A Hull firm has secured £250,000 in funding to bring its smart building software to market.
Ian Yeo and Scott Pilgrim launched Bimsense four years ago after becoming frustrated by the traditional approach to building design, construction and management.
The funding from the Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund (NPIF) – Mercia Equity Finance will allow Bimsense, which is based at Hull’s Centre for Digital Innovation (C4DI) tech hub, to commercialise its operations and maintenance software, called Operance, and create 10 new jobs over the next two years.
Bimsense specialises in building information modelling (BIM), which allows construction projects to be created digitally before they are built to address issues normally identified on site or after completion. This helps save time and money, improve quality and reduce potential safety risks.
BIM is widely accepted as the best way to achieve the government’s aim of reducing construction and operating costs by a third, and is in line with the Grenfell Tower report’s recommendation to create a digital lifecycle record.
Chief executive Ian Yeo said: “We’re delighted and excited to secure this investment to deliver our long-term ambition of digitising and ‘humanising’ building information to help create safer, healthier places for people to live, work and spend their leisure time.
“We know the devastating effects that poor, mismanaged information and ill-informed decisions can have on people’s lives. This funding helps us to tackle these issues, by enabling project teams to develop better quality information for end-users to access in a really easy, user-friendly way.”
Maurice Disai, Investment Associate at Mercia, said Operance could have a “huge impact in terms of reducing costs and improving safety and quality of life for building users”.
