The Propcast

In the tenth episode of Season 11 of the Propcast, host Louisa Dickins is joined by Meirav Oren, CEO and Co-Founder of Versatile and James Barrett, Vice President and Chief Innovation Officer at Turner Construction Episode Highlights: • The founding story of Versatile and their vision • What Turner Construction are trying to achieve for the industry and the synergies they have with Versatile • Key challenges with innovation adoption within the sector • The work they are doing to empower people working in construction • Where Meirav has seen the biggest growth in their product • Pressing issues in construction that James wants to try and resolve • How robotics can be implemented into the industry • Making the industry appealing to the future workforce • How they work on making products that will make people's jobs and change management easier • The different partnerships Turner Construction have and the reasons behind them • The Entrepreneur and Residence Program that Turner Construction have set up Resources: • LMRE Global Recruitment and Search Consultancy• LMRE YouTube Interviews• PropTech Salary Report, LMRE 2022• Innovation Lab• Omers Ventures Key Takeaways: • We put the data that we believe is most critical in the hands of the people who build. - Meirav • Productivity is everything to us in construction. We're trying to get more work in place with fewer people and that's how you drive schedules, that's how you drive cost savings. That's how you improve. - James • Evaluating and deploying solutions is working at the pace of change that people are comfortable with. - James • We're facing a huge issue with a lack of skilled labour. We have an ageing workforce that's retiring and it's not being replaced. - James • When Venture capitalists told me that the industry is laggard and antiquated and simply not a good investment, because it's not going to adapt fast enough, I said, it's the second largest industry in the world. It's right for innovation, it needs it. - Meirav • I think the worst thing you can have is incredibly bright, talented people wasting 2, 3, 4, 5 years of their life producing a solution that nobody wants. It's probably the greatest waste of human talent you can imagine. So that's why the whole program was born. - James About Our Host Louisa Dickins Louisa is the co-founder of LMRE, which has rapidly become the market leading global PropTech recruitment platform and search consultancy with operations across North America, United Kingdom, Europe and Asia-Pacific. To promote the industry she is so passionate about, Louisa set up the Global podcast 'The Propcast' where she hosts and invites guests from the built environment space to join her in conversation about innovation. About LMRE LMRE is globally recognised for leading the way in Real Estate Tech & Innovation talent management. From the outset our vision was to become a global provider of the very best strategic talent to the most innovative organisations in PropTech, ConTech, Smart Buildings, ESG, Sustainability and Strategic Consulting. At LMRE we are fully committed at all times to exceed the expectations of our candidates and clients by providing the very best advice and by unlocking exclusive opportunities across our global network in the UK, Europe, North America and Asia-Pacific. Sponsors Launch Your Own Podcast A Podcast Company is the leading podcast production and strategic content company for brands, organisations, institutions, individuals, and entrepreneurs. Our team sets you up with the right strategy, equipment, training, guidance and content to ensure you sound amazing while speaking to your niche audience and networking with your perfect clients. Get in touch [email protected]

