24.1.22
Our Q&A series is an opportunity for our Nordic team, headed by Sanna Walfridsson to discuss all things PropTech, Start-ups, and Career with different founders from across the region. Each week we will ask PropTech innovators burning questions and quiz them about their product, we hope you find it insightful and enjoy getting to know the founders as much as we have.
This week we have been in touch with Ross Griffin, Founder at KOSMOS & The FIFTH DIMENSION.
KOSMOS is a Cost Management consultancy with offices in Denmark & Ireland. Their combination of professionals and specialists sum up a large experience from both the public and private sector. Their keen focus on the commercial delivery allows them to assist clients with strategising their approach. Without a commercial focus successful delivery is impossible, KOSMOS offer their clients this focus and ultimate success.
The FIFTH DIMENSION is at the core of your project’s economic health, where all commercial activity is tracked, shared between stakeholders, and stored in order to close the Life Cycle of your projects economy.
When you compare Denmark to other countries like Ireland for example I believe Denmark has a natural tendency to move towards tech. That means that the take up and adoption is a lot quicker than other countries. Right now there is a lot of excitement around the Proptech market in Denmark and a big drive towards change in some key areas, like sustainability. And the ideas and products being developed are really exciting to see. Early adaption is key to this success and there is a big opportunity to export this globally.
One of the biggest challenges for us in the industry is that there is no real professionalism around cost management in a lot of the Nordic countries, including Denmark. Comparing my education as a Quantity Surveyor (Cost Manager) from UK/Ireland there is nothing comparable in any of the Nordic countries. This is a paradox for us as in one way it is a barrier but at the exact same time it is an opportunity, because the industry in Denmark and across the Nordic countries is extremely large and we have an opportunity to offer something different that will protect project budgets, and project success.
I dont ever believe that talent is an issue as a start up. We operate on a global playing field and we hire with that same principle in mind. The market has changed, we don’t need people to be sitting in the same room, office, building, city or even continent anymore so look for talent in that way also. We are however limited with the global supply of Cost Management professionals into our industry because there are only a few countries in the world that supply the global market with these types of professionals and that is a hinderance.
Our vision for The Fifth Dimension is to be a global player in construction cost data & analytics. Right now we are preparing the platform for its basic function, cost recording, reporting and analysis. The next stage will be to grow the data set in the data base and apply AI & Machine Learning to predict project cost, risk, time and even potential success. Because the process of cost calculation and carbon calculation are the same we are also developing the platform to record, report and analysis the carbon strategy for the project. You will notice I didn’t say estimate, there are plenty of software available on the market for cost estimating and companies trying to delivery carbon estimate software also, we don’t estimate, we collect, report and analysis.
The future is unknown, but one thing is for sure the construction & property industries have changed for ever. Industry 4.0 is going to absolutely blow our traditional ways of working, thinking and collaborating away. We will not recognise our industry in 50 years. Then again we probably won’t be around in 50 years to see it either.
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