors, and knowing where that defect is. And then closing it out and documenting it. Making sure the owner's happy with the end results.

And that's the nice linear, that's the four to six people in the eight steps and that's the linear. Defects closed nice and easy, and that rarely happens. There's subcontractor disputes, there's owners not happy. So we've got to allow for all that as well.

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So how many people does it take to change a light bulb using DLP Manager?

Chris Polin:

Three?

Kylie Davis:

And it gets done a lot faster.

Chris Polin:

With automation and automatic notifications. So doing all the chasing for you and coordinating the access. So the platform is really for the owner is seeing the transparency, the subcontractor can look at the defect and turn up with the right materials because he's seen all the details. And go, "I'm going to take that light in there."

We get a lot of cases where the subcontractor turns up and says, "Oh, I didn't know it was that light."

Kylie Davis:

I thought it was the other one. I'll have to head off to Bunnings.

Chris Polin:

And he never comes back.

And it's just respect for the owner's time as well. The owners stayed home from work to get this defect fixed, so we want to make sure we're minimising their time as well and maximising their experience around this. It's a negative thing, but we're trying to make it a little bit positive by giving them a good experience around their units.

Kylie Davis:

So you said that you used to work for Lendlease for their reputation?

Chris Polin:

Yeah, for Lendlease. Yeah, they call it reputation maintenance.

Kylie Davis:

I think that's such an interesting concept, the understanding that, look, it's not defects which are just annoying and have to be fixed. But actually there is damage, potential damage here if we don't do it right to reputation.

Chris Polin:

For builders and developers, and that's what the Building Commissioner, reputation. And everyone we work for, everyone tries really hard to get this right. And sometimes it doesn't happen. And so we want to make sure that we're quickly getting on top of it, learning from it, and ensuring that customer experience is as good as it can be.

So by traditionally Excel spreadsheets, emails, phone call, misinformation, this has just solved all that in one source. So one place to go and coordinates everyone together.

Kylie Davis:

Okay, so how does it tie into the pre work that was done before we got to defects. You mentioned before that you'd worked in building as well, obviously you've worked in building as well. So how does it connect up those dots?

Chris Polin:

Well, we've just finished our integration to Procore. So Procore's probably one of the largest construction technologies, and they've really identified... I like their business methods, which is they've got a marketplace with little niche technologies like mine, and that add in. So we've integrated into Procore.

So anything from handover, and Procore comes into DLP, then the DLP feeds back into Procore. And for a construction company who are spending good money on Procore, that's their one source of truth.

So our team, they're called defect teams, who are different from the construction teams. We want those guys who are doing construction to go and build the next project and not get dragged into managing defects. So we want to minimise their time, but the defects team can click some buttons and feed that information back into Procore without having to chase.

And the way it's going is once that information's in the ether or in a system, it should be able to be read by the commercial manager or the product team or the design team.

So that information in real time is being fed back into these construction systems. And that's where we see our little niche product.

Kylie Davis:

It's providing a really important and valuable source of data, because it's giving you information that qualifies or quantifies, look, we've been using Joe's blogs tiles but actually we've got issues with them. We've repeatedly got issues with them. And it's giving you real data around the cost of that.

Chris Polin:

Yeah, that's right.

Look, I see we are the only qualified platform that's providing data on the performance of that building. So we're saying, we installed this sinc, and our next integration is to get into the QA documentation. So during construction you say, right, the sinks come from China and it's landed here, and now I've installed it in unit 201. And it looks great on installation. They all look great. Nice [inaudible 00:20:05], but how has it performed?

We just last year pulled out 140 sinks that had [inaudible 00:20:11] in the porcelain. So little hairline cracks, but that information is lost. That was all traditionally in an Excel and the procurement team are buying the same sink. I know that because another client of ours pulled that same sink out next door with a different contractor.

So we want to take that sinc, identify it in DLP, and send it back to the front-end of construction. Say, "Just flag that for a moment."

[inaudible 00:20:41] around, and installation methodologies. So not by any fault of their own, but just some poor installation methodologies. And repeated 100 times, it can get very expensive.

Kylie Davis:

Yeah, true. So Chris, tell me about how long have you been doing this for? How old is DLP? How big are you guys?

Chris Polin:

So DLP is just over two years old. So I took on a project in a building company I started managing defects for a tier one builder and developer, and got handed another 950 line spreadsheet with every one being a defect.

Kylie Davis:

I lost the will to live.

Chris Polin:

I need the work, but I can't do this again.

So I had a colleague who we'd actually built, I didn't I'd built a tech earlier with Lendlease. And he managed Sydney Water Systems. So I went to him with this problem. He said, "Mate, no problem, this is how we do it." And he had some very good workflow management.

In a few months we built this MVP and then launched it with this tier one builder on a couple of other projects. And over the next 18 months took all this feedback and usability and how they're using it, and developed it and released it this April as a PAAS model. So platform as a service to other builders and developers.

So we are six people at the moment with an external developer team, but next year, it's only been since April, it takes a bit of time to build up the confidence in the industry and who you are. So now with our integration of Procore, expecting a big year next year.

Kylie Davis:

Awesome, congratulations. So those first couple of years are always the hardest. Although I think it's a bit like children, they tell you that babies are hard, but then you get teenagers and you realise teenagers are hard.

Chris Polin:

One day at a time, Kylie, one day at a time.

Kylie Davis:

So what's the competitive landscape like out there? Because a couple of interviews ago I interviewed the guys from PlanRadar, [inaudible 00:22:56] Krauser from PlanRadar, how are you guys different to or complimentary to what they're doing?

Chris Polin:

In investigating this, there's a lot of experience for my in-depth experience of managing spreadsheet [inaudible 00:23:14].

Kylie Davis:

950 lines spreadsheets that you've run through.

Chris Polin:

And look, there's a lot of construction technology out there. But really the way we differ is I really feel that we're trying to coin the phrase post-construction technology. So there's not much post-construction technology, we're not trying to compete during construction, but it's at handover when so many different stakeholders are involved. They're different from the construction teams, they're unit owners who have specific needs.

They might not be English speaking, they have no idea about building, which is not required. And just make it intuitive enough to engage with those people as well and get that right information.

So we're really not trying to compete with construction technology, and that's where we see ourselves in Procore as well. Really post-construction, which is from handover to the unit owner and beyond.

Kylie Davis:

And look, I guess there's really advantages here too to that whole supply chain of builder and subbies, and suppliers and all of that too. Because if everyone's holding everyone's money until everyone's confident that the risk's been mitigated, that slows everything down, doesn't it? Because everyone's always anxious about what the risk might be going forward.

Brutal.