In the ninth episode of Season 11 of the Propcast, host Louisa Dickins is joined by Mateo Zimmermann, Investment Manager at CEMEX Ventures, Chris Bone, Co-Founder & CEO at Modulous and Tim Davies, CEO at HiiROC Ltd. Episode Highlights: • The work that each of the businesses do and how they collaborate • The work HiiROC are doing to try and make hydrogen more affordable • The main issues currently facing the construction industry and the work being undertaken to try and find solutions • How these issues can impair innovation and make the industry quite risk averse • The work Modulous are doing on ESG • The challenge with bringing new talent into the industry who can help drive innovation and technology adoption Why it can take longer to see the rollout of new technologies within the space The different speed of innovation adoption across the industry and the frustrations this can cause • The investments CEMEX are making in companies working on green construction • The issues with supply/ delivery of materials and the work CEMEX are doing to try and resolve this • The future they all see for construction Resources: • LMRE Global Recruitment and Search Consultancy• LMRE YouTube Interviews• PropTech Salary Report, LMRE 2022• Leaplab | CEMEX Ventures• Construction Startup Competition • McKinsey• Modulous• Synhelion• PartRunner – Home Key Takeaways: • CEMEX have been amazing for us through this process because they're thought leaders in their space. They have great views on how the industry can be changed and that's something that we're very keen to help facilitate. Our vision is to help solve the housing crisis while protecting the planet. - Chris • We are rolling out the production of hydrogen, but we're working with partners like CEMEX to say how do we use it in the right setting? So how do you use it to produce cement? How do you use it to produce steel or for transport? - Tim • We can only tackle the challenges our industry are facing, and I want to emphasise on that, if we industry players collaborate to build a better future. - Mateo • We're continually looking at both the physical product and the carbon content of that product. And until you understand the carbon content, it's very difficult to drive change, to improve that, or to be able to track it and understand exactly what level of carbon is, in our instance being put in our buildings. - Chris • It's a very tight margin business. Therefore, when you look at cement or steel and the like to suddenly introduce a much higher energy cost because you're using hydrogen, not natural gas or whatever else is nigh on impossible. So we as technology providers have to provide the solution that makes it affordable. - Tim • I think the paces are also a little bit different. There's obviously a lot of innovations in terms of materials that are happening, but not necessarily there is an adoption on the job site right on construction. - Mateo • It's very inefficient and obviously materials are a large part of the construction budget. So from 40 to 60% depending on the country and it's highly inefficient. It's actually one of the biggest reasons for delays in construction. - Mateo About Our Guests: Mateo Zimmermann Mateo Zimmermann is Investment Manager at CEMEX Ventures, responsible for the Corporate Venture Capital Investments in startups in the Construction technology space. Before joining CEMEX Ventures, Mateo worked at The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) from 2013 to 2017 as a Management Consultant, where he promoted to Project Leader. He previously worked at StepOne as an Advisor for startups and corporates in their Digital Strategies. Before that he worked as an Investment Analyst in Private Equity and Corporate Debt at the Asset Management division of Arcano. He also worked for UBS and Electrolux Group. Mateo has a double degree in Engineering and Management. He graduated as MSc in Industrial Engineering and Management at Technische Universität Berlin (Germany) and obtained a Master in Management at ESCP Europe (Paris, France). He was born in Madrid (Spain) and has both the Spanish and German citizenship. CEMEX Ventures The global economy has endured a tough 2022. With decades-high inflation sapping post-lockdown spending and pushing central banks to hike borrowing costs at an unprecedented clip to bring it under control. Yet despite poor projections and an overall decline in VC funding, 2023 represents an optimistic year for startups in the ConTech sector. Predictions point to trailblazing new technologies and business models entering the industry to improve sustainability and reduce the global carbon footprint. That's why CEMEX Ventures, the corporate venture capital and open innovation unit of CEMEX, goes beyond simply investing. Since 2017, CEMEX Ventures develops relationships between entrepreneurs, investors, CEMEX, and other corporations in order to revolutionize the construction industry as we know it today. Chris Bone Chris is CEO and co-founder of Modulous, the construction technology company that was formed to address the global housing crisis while reducing the climate impact of real estate development. Chris has 25 years' experience in the construction industry, having managed businesses across consulting, manufacturing, and construction. At Modulous he is responsible for all aspects of the company's growth and development in the UK, Europe, and the USA. Modulous Modulous was founded in 2018 by a team of construction, technology, and manufacturing specialists to create an asset-light model for the design and delivery of sustainable homes. Its integrated digital and physical product suite is designed to make the whole construction cycle - from feasibility right through to delivery on site - more efficient and effective. Its software platform generates optimised schemes based on a Kit of Parts, which is manufactured within the supply chain, removing the need for dedicated factories. The Kit of Parts is a standardised set of assemblies providing a high-performance net-zero modular housing system, delivered in half the time of traditional housebuilding, with 70% less waste and 60% lower embodied carbon. Modulous has offices in London and Seattle and is the first globally scalable technology solution to address both the worldwide housing crisis and escalating climate emergency. Tim Davies Tim has held Chief Executive & Board roles across a variety of sectors including green-tech, retail & service-providers working with both corporates and start-ups. He has a proven track record of identifying and delivering new business opportunities and considerable value creation including 20 years' experience working for PE & VC-backed businesses. Now, as CEO of HiiROC, Tim and his team have developed a technology with a potentially transformational impact on Climate Change. HiiROC A transformational new technology for affordable, clean hydrogen production using world leading proprietary plasma technology. HiiROC's Thermal Plasma Electrolysis (TPE) uses renewable (or grid) electricity to split hydrocarbons (biomethane, flare gas, natural gas, propane, etc) into zero-emission Hydrogen and inert solid Carbon Black (i.e. without producing CO2). TPE works at a fraction of the cost of Water Electrolysis, without the CO2 emissions of Steam Methane Reforming and is scalable from micro onsite (saving transport & storage costs) to industrial scale. The highly versatile technology is being piloted globally in 2023 across the hydrogen sectors from industrial decarbonisation to transport to grid blending and power management whilst also being used for flare gas mitigation and CO2 reduction using biomethane. About Our Host Louisa Dickins Louisa is the co-founder of LMRE, which has rapidly become the market leading global PropTech recruitment platform and search consultancy with operations across North America, United Kingdom, Europe and Asia-Pacific. To promote the industry she is so passionate about, Louisa set up the Global podcast 'The Propcast' where she hosts and invites guests from the built environment space to join her in conversation about innovation. About LMRE LMRE is globally recognised for leading the way in Real Estate Tech & Innovation talent management. From the outset our vision was to become a global provider of the very best strategic talent to the most innovative organisations in PropTech, ConTech, Smart Buildings, ESG, Sustainability and Strategic Consulting. At LMRE we are fully committed at all times to exceed the expectations of our candidates and clients by providing the very best advice and by unlocking exclusive opportunities across our global network in the UK, Europe, North America and Asia-Pacific. Sponsors Launch Your Own Podcast A Podcast Company is the leading podcast production and strategic content company for brands, organisations, institutions, individuals, and entrepreneurs. Our team sets you up with the right strategy, equipment, training, guidance and content to ensure you sound amazing while speaking to your niche audience and networking with your perfect clients. Get in touch [email protected]

