Kylie Davis

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Kylie Davis

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, real estate, property ownership, design and construction all collide. It's so great to have you here and to share stories with you of innovation, opportunity and challenges. 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 behaviors and activities around that. And there's a lot now, none of this would be possible without our sponsors.

Kylie Davis

So a very big shout out to Hid digital identification and building access solutions easypay making collecting payments easy for proptex dynamic methods, the innovators behind forms live, REI forms live, and Realworks direct connect making moving easy and the Proptech association of Australia thank you for your support of the podcast. Now, why does building a property cost so much? Well, a lot of the reason is because of the lack of efficiency in the building industry, the manual systems and handoffs and the updates managed through phone calls, email, onsite visits, pdfs, gaps in the supply chain and the demands of governance which require even more administrative work, and the lack of visibility across that entire process, which culminates in defect correction at the end. In fact, according to Deakin University, at least 13% of the cost of a building is attributed to rework in some way.

Kylie Davis

But my guest in this episode is fixing all of that. Justin Williams is the founder of Construction ID by Wiseworking, a building process and document management platform that captures all of the information in a build from design through to post building management, and it's all in one system. They were the winners of the Proptech awards in 2022 and a finalist again this year. So here to tell us all about construction id by Wise working Justin Williams. Welcome to the Proptech podcast.

Justin Williams

Thanks for having me, Kylie. This is a real pleasure and hopefully it's not too boring for everyone.

Kylie Davis

So I'm really looking forward to this conversation about transforming construction because I think it is an industry that really needs a lot of change to happen in it to make improve it. But look, Justin, first question is always the hardest and it is our elevator pitch. So tell me what the construction id, elevator pitch is.

Justin Williams

Construction id, by wise working is a SaaS software solution for the built environment. We exist to build the world and make it a better place. A building consists of multiple phases that may span over 50 years. Software currently services a single phase of the building, for example, tendering or construction. Construction services all the phases, the entire lifespan of the building, with detailed project and document management forms and reporting.

Kylie Davis

Okay, so you're a SaaS platform, you're covering the whole phase of a building's lifecycle, is that correct?

Justin Williams

Correct.

Kylie Davis

And what's the actual problem that you're solving?

Justin Williams

So the actual problem we solve, there's quite a few of them actually.

Kylie Davis

That's good. We love lots of problems. Don't worry about that.

Justin Williams

Look, if anyone's ever experienced trying to find that golden email or that bit of information that they need at present, they have to switch across different apps and different platforms, or look through different way through emails looking for the magic piece of information. Construction id means that it's a central platform for users and that's the building's team to view, communicate and manage the entire building throughout its life. So it eliminates information silos, so information from each stage is stored. What that means is information from each stage is stored on a separate software and database for each different role. Instead of that, it's all done centrally. It means that migration and rebuilding of the data is avoided because that often leads to miscommunication, having it stored separately, miscommunication, or even data entry errors and lost information.

Justin Williams

It creates visibility so that anyone, particularly the property developer, can get an accurate, real time view of where the building is at, rather than the, I won't say the glossed picture that they sometimes get about where the building is at, and then they get told too late that there's actually a delay or a cost overrun. It means that history is all in the one place. So that when an issue is fixed, and I'll go into an example of what that could actually mean later on, when the issue is fixed, the history is there to help aid that fix.

Kylie Davis

Right.

Justin Williams

And it actually lowers the cost of development because it stops rework occurring. It avoids additional software costs at each stage because traditionally what would happen is every different stage of the building would require a bit of different piece of software and that would be bought by that individual but built into their tender price. So ultimately what it does is it lowers the actual cost of building. It reduces is rework. Like I mentioned before, we've done some research with Deakin University in Victoria, and rework actually costs as much as 13%. Generally between ten and 13% of a building's costs over its lifespan can be contributed to rework. And rework could be reattending an issue, fixing a defect that was fixed incorrectly a few years ago, or data entry of something that was done previously. So doing the data entry twice.

Kylie Davis

Okay, so what you've got is a platform that is like a centralized communication platform that's bringing together all of these different conversations that happen around a building and different elements of software that disparate pieces of software that are used to manage bits and pieces and streamlining all of that. Is that correct?

Justin Williams

Well, it's a communication platform, but also it's what you call a document control and quality control platform. Rather than just sharing communication and documents, it actually produces the forms, the quality forms that you would need to, for example, that the builder has to complete to do an inspection test record to prove that they've installed the plastering correctly in a room. So it gives the team visibility of the right processes have always been followed, but also the right documents are being looked at.

Kylie Davis

Okay. Because I can imagine, oh, look, I can only imagine what the email communication trial looks like at the moment using email, excel and a filing cabinet or a whiteboard, right?

Justin Williams

Absolutely. It's a mismatch.

Kylie Davis

This is what you're replacing. I can imagine. So how far back or where does the use of construction id by wise working start, Justin?

