How does the Dutch market look like?

As mentioned before DCS Finland Oy has founded new companies in Norway and in the Netherlands. During the last 2 years we have seen that the market for the Infrakit Cloud in both countries is waiting for this solution.

Fun fact: With 139,000 km of public roads, the Netherlands has one of the most dense road networks in the world – much denser than Germany and France, but still not as dense as Belgium. Dutch roads include at least 3,530 km of motorways and expressways, and with a motorway density of 64 kilometres per 1,000 km², the country also has one of the densest motorway networks in the world. (Source: Wikipedia)

The Dutch market is seeking for more efficiency in road construction projects. The fact that Infrakit offers brand independent solutions for exchanging information with all machine control systems is unique in the market. In Netherlands openness is very important, because companies hire subcontractors for all the work. Sometimes they have some own machines, but most of the times they need to hire many machines and all these subcontractors have different machine control systems. Many of those don’t even have connection to a cloud system and this is a big issue for construction companies. Our customers see immediately the big benefits of being able to share information real time with all participants in the project. These can be project owners, but also designers, foremen, land surveyors, machines, etc.

How can Infrakit respond to this demand?

Infrakit makes it possible to take BIM from the office to the worksite of every project, whether big or small. Infrakit makes it possible to really benefit from 3D designs and to connect as-built data together in real-time with the models. Infrakit makes it possible to follow project progress and makes it easy to adjust capacity to the real needs. Infrakit makes it possible to decrease failures to acceptable levels from the high levels everybody faces – until today.

The industry understands the need to improve work processes and to do that the industry sees that modern technology is the way to go. All other methods give marginal benefits, but an independent cloud solution gives big benefits and make savings in total construction costs up to 20% possible.

All your project data in one cloud platform.

Infrakit makes use of open standards and that is very much in favour of all users. All machine control manufactures do see this need as well and thus all of them have decided to open up to Infrakit to give these benefits to the market. And the market understandably is very happy with this and will benefit hugely in every project. It is a big win-win situation for project owners, construction companies and subcontractors.

Feel free to call us for live demonstration of the possibilities for your organisation!

Kind Regards,

Jan van den Brandt
Infrakit B.V.

T: +31 655735500
E: jan@infrakit.com
I: infrakit.com

Verlengde Maanderweg 100
6713 LL Ede
Netherlands

PRESS RELEASE: Infrakit subsidiaries founded in Norway and the Netherlands

This month, Infrakit subsidiary companies are founded in Norway and Netherlands. The new companies, Infrakit AS and Infrakit BV, are founded to handle Infrakit business in their respective regions. Managing directors are Anders Tiltnes (Infrakit AS, Norway) and Jan van den Brandt (Infrakit BV, Netherlands). Best of luck for both gentlemen in their new roles!

Founding of Infrakit AS (Left: Anders Tiltnes, Managing director Infrakit AS, right: Teemu Kivimäki CEO and Founder DCS Finland Ltd)

PRESS RELEASE 27.1.2017
FREE TO PUBLISH

Infrakit Cloud is expanding globally. In January 2017 Infrakit (=DCS Finland Ltd) has founded subsidiaries in the Netherlands and Norway. Infrakit’s official reseller network now reaches Japan.

A Finnish start-up Infrakit, a high-technology cloud platform, allows real-time project management and quality assurance for all parties in infrastructure construction projects.

Infrakit users have access to up-to-date project progress information throughout all construction phases, which reduces mistakes and delays considerably.

In Finland, the biggest infra-construction companies and more than a dozen municipalities are using Infrakit on their projects around the country. The company has had various pilot projects and reselling contracts in the Netherlands and Sweden for a couple of years. Norwegian sales were launched in 2016.

In January of 2017 Infrakit founded subsidiaries in the Netherlands and Norway to advance local sales and enable active customer service and support.

The company says to significantly invest in their global reselling network in 2017. In addition to the existing Finnish, Swedish and Dutch resellers they now have an official reseller also in Japan.

Global negotiations are under construction with many other companies in the field of infrastructure and surveying.

For more information:
Infrakit’s International Sales Manager Pasi Joensuu
mobile & email: +358 44 768 4424, pasi.joensuu@infrakit.com

www: infrakit.com
blog: infrakit.com/en/blog

LinkedIn: Infrakit
Twitter: Infrakit

2016 – What an eventful year for Infrakit

Only thinking about last year makes me a little dizzy. We organized so many of our own events and participated into even more! I thought it would be nice to take a trip down the 2016 memory lane by going through some of those events.

Infrakit Day Helsinki

This is the main event for us where we invite our customers; Infrakit super users and beginners, industry influencers, and our partners etc. The main purpose for Infrakit Day is to bring guests from all sectors of infrastructure industry together — project owners, designers, contractors, surveying and GPS equipment manufacturers. And the purpose came through, when at the event our guests were exactly that – a great mix of all.

Participants’ sectors counted from all 3 Infrakit events

What was also very nice, was the wide scale of participants’ roles: everything from CEOs to worksite engineers to head of designers. This was later said to be the thing that differentiated our event from similar ones: people got to talk with everyone – from each sector, role and Infrakit user level. Learning from others was key!