In the eighth episode of Season 11 of the Propcast, host Louisa Dickins is joined by Maria Davidson, CEO & Founder of Kojo and Dan Babcock, President at James Babcock Inc

Episode Highlights: • What was behind the creation of Kojo and the issues they believed they could resolve • What Kojo stands for • Common questions clients of Kojo want to have answered • The reasons why Dan's company became customers of Kojo and the benefits they get from it • How Dan found introducing a new technology solution into the business that had been running since the 50's • The impact the increase in the cost of materials is having on profitability • The different product changes that have occurred for Kojo and their future plans • What drives the development of different products and their roadmap • Other products Kojo integrates with • Trends Maria is seeing within the industry

Resources: • LMRE Global Recruitment and Search Consultancy• LMRE YouTube Interviews• PropTech Salary Report, LMRE 2022• Procore• OpenSpace podcast

Key Takeaways: • When we started Kojo back in 2018, the question that we were really obsessed with was how could we make the built environment faster, more efficient and less error prone to build? - Maria • In the last three years, with an extremely volatile supply chain and volatile material prices, the difference between being profitable and unprofitable can really come down to one project going well or going badly. - Maria • A big thing is pricing. We've seen huge savings. Because back in the day, my purchaser would've taken an order and called our favourite vendor and ordered the materials. Now we're sending it out if it's a smaller order, to three to four vendors and I can see on my dashboard the amount of savings between if we would've just gone with the one vendor. - Dan • So we take baby steps on anything we do, because people in construction are a little behind on, I'd say technology, but we don't want to be, not all of us. - Dan • We just had a customer who got an invoice for $12,000 that should have been $120 because the unit of measurement was off. And they said, that's the kind of thing that we could have just paid because we're getting thousands of invoices a month, and it's impossible for us to know that each one is being meticulously checked. - Maria

About Our Host

Louisa DickinsLouisa is the co-founder of LMRE, which has rapidly become the market leading global PropTech recruitment platform and search consultancy with operations across North America, United Kingdom, Europe and Asia-Pacific. To promote the industry she is so passionate about, Louisa set up the Global podcast 'The Propcast' where she hosts and invites guests from the built environment space to join her in conversation about innovation.

About LMRELMRE is globally recognised for leading the way in Real Estate Tech & Innovation talent management. From the outset our vision was to become a global provider of the very best strategic talent to the most innovative organisations in PropTech, ConTech, Smart Buildings, ESG, Sustainability and Strategic Consulting. At LMRE we are fully committed at all times to exceed the expectations of our candidates and clients by providing the very best advice and by unlocking exclusive opportunities across our global network in the UK, Europe, North America and Asia-Pacific.

Sponsors

Launch Your Own Podcast A Podcast Company is the leading podcast production and strategic content company for brands, organisations, institutions, individuals, and entrepreneurs. Our team sets you up with the right strategy, equipment, training, guidance and content to ensure you sound amazing while speaking to your niche audience and networking with your perfect clients. Get in touch [email protected]

In the seventh episode of Season 11 of the Propcast, host Louisa Dickins is joined by Chris Oldham Senior Policy and Programme Manager at City of London Corporation and Hannah Vickers, Chief of Staff at Mace

Episode Highlights:

• What the 'Skills for Sustainable Skyline Taskforce' is and the work they are doing • Why it is unusual to have a Chief of Staff role in the construction industry • The trends that Hannah has seen within the sector over the last few years • The workforce engagement campaign that Chris is helping to run to ensure they have the right people in key roles • Why we need a more joined up approach to engage schools when looking to bring the future workforce in • The misconceptions on what a career in the build environment is like • Creating a clearer path both into the industry and being able to retrain within the industry • The importance of addressing the skills gap • The current innovation trends within the sector

Resources:

• LMRE Global Recruitment and Search Consultancy • LMRE YouTube Interviews • PropTech Salary Report, LMRE 2022 • Skills for Sustainable Skyline Taskforce • Construction Leadership Council • Women in Construction Tech • BIM Academy