Justin Williams

It actually starts at design and tendering. So the idea is the more information you can get into this system, this central repository, the, so we encourage users to use this through design phase, then into construction phase, then afterwards into operational phase, because the more information you get in there, the more benefits that all of the users get out of the system.

Kylie Davis

Yeah. And does it then translate into just owning and operating the building, or do you hand off to a different, or can you hand that data off to a different platform after that?

Justin Williams

Ideally it translates into operations of the building, they retain it, but if they have a different provider or the owner's corporation doesn't want to use construction id, then yes, we can export everything, all that information, they can have access to it.

Kylie Davis

Okay, so do you specialize in particular types of buildings? Because you just mentioned Australia then, which is what I'm seizing on. Or is it any kind of building?

Justin Williams

Look, it's any kind of building. And our current clients are right from, as you say, the top end tier one strata companies right down to small residential buildings. Because the idea of construction id is because it's scalable and because you can sort of pick and choose what you want to use. It's modular, it's applicable to any type of built environment project.

Kylie Davis

Okay? So the benefits of using it are that I'm going to save a hell of a lot of time, I guess, looking for lost records. It's keeping everything in one place and it's creating almost, well, it's creating a data trail, right, of what's gone on in this building. And all the information is applicable to this building. And it's building decisions or construction decisions that have been made across the is. That is so important because I was talking to the guys at PT blink the other day and we kind of ended up having a bit of a vast conversation around how invisible so much of the data is in construction. Not because it doesn't exist, but because it's never been digitized, right?

Justin Williams

Yes, it's never been digitized. And you're right, it is sitting in silos. I won't say it's people's heads, but when someone tells them another part, if it's sitting offline, when someone tells someone the story of where things are at, it's their story rather than the true story. And, and what construction id does with that visibility is avoids surprises. And it's not like someone isn't there to tap you on the hand and penalize you. It's so that it's seen early and then you can approach it as a team so you can make the decisions before the problems actually occur.

Kylie Davis

Right. So how long have you guys been around for.

Justin Williams

Wise working actually started in 2011, and so we've been around for a long time. Construction id is the evolution of all the systems and intellectual property that we built over all those years. We started on building defects and moved into ohns and then went to post construction and built lots and lots of different apps. But everything was brought together with construction id because as you said, there's lots of lost data. There's lots of data out. There's no doubt that the data is out there, but nothing actually brings the data all together. And the idea with construction id covering all those phases and having all of those different points of functionality does bring all that data together.

Kylie Davis

So how long has construction id been in market for.

Justin Williams

So I actually started building construction id during the COVID the lockdown.

Kylie Davis

So many of us did a bit of breathing space to code.

Justin Williams

Exactly.

Kylie Davis

You are not the first.

Justin Williams

Yeah.

Kylie Davis

I just have this vision of reflecting back on Covid of all of these developers sitting in their rooms coding while they waited for the pandemic to end. It's kind of really what happened 2020, when you started to pull it together.

Justin Williams

Put it all together. Since then going to market, we've had some success with the tier ones. The product has been used nationally for all different phases of building. So that's a great thing. But being a bootstrap company, our challenge now is to get the product out there.

Kylie Davis

Do you want to do a bit of a humble brag and tell us who some of your clients are?

Justin Williams

Well, look, I'll start with the top end of town. So we're working with Seabus property and then just to show got another few other tier ones, which I'm not too keen to do a humble brag about one. But at the different end of market we've got in the residential area, we're working with Burbank Australia down in Victoria on residential projects. And every different sector has its own unique challenges and quirks. And construction id isn't a one shoe fits all product, but it can be actually tweaked depending on the needs of the customer and the market.

Kylie Davis

So your clients are doing everything from building high rise commercial buildings all the way through to individual residential home developments.

Justin Williams

Correct.

Kylie Davis

Wow. Okay. And everything in between?

Justin Williams

Everything in between.

Kylie Davis

Because your platform doesn't care. It's the process that you're automating. You don't care what the end box looks like. Okay. That is a really impressive client list. And for a prop tech that's only been around as a technology solution since 2020. Although I appreciate that you guys, were you consulting or did you before?

Justin Williams

With wise working, we started the journey wanting to do software consulting and contracting, but found ourselves pulled towards the software. Because when we started wise working, there wasn't much out there. There was a lot of demand for the software. Nowadays it's different. There's software glore, but that software, there's a lot of point solutions out there that only sort of service one part of the problem. We're looking to tackle the whole end. To end the whole building. So rather than a two year involvement, we're looking for a 50 year involvement. And generally speaking, that is through the developer or even a financier or insurance company, oddly enough, that's concerned with the big picture that their investments actually risk protected.

Justin Williams

And you do that by, yes, aiding the builder and the subcontractors and the owners corporation, but ultimately you need to give that visibility to who's funding the project.