A great turn-out for Helsinki’s Infrakit Day.

And talking about learning, we managed to get some great speakers to tell us all about their cases and problems vs. solutions in the digitalizing industry. Through an after-event survey we received some feedback that the quality of presentations was great, but the program itself became quite heavy as there were so many speakers. Well, we learned from that and booked fewer presentations for the future events to give some room for digesting the information and discussing it with others. Finding the perfect balance is a challenge, but an interesting one!

Infrakit Days in Oulu and Kuopio

Infrakit Day in Oulu

There was a demand for having more of these events, so we made it into a small roadshow! We realize that most of our customers are outside of Helsinki, so we went to them. The positive feedback we got from both cities’ events revolved around interesting and informative topics, and enabling valuable discussion among peers and between all parties. The constructive criticism we got from Oulu was that there wasn’t a presentation from a worksite point of view – foreman for example – and it could be nice to start the event with a round of introductions. In Kuopio our guests told us, Infrakit team, to talk more about our own product and services. Will do for next one!

You can read further blog posts with all event PPT slides from here (only in Finnish): Infrakit-päivä 2016 (Helsinki), Infrakit-päivä Oulussa, Kuopion oma Infrakit-päivä.

CEO Mr. Kivimäki, State Secretary Trifunovic, Ambassador and State Secretary Kern

Serbian Infrakit Day

Our Serbian office held their own event in Belgrade in association with the Embassy of Finland. I heard it was a success for they had 50 people invited and enrolled, but 70 people showed up. What a positive problem! The event programme, speakers, and guests were in line with the Finnish ones. I was happy to hear there was a lot of discussion about the digital infra-industry during and after the event. You can read the English blog post about it here: Belgrade’s Infrakit Day.

Infrakit Reseller Event

As Infrakit is expanding its business globally, resellers come into play. During 2016, and even earlier, we had some interesting talks about how we could work together with companies that – like us – are in the crossroads of the industry, who see that infra-industry is digitalizing fast and who would be happy to be involved in making the digital leap easier for everyone. This in mind we invited the key people in some companies around the world to the deep forests in Finland in October. And we made them run in the pitch black forest with Infrakit as GPS – a fun game we called Infrakit Orienteering Challenge! A nice warm meal and hot sauna was surely awaiting them after finishing the race, so all was good in the end! The event in its main purpose was great. We accomplished to start a reseller journey together with people all the way from Tampere, Finland to the Netherlands and Japan!

Infrakit Day 2017 invitation

Now we have come a full circle as Infrakit Day Helsinki is going to be held again soon, 16th of February! Again around 50 people is expected, and there is some room still left. Be fast and get a seat for you and your colleague from here: Infrakit Day 2017! Event is in Finnish, free of charge, and there is plenty of delicious food served – amongst our wonderful speakers, of course!

EDIT. The event was great, room filled with infra industry’s top people: read the blog post about it (in FIN) here.

Hope to see you in our events in 2017!

6 principles for infra-collaboration

The future is exponential
For the first time in human history we live in an exponential world. Moore’s Law, which say that every 1-2 years the number of transistors per square inch on integrated circuits doubles, creates an exponential development for anything digital. Up until recently humans have lived in a linear world. Linearity is predictable and understandable, and most of our systems are developed around a sort of linear change.

How does this exponential world affect the infrastructure industry?
Well, at least it will not be predictable. Development will happen at a higher pace and new methods will be available that will transform the way we work.

What will be the key to success?
When change happens fast and new methods become available the key thing we can do is collaborate. Having information available in real-time will have a huge impact in how we make decisions. Consider a worst case for example: imagine not visiting the construction site for 1 month and not knowing what has happened there the last 4 weeks? How would you feel?

Having information available in real-time will have a huge impact in how we make decisions.

Real-time view of the project status
Well, then imagine having a real-time view of your site, from anywhere. On your commute home from work you can see that, yes, they did complete that last part. And yes, it has been documented to be proved as planned. That’s a good feeling. Also when errors do occur, having the chance to detect and avoiding them in real time, not 2 weeks later, is a great feeling.

How can we make sure information is available and that communication happens the way it should?
Well, we have proposed the “6 principles for infra-collaboration”. As described below these are the foundation of how you make sure your personnel have access to up-to-date information about your project. And having access to information is the best indicator that your project is on its way to success. Especially in an exponential, unpredictable and fast changing world of infra.

Cloud-connected in open formats – availability for all in real-time

“6 principles for infra-collaboration”
1) Use open file formats
Because if you use proprietary formats for exchanging information there will be a day when someone can not access the info. Also, open formats allow you to use the tools and software you or your sub-contractors prefer.

2) Support different equipment, machines and hardware
So that you are free to use the equipment you like, and for example negotiate on price. This is an important thing for the bottom line of the project.

3) A collaboration tool can not also be a CAD tool
Use different CAD tools, each tackling their own task. You should have the option to solve different tasks with different tools. And if you hire a new member of staff or consultant, they should be able to use the tools they have skills for.