Shout outs:

• Antonia Soler • Bola Abisogun

Key Takeaways:

• I began my career as a primary school teacher, which gave me a real interest in how we can best equip our young people for the careers of tomorrow. - Chris • We're encouraging the existing workforce for the full project lifecycle of sustainable buildings to upskill, to reskill with those green skills that we've identified in the research, and also to attract a large cohort of diverse new entrants from untapped pools of talent, particularly looking at women, more young people, people from ethnic minority backgrounds into the build environment. - Chris • One of the first trends that I came across was how much our productivity improved during covid. - Hannah • We are the second highest paying sector in the UK. So if you think about people having lifelong careers and retraining, you could potentially retrain and come into construction, but still be as well paid or better paid than you might be in another sector. - Hannah • I think how we tap into those pools of talent, we need to look at developing a more flexible approach to work as well, which in practice is probably offering hybrid work. - Chris • We're going to need people who can work to those requirements, who can understand what that means for the construction process. So if you like it's not a hard sell. It's a sort of requirement to be able to function as a business going forward. So that's why for us, it's so important. - Hannah

About Our Host

Louisa Dickins

Louisa is the co-founder of LMRE, which has rapidly become the market leading global PropTech recruitment platform and search consultancy with operations across North America, United Kingdom, Europe and Asia-Pacific.

To promote the industry she is so passionate about, Louisa set up the Global podcast 'The Propcast' where she hosts and invites guests from the built environment space to join her in conversation about innovation.

About LMRE

LMRE is globally recognised for leading the way in Real Estate Tech & Innovation talent management.

From the outset our vision was to become a global provider of the very best strategic talent to the most innovative organisations in PropTech, ConTech, Smart Buildings, ESG, Sustainability and Strategic Consulting.

At LMRE we are fully committed at all times to exceed the expectations of our candidates and clients by providing the very best advice and by unlocking exclusive opportunities across our global network in the UK, Europe, North America and Asia-Pacific.

Sponsors

Launch Your Own Podcast

A Podcast Company is the leading podcast production and strategic content company for brands, organisations, institutions, individuals, and entrepreneurs. Our team sets you up with the right strategy, equipment, training, guidance and content to ensure you sound amazing while speaking to your niche audience and networking with your perfect clients. Get in touch [email protected]

In the sixth episode of Season 11 of the Propcast, host Louisa Dickins is joined by Geoffrey Lewis, VP Product Management and Tiffany LaBruno, Product Director who both work at Procore Technologies.

Episode Highlights:

• How Geoffrey got involved in the PropTech sector from investment banking and a failed startup

• How the construction industry beginning to utilise new technologies sparked Tiffany's desire to work in the sector and further train people to continue this adoption

• The trends they have seen with the growth of innovation

• The challenges with the increased adoption of technology with the construction industry and how they are working to overcome them

• Why Procore merged with Honest Buildings and the impact it had on business

• The value Procore brings to its customers

• The main differences they have found between working with general contractors and property owners

• The partnerships they are forming with other software providers and what they are trying to achieve with this

• The investment Procore is making into the pre-construction space and how this ties in with ESG

Resources:

• LMRE Global Recruitment and Search Consultancy

• LMRE YouTube Interviews

• PropTech Salary Report, LMRE 2022

• Honest Buildings

Shout outs:

• Riggs Kubiak

• Vantage Data Centers

• UMT360

Key Takeaways:

• So we really have seen over the 20 - 30 years that I've been in this industry, an evolution to utilise technology within construction. - Tiffany

• If they get in there and it's too hard to use or too hard to configure, they're just gonna throw up their hands and go back to Excel. - Geoffrey

• There's so many things we're seeing and utilising at Procore in terms of AI and ML and really driving data insights to owners. They're starting to see the value of utilising it across the platform because then they can make decisions on future projects based on how the last project went. - Tiffany

• The one thing I would say for founders out there, you know companies are bought, not sold. Procore's got to really want to purchase Honest buildings. You can't just go to them and say, hey, we're for sale, that's not gonna be something that gets a deal done. - Geoffrey

• Historically the tools have been built for these general contractors who are doing all the work and very much need software. But the owners who are holding all the risk, I think haven't necessarily availed themselves with the right tools to be able to really effectively manage that risk. - Geoffrey

• What's interesting is a lot of our most used integrations are things that are used across every industry, not just construction. - Tiffany

About Our Host

Louisa Dickins

Louisa is the co-founder of LMRE, which has rapidly become the market leading global PropTech recruitment platform and search consultancy with operations across North America, United Kingdom, Europe and Asia-Pacific.

To promote the industry she is so passionate about, Louisa set up the Global podcast 'The Propcast' where she hosts and invites guests from the built environment space to join her in conversation about innovation.

