5 New Innovations that Could Change the Building Industry

Brief 

The push to boost housing supply will continue this year, and with that has come a growing number of technological innovations set to shake-up the industry. Here’s a selection of five new products that could help to change the building game.

Insight

While new home consents are at record levels and evidence of the building boom is inescapable, construction industry capacity constraints are starting to weigh on the pace of development. But the pace of technological invention has also accelerated and a host of innovations designed to improve and enhance the industry are hitting the market.

Utecture: The Timesaving “Gamechanger”

A new digital platform has the potential to give builders cost and time savings of 60 per cent in the sales cycle, and its developers say industry heavy-hitters are signing up for it.

The cloud-based platform, Utecture, allows merchant suppliers and builders to accurately plan and cost a job in significantly reduced time, down to around an hour from the current average of 11 days. This means it can provide quotes and close contracts in half the time, which will speed up the production process and also improve affordability in new build projects.

It does this with virtual pre-construction house plans. Users interact with the plans and can make changes. The technology re-renders the plans with each change, and costs are quantified immediately. Donovan Group chief executive Kyle Donovan says it gives contractors the ability to make real time decisions on what something looks like and how much it costs.

In contrast, when working from traditional plans any changes could take weeks to get them done, signed off and priced, he says. “This cuts down on time, saving money in the process, while providing the client with instant certainty on specs and costs. It seems simple, but it is transformative for clients as they can make better decisions.”