4) Have the same files and information available both on site and in the office
Because having to print or create a copy of the file to bring out to the site is a waste of time.

5) Have information available on all platforms: mobile, tablet, PC/Mac
Because you should be free to choose which computers and mobile devices you want to use.

6) Support information flow between all project phases: designing, construction and as-built documentation + maintenance
Because for each time you change systems you lose a little bit of information.

Read more on the subject: “Infra-construction in 2020”

GUEST POST: Turning Point of Digital Infra-Construction

Turning Point of Digital Infrastructure Construction
(Written by Iiro Villman)

Summer, the high season of infra-construction business, is here and news about busy offer calculations and great amounts of projects offers can be heard from all over Finland. The most intense period of the whole year is on-going, but this time maybe even more actively than before. “If this is recession, hopefully it would last even longer”, a sentence heard from one contractor. This indicates that even winter wasn’t too bad for the infra-construction industry. Is the positive news stemming from the contractors, who have been keeping the offers low and – in this way – gotten themselves a lot more work with a smaller salary, or from the fact that they have some competitive advantage over other contractors?

Digitization as an competetice edge: tangible benefits are seen in cost-efficiency

Technology for Everyone

There have been services for digital construction available for everybody’s use for some years already when trying to improve the competitiveness of the market, but still only few have utilized them in full scale. Finland’s major infrastructure contractors have been developing the technology and using the services for years, though. Their initiative and government-supported projects have developed technology to a much needed positive direction in the industry.

Now, however, it seems that the advantages of technology have been noticed among small and medium-sized operators as well. Machine control system sales are accelerating when, at the same time, applications and electrical tools are becoming more and more standards in the field. The benefits of the technology can be seen in the improved cost-effectiveness of projects and thus improving the competitiveness of companies. You see, in today’s contract contests, only few jobs are goldmines for the winning tender already from the beginning.

Total costs of the project are determined at the designing table, but during implementation phase the greatest costs arise from material purchasing and implementing the job itself. It is difficult to lower the material prices since manufacturing and raw materials’ costs are rising continuously. Instead, it can often be seen on worksites that machinery is on a standstill or tasks might have to be done twice due to construction errors or incomplete designs. New technologies provide new possibilities and solutions for lowering working costs and enhancing work efficiency for any project, but especially for projects that have set very low margins in the offer phase.

Professionally skilled staff and active foremen are the key players when talking about work efficiency. But what if the foremen don’t have the time needed to run the worksite with traditional methods? Machine control systems and data transfer applications – which are easy to use – help foremen, and make their tasks easier on-site. When utilized right, devices and applications pay themselves back quickly with work becoming much more efficient.

You can view 3D designs in real-time also on Infrakit

Real-time Quality Control

Nowadays project owners have a goal to implement projects with as high quality as possible with the lowest costs possible. Achieving and authenticating the given objective is based on mutual trust between project owners and contractors, even if the owner’s representative or consultant would visit the site often. Most of the end products in infra-construction remain hidden from the surface and it is not always possible to see from the finished structure whether the project was actually completed according to the design.

It’s not my intention to imply only the worst-case scenarios about contractors’ reliability or their ways of producing high quality projects, but to highlight all thepossibilities of improving the worksite’s real-time quality control processes brought by today’s techniques. Work on the construction site is progressing rapidly and getting the as-built data surveyed with the traditional methods to consultants and project owners can often take weeks. In the meantime, many phases have been completed following the possibly incorrect as-built data. Repairs done afterwards are always expensive and, in addition, violate the work that has been done correctly around the incorrect structure.

3D view of the project

Nowadays, project owners require more comprehensive documentation from the contractors just to ensure the usability of the structures. Contractors avoid expensive solutions that seemingly don’t directly affect the final result of their product. They try to come up with easier ways in order to fulfill the project owner’s requirements. For this reason, contractors have acknowledged digital applications, and benefits and possibilities provided by new technology. In order to achieve the desired transparency and comprehensive quality control, real-time applications have been taken in everyday use – at least in public sector’s construction projects. I sincerely wish that the private sector would follow their lead!

3D KOPPI logoThe issues mentioned above are based on stories told by different contractors and on my own experience from the private sector. I, myself, have worked as a site manager in earthmoving projects and seen the ways that tasks could be completed more efficiently with machine control systems and real-time data transfer and quality control. Luckily these kinds of solutions already
exist and new tools are created as we speak. Even the small contractors can get a competitive advantage by taking the newest technologies in use, and work the same way as the big companies.

Founders of 3D-KOPPI Sami Rautkoski (left) and Iiro Villman

The author, Iiro Villman, is the Project Manager of 3D-KOPPI Ltd., 3dkoppi.fi

Editor’s note: This is the 2nd post in our new Guest Post series where infra-construction experts and experienced doers tell about the transformation of infra-construction industry, digital leap and new winds of change in the industry. The posts are written by the authors themselves and the texts have not been edited (except a word-for-word translation into English).