About LMRE

LMRE is globally recognised for leading the way in Real Estate Tech & Innovation talent management.

From the outset our vision was to become a global provider of the very best strategic talent to the most innovative organisations in PropTech, ConTech, Smart Buildings, ESG, Sustainability and Strategic Consulting.

At LMRE we are fully committed at all times to exceed the expectations of our candidates and clients by providing the very best advice and by unlocking exclusive opportunities across our global network in the UK, Europe, North America and Asia-Pacific.

Sponsors

Launch Your Own Podcast

A Podcast Company is the leading podcast production and strategic content company for brands, organisations, institutions, individuals, and entrepreneurs. Our team sets you up with the right strategy, equipment, training, guidance and content to ensure you sound amazing while speaking to your niche audience and networking with your perfect clients. Get in touch [email protected]

In the fifth episode of Season 11 of the Propcast, host Louisa Dickins is joined by Jeevan Kalanithi, CEO at OpenSpace and Parker Mundt, Vice President of Platform at Suffolk Technologies.

Episode Highlights:

• OpenSpace's founding story

• How Jeevan and Parker initially met and started working together

• The concept behind Suffolk Technologies and the companies they invest into

• Open Space's two products and the difference between them

• How OpenSpace overcame the challenges when scaling their products

• The broad challenges Parker sees startups facing with new products

• How product trends change based on geographical locations

• Parker's investment predictions for 2023-24

• Current macro trends and what this will mean for those ready to innovate and be tech forward

• The firms involved in the Suffolk Boost Accelerator Program

• Companies that are creating innovative solutions for sustainability

• What steps Open Space are taking to reduce the 'eight waste' on construction sites

Resources:

• LMRE Global Recruitment and Search Consultancy

• LMRE YouTube Interviews

• PropTech Salary Report, LMRE 2022

• Sifteo

• 3D Robotics

• Autodesk

• Suffolk Boost Accelerator Program

• Qflow

• Carbon Titles

• Shepherd Insurance

Shout outs:

• Brittany Harris

• Jade Cohen

Key Takeaways:

• They started a company and sold it, and sure enough, they were working on a capture technology with these new 360 cameras. When I heard about it, I was like, you know, who could really use this? Building. - Jeevan Suffolk has trialled over 180 different tech solutions. We pride ourselves in being a very forward thinking general contractor who has a deep desire to innovate within the construction space. - Parker

• We're building more and more stuff upon that. It all works because we have a simple capture product and I think we've captured something like 12 billion square feet, some big number. So it's a lot of data that allows us to make the system smarter and more useful for our customers. - Jeevan

• I think today we see a lot of companies that come in and maybe are naive or maybe just a bit out of touch with what some of the tech solutions in construction in particular would charge. And that can be a showstopper immediately, because the folks that you're selling to are still very focused on price and schedule, right? Those are the two main drivers in the construction industry. - Parker

• For us we're really focused on making sure that the founders feel comfortable at the valuation that they're at and not necessarily pumping it up just for the sake of having a larger valuation. - Parker

• We're at an innovate or die kind of portion of the life cycle right now where folks who are tech forward and are looking to see how they can do things better, faster, cheaper, safer, you know, those folks will emerge as the industry leaders, as a general contractor. - Parker

• We really prioritise reliability and speed and efficiency with our technology and we hope that allows our builder customers to do the same. - Jeevan

About Our Host

Louisa Dickins

Louisa is the co-founder of LMRE, which has rapidly become the market leading global PropTech recruitment platform and search consultancy with operations across North America, United Kingdom, Europe and Asia-Pacific.

To promote the industry she is so passionate about, Louisa set up the Global podcast 'The Propcast' where she hosts and invites guests from the built environment space to join her in conversation about innovation.

About LMRE

LMRE is globally recognised for leading the way in Real Estate Tech & Innovation talent management.

From the outset our vision was to become a global provider of the very best strategic talent to the most innovative organisations in PropTech, ConTech, Smart Buildings, ESG, Sustainability and Strategic Consulting.

At LMRE we are fully committed at all times to exceed the expectations of our candidates and clients by providing the very best advice and by unlocking exclusive opportunities across our global network in the UK, Europe, North America and Asia-Pacific.

Sponsors

Launch Your Own Podcast

A Podcast Company is the leading podcast production and strategic content company for brands, organisations, institutions, individuals, and entrepreneurs. Our team sets you up with the right strategy, equipment, training, guidance and content to ensure you sound amazing while speaking to your niche audience and networking with your perfect clients. Get in touch [email protected]

In the fourth episode of Season 11 of the Propcast, host Louisa Dickins is joined by Antonia Soler, Director of Hilti Technology Office at Hilti and Vivin Hegde, GB and Founding Partner at Zacua Ventures, an early stage global VC specialised in investing in the Built Environment sector.

