Henry McDonald interviews Gavin Tonnet of utecture about city-changing urban renewal projects and transformational virtual pre-construction technology.
Gavin is a recognised expert and leader in the property space having created and led businesses for Mirvac, Leighton, Stockland and Japanese giant, Sekisui House. He was responsible for many significant city-changing urban renewal projects. He has been involved and led over USD$20b of major renewal. Some of those that really changed and shaped city fabric and culture include:
He’s now turned his attention to utecture which is carving out a new category in building technology that uses digitisation, visualisation and data to lower costs for builders and consumers and drive climate impact.
After being introduced to the team behind the utecture technology, Gavin spent the better part of the year travelling around the world trying to poke holes in it.
Instead, he realised that there were no holes to poke and he joined the team because he believed it is the next big thing with ramifications not only for the commercial health of the building industry, the well-being of the house-buying public, but also our shared environmental future.
utecture is carving out a new construction technology category called Virtual Pre-Construction. Virtual Pre-Construction requires digital twinning technology to deliver on four distinct pillars: Design, Real-time Pricing; Visualisation and Management.
Existing construction design platforms share some of utecture’s features superficially, but compared to utecture they are basically only cosmetic tools. They use CAD design window-dressing, but fail to address the significant pain points that have held back the construction industry for years.
Pete talks to Steve Randall about tools and how they have evolved since his early days working in construction. As always, Pete injects plenty of knowledge with his unique sense of humour.