Ireland-based building materials giant Kingspan invests US$10m in BIM technology supplier Invicara.
Some 18 months ago, in August 2016, I wrote about BIM Assure, a cloud-based building information model checking service developed by the US-based Invicara. At the time this startup had offices in Ann Arbor in Michigan, plus India and Singapore, but it now also has offices in the British Isles – an Ireland base in Dublin and a UK base in Egham, Surrey. The latter is presumably where Andy Hamer, formerly CEO of the Surrey-based Codebook* and now director of customer success at Invicara, hangs out – I bumped into Andy at a BIM event in southeast London last week and, following recent news of mergers and acquisitions, he hinted an announcement might be imminent….
Today I learned that Invicara has received a US$10m investment (for a minority stake) from the Ireland-based building materials group Kingspan, well-known (in the UK at least) for its insulation products, access floors, environmental, solar and other M&E products and systems. According to Kingspan’s news release:
With this investment, Kingspan has made a definitive commitment to the development of a solution for digitalisation of the construction industry.
Invicara has developed solutions that integrate with Building Information Modelling (BIM) technology. BIM provides detailed digital representations of buildings, allowing time and cost saving collaboration between partners on construction projects such as architects, engineers, contractors, and owners.
Working with Kingspan, Invicara will use its cloud-based platform to build a new solution that uses design and construction data to create new digital workflows that transform the customer experience.
Kingspan’s Louise Foody (director of digital and brand) and Mike Stenson (head of innovation) will join the Invicara board. Foody says:
For manufacturers of building systems and solutions, digitalisation enabled by technologies like BIM is a game changer. At Kingspan, we aim to leverage digital technologies to further align our offerings with our customer’s needs and more efficiently collaborate with owners, designers, and contractors at every stage of the building lifecycle.
BIM Assure, the first product built on the Invicara platform, provides a cloud-based data management solution that helps owners and their design and construction partners create a data-rich ‘digital twin’ of a building. The product is currently used on projects in North America, Ireland, the UK, Australia, and Singapore. Invicara says it is planning significant new capabilities for release in 2018, and will extend its reach thanks to Kingspan’s global presence in key market segments such as airports, healthcare, data centres, and retail (among others).
Anand Mecheri, CEO and Founder of Invicara says:
Our relationship with Kingspan opens a new market opportunity for Invicara – providing us with deep context to build powerful solutions on the Invicara platform, enabling product manufacturers to participate in the digitalisation of construction. From the start, Invicara’s vision has been to improve the value derived from BIM for the entire ecosystem of the built environment – providing an efficient flow of reliable data for a wide range of workflows.
[* Disclosure: Codebook is a past customer of pwcom.co.uk Ltd. Another former Codebook employee, Sam Oliver, joined Invicara as application services consultant in late 2017.]