Episode Highlights:

• How Antonia and Vivin both met whilst working at Hilti

• The Women in Construction Tech Group that Antonia has co-founded

• The events and chapters WCT are running

• How Zacua Ventures started and where the idea came from

• Vivin's advice to founders looking to scale towards an exit

• The evolution Vivin believes early startups need to go through in order to be successful

• The challenges around digitising construction and how Antonia suggests these are addressed

• The importance of understanding what it's actually like to work in construction when trying to build a solution

• Where Antonia and Vivin expect to see investment being made in 2023

• The difference in investments between early stage and late stage

• The reasons why interest in Series B is quieter in terms of investment

• How construction technologies are helping with sustainability

• The technologies being developed to address prefabrication and modular construction

Resources:

• LMRE Global Recruitment and Search Consultancy

• LMRE YouTube Interviews

• PropTech Salary Report, LMRE 2022

• WCT

• McKinsey

• Fieldwire

• Dusty Robotics

• Built World

• Trimble

• Ecoworks

• Carbon Title

• Urban Machine

• Kit Switch

Shout outs:

• Gregg Wallace

• Mauricio Tessi Weiss

• Juan Nieto

• Julieta Moradei

Key Takeaways:

• And this is where the seeds of Zacua Ventures were sewn, right? We had built a network, we'd seen how hard corporate innovation is for a lot of corporates, and we are also invested in funds. - Vivin

• So a startup needs to be mindful of the exit options that they have. They shouldn't be driven by the exit itself. - Vivin

• I find that founders that spend a lot of time with customers in the field and in the office come up with the best solutions. Because they are observing workflows, testing solutions on the job site and otherwise learning how their solution can best serve their customers. - Antonia

• So women in construction tech, it's dedicated to creating opportunities and developing relationships for women driving innovation in the construction industry. We envision a construction industry where women are well networked, support each other, efforts to improve and advance in the space and otherwise. - Antonia

• We did a survey of 80 contact focused VCs and corporate VCs a couple of weeks back. Just a little bit of the industry, I would say, and it's positive. We do see more investment happening in this space. Pretty much 70% of the VCs we spoke to said they're going to increase their investment rather than decrease in this space. - Vivin

• I think everybody has a good view of how the market could look in the next 6, 12, 18 months. Even if it's not rosy, it's still more predictable than it was five months back. And therefore the deal flow should pick up slowly and the deal making should also pick up accordingly. - Vivin

About Our Host

Louisa Dickins

Louisa is the co-founder of LMRE, which has rapidly become the market leading global PropTech recruitment platform and search consultancy with operations across North America, United Kingdom, Europe and Asia-Pacific.

To promote the industry she is so passionate about, Louisa set up the Global podcast 'The Propcast' where she hosts and invites guests from the built environment space to join her in conversation about innovation.

About LMRE

LMRE is globally recognised for leading the way in Real Estate Tech & Innovation talent management.

From the outset our vision was to become a global provider of the very best strategic talent to the most innovative organisations in PropTech, ConTech, Smart Buildings, ESG, Sustainability and Strategic Consulting.

At LMRE we are fully committed at all times to exceed the expectations of our candidates and clients by providing the very best advice and by unlocking exclusive opportunities across our global network in the UK, Europe, North America and Asia-Pacific.

Sponsors

Launch Your Own Podcast

A Podcast Company is the leading podcast production and strategic content company for brands, organisations, institutions, individuals, and entrepreneurs. Our team sets you up with the right strategy, equipment, training, guidance and content to ensure you sound amazing while speaking to your niche audience and networking with your perfect clients. Get in touch [email protected]

In the third episode of Season 11 of the Propcast, host Louisa Dickins is joined by Gregg Wallace, Partner at Building Ventures, who invest in companies reshaping the way we design, build, operate and experience our built environment and Matt Wegworth, Vice President of Dawson Ventures at McKinstry, whose goal is to advance early-stage technologies and offerings and support innovative startups.