Kylie Davis

You have just given me a major conversations that I've had recently with people. But one of the things I see maybe we're doing incorrectly as an industry in proptech is we're trying to solve the pain for end user clients when in fact we should possibly be selling the value of the benefits of our software to the finances. The finances follow the money, right?

Justin Williams

Absolutely.

Kylie Davis

Especially in this developer and big space, because trying to convince people that, look, what you're doing at the moment is really painful, please stop it. Like we've got a solution is like. But when you say, look, unless you start to be accountable for the dollars by the money behind this project wants you to save what you save and deliver a better product and take less time doing it, because the time, the quality and the cost of things in construction is so broken, it's so unnecessarily expensive, long and unaffordable. Right. Because the way we construct currently is making our properties unaffordable.

Justin Williams

Absolutely.

Kylie Davis

Yeah. Maybe we need to pivot into influencing the construction.

Kylie Davis

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Kylie Davis

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Kylie Davis

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Kylie Davis

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Kylie Davis

So I want to unpack this a little bit more. You do have a really impressive client list without giving too much away. How did you win them over? How have you been so successful so quickly?

Justin Williams

I luckily enough have a decent network. Good, but a network cannot always help. So far, having worked in property and construction for a number of years, I've had the pleasure of working for a tier one company being pro build who don't exist anymore, as everyone knows. But those pro build people scattered and went to different companies. So luckily I was able to contact some of those companies through the people that I knew. But like I was saying before, a network can only get you so far. So that's the next step with our business, is to scale the business and do more marketing and potentially engage a salesperson to actually chase those prospects.

Kylie Davis

Yeah, well, your black book is no use if your tech doesn't work right. So all you do is really annoy everyone in your black book. So how big are you guys now? How big is construction? Id by wise working.

Justin Williams

We'Re a small team of seven based in Victoria and in Australia, so we do the bulk of our development offshore. We do some development onshore, but we do the bulk of it offshore. And that's to ensure that we get a quick product. But we do the quality management within Australia and that's really important, that mix there. And it allows that the companies be agile and implement tweaks and customizations for clients quickly, but also have that quality testing process there so that it vets those developments and makes sure that the developments are what the customer actually asks for. Or as you say, work.

Kylie Davis

Yeah. So what have been the biggest challenges in getting it to this stage so far?

Justin Williams

Look, where do I start? There's been lots and lots of challenges. And like I was saying before, we've taken the approach of bootstrapping. So it gives us that flexibility to build the product to the size that it actually is. Early days, we made that decision to try and hold on for as long as possible before we got investors that limited the scope of what this product could actually be. So we've had the opportunity to grow the product and now that approach has got pros and cons. Major Con is that you don't grow anywhere nearly quickly as you want. That network, my personal network, and being the only sales mechanism we've had in the past is a major one as well. It's been a really real challenge.

Justin Williams

But the three major challenges that I've listed down here, make sure that you always do your research and you don't over promise. You always under promise and you always over deliver. I know that's a cliche, but clients really appreciate something which is believable. And look, the second thing that I learned is you don't trust. Don't put all your trust into a good relationship or into good faith. Make sure you build a contract. Protect yourself. My personal strength is in solutions and solution delivery and solution architecture, but my weakness is in commercials and contracts. So I brought on a co founder last year and look, that's really changed the business and the way that the business is looking to scale up. His first thing he did was implement contracts.

Justin Williams

And that not only protects the account, but it avoids the situation that we encountered lots of times in this journey where you've sold to an individual, they've got the vision, they thought how great it is, and then they leave the company, someone else, new starts and they want to replicate what they did at their old company. And without the contract, you got absolutely no protection against that.

Kylie Davis

Was there a last one? No go.

Justin Williams

I was going to say the last one is with your thinking is building a system and not just a solution. So if a client's asking for ABC, you don't just give them a product as ABC, you think about what the D is, how that fits into the bigger picture. When you build it, you're not just building a, B and C all the time, A, B and C. You're actually thinking about ABCD and how strategically you can actually benefit from that development.

Kylie Davis

Fantastic. Thank you for sharing that. Now, what's the name of your co founder? Give him a shout out.

Justin Williams

So, Craig Broadband. And he, over this journey, have met lots of potential people to bring into the business, but he has gone through the journey personally. He's actually built up a software company, sold the software and knows all the pitfalls that can be had during the journey.

Kylie Davis

Fantastic. And look, I loved what you mentioned about the challenges because it talks about as a founder, you have to recognize both your strengths and your weaknesses, right. And then build a team around you that complements your weaknesses, basically. That sounds weird and it sounds like it's negative. And I don't mean that in any way, shape or form. You actually want people who are good at the stuff that you're not good at, but you need the self awareness to know, look, I'm not good at that, but it is important and so I'm going to not abdicate responsibility for it. But I recognize how important it is and I'm going to let good people do good work in that space and I'm going to get out of their way and let them do it. Right. Fantastic. So what is the one thing that you wish?