Creating more OpenSpace in the Built World

When every young person graduates, they want to change the world and make an impact. I envisioned pointing to skyscrapers, hospitals, or schools and saying, “I helped build that.” Surely my kids and grandkids would get a kick out of that, and remember me as they’d drive by these buildings on their own someday. For anyone who has ever built anything, the sense of pride and accomplishment is hard to beat. In the built world, the results and work product are palpable and tangible. After exploring a few other types of engineering, I resolved that real estate development and construction was where I would make the biggest impact - and be the most fulfilled.

A few years into my career, I was thrust into some amazing and diverse projects: two different billion dollar IPD hospitals, various shopping centers, as well as high rise commercial buildings. I then went on to oversee the construction of a large prison receivership program, various corporate campuses, and even a casino. Despite the variety and scope of these projects, I learned that the Achilles heel of each project always boiled down to project coordination and communication.

Projects run grossly over budget and schedule, with improvements that could more than double productivity if deployed in the right way going unused. As I thought about it, I realized that leveraging technology would be the most effective way for me to contribute to the solution. From my own personal experience, I came to believe that through software innovation, project stakeholders become empowered to make better informed decisions and gain more in-depth insights into their projects and teams.

I’m not alone, I know. It is no coincidence that the venture capital investment in construction technology over the last five years has been explosive. We all see the multi-trillion dollar construction industry continuing to trend upward over the next few decades with no signs of slowing down. There are many tools, processes, and technologies that are flooding the market to help address the lagging productivity and widening skilled labor gap. However, adoption still seems to be slow and much of it has to do with the fact that technology has not been purpose-built or doesn’t work well with today's mobile construction workforce.

The solution is to create technology that is easy to use and delivers actionable insights to teams directly in the field. Sounds simple, but it’s not.

Enter OpenSpace. This team understands the problem plaguing the AEC industry, and this is not their first time doing solving big problems. The founding team is composed of MIT PhDs who have started and sold technology companies in the past (one was one of Twitter's largest acquisitions, another was to a $275M drone company, 3DR, where I just came from, that partnered with Autodesk to bring a site scanning tool to the jobsite). The rest of the team has PhDs in computer vision and artificial intelligence, and they have carefully architected a complex system of estimation algorithms that, despite their complexity - or maybe because of it - makes the front end user experience extremely easy to use and navigate. Bottom line: these are smart people that get it and have practical experience.

I joined the OpenSpace team because of the impact we are making in the built world through easily capturing full visual records of the entire job (inside and out), so that teams can resolve disputes and keep track of projects from afar. I can remember foreman meetings in my general contracting days where half the meeting was spent arguing over what was done and not done, and everyone left the meeting more stressed because the real issues were not addressed or resolved. OpenSpace has now given truth to project teams.

OpenSpace has created a time machine for builders, so that you can visually inspect the job site as it was yesterday, a week ago, or ten years ago. When it comes time for the monthly progress updates or resolving a claim, OpenSpace becomes the truth for what happened on the job to resolve these conflicts quickly.

And the best part is that it requires no labor, and no infrastructure. You stick a Garmin 360 camera to a hardhat, turn it on and do your job on a project; you can forget you are even wearing the camera. We passively collect all the data, and after the data is uploaded, our estimation algorithms figure out where that person was, and then spit out a Google Street View-style view you can navigate. And because it's zero effort - like a fitbit - you can capture all the time, building up super dense (but easy to search) visual scans of any given building or project. Delivered: a mobile tool keeping up with the mobile construction workforce.

Reach out to me via Linkedin or email (tomf@openspace.ai) if you are interested in learning more about how we can work together (either through implementing our technology, integrating as a technology partner, or joining our team) in boosting productivity in the AEC industry. I’ve been fortunate to see a lot of good and not so good ideas for how to improve things for AEC. I truly believe we are doing something real - and most important: dead-simple useful - for builders. Do reach out.