Episode Highlights:

• How Gregg as part of the Hilti Group invested in Building Ventures first funding round

• How they have now launched Fund 2 and the different strategic partners this will bring onboard

• The growth they have seen in the market and what it means for their organisation

• The synergies between Building Ventures and McKinstry and why they started working together as strategic partners

• The tagline that McKinstry work by and how that benefits their clients

• Why Dawson Ventures was created

• The stage and ticket size that both companies invest in and trends they follow

• The different areas of growth they are seeing, despite the economic situation

• The importance of having a go to market plan in the construction and proptech space

• Gregg and Matt's ideas for generating more innovation and adoption within the industry

• Their view on the best ways to attract new talent into construction technologies

• The battle the industry has between efficiencies and innovation

Resources:

• LMRE Global Recruitment and Search Consultancy

• LMRE YouTube Interviews

• PropTech Salary Report, LMRE 2022

• ALICE Technologies

• ICON

• A/O PropTech Report

• Hilti Group

• Assemble System

• Autodesk

• Financial Times

• ENR 400

• TurboTax

• BuiltWorlds Conference

Shout outs:

• Mayra Soto

• Vivin Hegde

Key Takeaways:

• We appreciated as Hilti the ecosystem that Building Ventures brought, so we made an investment in mid 2018, alongside a whole number of strategic investors as part of Building Ventures first fund, which launched in 2018 as $53 million and placed 16 startup portfolio companies. - Gregg

• That's what we also represent as Building Ventures, looking at how do we create a fundamentally better built world? Not the transaction side of buying and selling and dividing buildings into crypto coins, but really creating a fundamentally better built world, connecting the historically disparate phases of the building lifecycle. - Gregg

• What that does for us here and certainly for our clients is it brings a suite of thinking and offering to drive that desire to how do we remove the waste and climate harm out of the environment through innovation, so that it has 60 years of operation. - Matt

• We believe by keeping really close to the industry, we can be very supportive. At the early seed stage, getting to know founders, making introductions, helping them think through strategically the problems. - Gregg

• This is not a one-time transaction. This is the start of a five to 10 year relationship through all of its ups and downs that we want to support our portfolio company. - Gregg

• So do we see a slowdown? Not at all. Are we continuing to invest in our own startups? Absolutely. - Matt

About Our Host

Louisa Dickins

Louisa is the co-founder of LMRE, which has rapidly become the market leading global PropTech recruitment platform and search consultancy with operations across North America, United Kingdom, Europe and Asia-Pacific.

To promote the industry she is so passionate about, Louisa set up the Global podcast 'The Propcast' where she hosts and invites guests from the built environment space to join her in conversation about innovation.

About LMRE

LMRE is globally recognised for leading the way in Real Estate Tech & Innovation talent management.

From the outset our vision was to become a global provider of the very best strategic talent to the most innovative organisations in PropTech, ConTech, Smart Buildings, ESG, Sustainability and Strategic Consulting.

At LMRE we are fully committed at all times to exceed the expectations of our candidates and clients by providing the very best advice and by unlocking exclusive opportunities across our global network in the UK, Europe, North America and Asia-Pacific.

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Launch Your Own Podcast

A Podcast Company is the leading podcast production and strategic content company for brands, organisations, institutions, individuals, and entrepreneurs. Our team sets you up with the right strategy, equipment, training, guidance and content to ensure you sound amazing while speaking to your niche audience and networking with your perfect clients. Get in touch [email protected]

In the second episode of Season 11 of the Propcast, host Louisa Dickins is joined by René Morkos, the Founder and CEO of ALICE Technologies, the world's first construction optioneering platform and Shane Richardson, President of Lagrange, a management consulting firm providing project controls and program management services.

Episode Highlights:

• The founding story behind ALICE Technologies and the problems it was designed to solve

• The difference between the two products, 'Alice Pre-Construction' and 'Alice Manage' and their capabilities

• How Rene and Shane met and how they started working together

• How to use data to make better informed decisions

• The hesitancies the construction industry have around technology

• The issues they face and potential missed opportunities if they are brought in part way through a project, rather than the beginning

• Early innovators in the space and their impact on implementation and integration

• The biggest changes they have seen within the industry and what they predict over the next 20 years

• The importance of finding the right tool when trying to digitalise data to increase productivity

• Where they believe the skill gaps currently are in construction tech

• ALICE's sustainability pledge

Resources:

• LMRE Global Recruitment and Search Consultancy

• LMRE YouTube Interviews

• PropTech Salary Report, LMRE 2022

• Bechtel

• Katerra

• Canadian Nuclear Labs

• Skanska

• Stanford University

Key Takeaways:

• What resources do you need to build to perform those tasks? That's the kind of information you give the system, and then the system generates 6 million different ways of building the project for you. - Rene

• I noticed that was one of the things that wasn't being leveraged; how can we use this data to make better informed decisions? -Shane

• A lot of times you're already 20 plus percent complete with a project, and there's a certain point where you can always minimise risk, minimise costs on a project, but as you progress on a project, the further you progress, you lose out on that opportunity. - Shane

• What's happening in construction today is what happened to manufacturing in the seventies and eighties. It's really becoming digitised. It's becoming integrated across the supply chain. - Rene

• I think that's one of the reasons why construction projects were plagued with delays, for decades and decades. It's because how do we fix that problem of being able to translate accurate data in its schedule, maintain it, and so ALICE takes care of that. - Shane

• The way that I perceive it is that one of the major skill gaps is that construction is getting converted into algorithmic terms. And so that's something that's relatively new. - Rene

• McKinsey article: over the last 20 years the industry as a whole has only only increased 1% in productivity. And the construction spending is about 13% of the world's GDP. And so you think about that, it's over 1.3 trillion in opportunity to try to leverage. - Shane

About Our Host

Louisa Dickins

Louisa is the co-founder of LMRE, which has rapidly become the market leading global PropTech recruitment platform and search consultancy with operations across North America, United Kingdom, Europe and Asia-Pacific.

To promote the industry she is so passionate about, Louisa set up the Global podcast 'The Propcast' where she hosts and invites guests from the built environment space to join her in conversation about innovation.

About LMRE

LMRE is globally recognised for leading the way in Real Estate Tech & Innovation talent management.

From the outset our vision was to become a global provider of the very best strategic talent to the most innovative organisations in PropTech, ConTech, Smart Buildings, ESG, Sustainability and Strategic Consulting.

At LMRE we are fully committed at all times to exceed the expectations of our candidates and clients by providing the very best advice and by unlocking exclusive opportunities across our global network in the UK, Europe, North America and Asia-Pacific.

Sponsors

Launch Your Own Podcast

A Podcast Company is the leading podcast production and strategic content company for brands, organisations, institutions, individuals, and entrepreneurs. Our team sets you up with the right strategy, equipment, training, guidance and content to ensure you sound amazing while speaking to your niche audience and networking with your perfect clients. Get in touch [email protected]

In the first episode of Season 11 of the Propcast, host Louisa Dickins is joined by Ibrahim Imam, and Sander Van de Rijdt, joint Co-Founders and Group CEO's of PlanRadar.

PlanRadar is a digital platform for construction documentation, task management and communication. It is currently used in over 65 markets and has 120,000 construction professionals as users.

Ibrahim and Sander met at University and prior to PlanRadar founded other technology businesses together.

Episode Highlights:

• Why they launched PlanRadar and the industry issues they were trying to solve

• Why they believe the construction industry is so under digitalised

• What helped them to achieve such rapid growth

• The decision making process behind why they move into certain regions

• How word of mouth is one of their most powerful business drivers

• How customer feedback dictates the development of the product

• Misunderstandings that can arise from conventional paper and pen usage

• Overcoming people's hesitations with new technology

• Their aim to make the construction industry more ESG compliant

• The need for diversification within the industry to continue to drive growth and innovation

• Their future aspirations for PlanRadar

Resources:

• LMRE Global Recruitment and Search Consultancy

• LMRE YouTube Interviews

• PropTech Salary Report, LMRE 2022

Shout Outs:

• Constantin Kock

• Domagoj Dolinsek

• Clemens Hammerl

Key Takeaways:

• We decided to get on that mission to try to improve the lives of all the people out there on the construction sites and in the real estate projects. - Sander

• We have around 20,000 customers, which is a lot. But when you realise that there are around 2.5 million potential customers just in Europe, then it's nothing. - Sander

• But what PlanRadar has figured out throughout the last few years is to make the customisation level that every organisation requires, to really meet their own processes. - Ibrahim

• We hired last quarter, I think 134 new people. We plan to hire this quarter, 82 new people. So we're still growing. - Sander

• PlanRadar is a tool that everybody can now download from the App store or the Play store and just instantly use it and start adding value to their corporations. - Ibrahim

• The main lesson is if you want to build a successful company, it's all about the people that you hire. Because a good team can deliver good results. Simple as that. - Ibrahim

About Our Host

Louisa Dickins

Louisa is the co-founder of LMRE, which has rapidly become the market leading global PropTech recruitment platform and search consultancy with operations across North America, United Kingdom, Europe and Asia-Pacific.

To promote the industry she is so passionate about, Louisa set up the Global podcast 'The Propcast' where she hosts and invites guests from the built environment space to join her in conversation about innovation.

About LMRE

LMRE is globally recognised for leading the way in Real Estate Tech & Innovation talent management.

From the outset our vision was to become a global provider of the very best strategic talent to the most innovative organisations in PropTech, ConTech, Smart Buildings, ESG, Sustainability and Strategic Consulting.

At LMRE we are fully committed at all times to exceed the expectations of our candidates and clients by providing the very best advice and by unlocking exclusive opportunities across our global network in the UK, Europe, North America and Asia-Pacific.

Sponsors

Launch Your Own Podcast

A Podcast Company is the leading podcast production and strategic content company for brands, organisations, institutions, individuals, and entrepreneurs. Our team sets you up with the right strategy, equipment, training, guidance and content to ensure you sound amazing while speaking to your niche audience and networking with your perfect clients. Get in touch [email protected]