THE construction industry is among the booming industries and major economic drivers in the country. Yet, not much has been said about one reality – most contractors have been losing a lot of money in their construction projects.
Eve-on-Top, a Tagum City-based startup, was inspired to look deep into this problem of profit losses in the construction projects and created a solution – AIMHI, a profit management platform powered by artificial intelligence (AI).
“The construction and infrastructure industries have seen only one percent increase in productivity in the past 20 years. Profit margins of contractors continued to drop and might potentially endanger the construction workers’ job,” AIMHI Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Cherryanne Lee Angoy said.
She inferred that among the biggest challenges for contractors are finishing projects according to technical specification and on time while still hitting the desired profit margin. This has become more difficult to do due to manpower volatility, unpredictable weather conditions, supply and shortage in materials, machinery breakdown, reactive cost management during construction period, poor manpower productivity and poor material inventory management, making construction decision management more complex.
She said AIMHI is profit management software that aims to solve these long-standing problems in construction projects which caused delay in project completion, over budgeting, and falling below profit margin. By tackling these problems with AIMHI, contractors are expected to gain a five to 10 percent increase in profit.
AIMHI is designed to proactively inform stakeholders about soaring costs and probable liabilities, allowing them to bring down the risks, predict target profit accurately at the earlier stages of the project and provide them the insights required to make better decisions and complete projects profitably.
Another contributing factor of these problems is the industry’s slow adoption to innovation compared to other industries. Most subcontractors and some contractors still rely on spreadsheets in managing their construction projects. Even though AI has the potential to increase the construction industry’s profit by 71 percent by 2035 according to Accenture, it is still the least digitized industry.
“There have been a lot of innovations for the construction industry but they focused more on design and planning. There is not much technology developed for the construction implementation stage,” Angoy said.
AIMHI Co-Founder Monica Llamas-Turrecha revealed that AIMHI uses AI technology to go beyond just encoding data or scheduling tasks. The AI analyzes real time and historical data in the construction life cycle to learn project inefficiencies, manpower productivity footprint and overall cost behavior. Its excellent cost management feature will ensure that every construction project will be accomplished without delay and not going over-budget.
She said users can also upload project estimates, track actual spending versus budget, track manpower and equipment allocation, project schedule, proactive suggested tasks, overall dashboard for progress report, timeline, overall budget and project ranking.
Aside from that, the platform is easy to use and provides clear information because it uses construction management principles and reliable workflows.
Tagumenya innovator Angoy who owns a construction firm has 16 years of experience in the US tech industry. Turrecha, on the other hand, is a Dabawenya with more than five years of experience in Artificial Intelligence (AI) Design and more than 10 years of experience in the information technology (IT) industry in Australia. Both women shared a passion for innovation, IT, and construction management that led them to create AIMHI.
With her extensive knowledge and exposure to AI development, system analysis & design, digital architecture and UX, Turrecha served as the chief technical officer of Eve-on-Top and responsible for the capabilities of AIMHI in realizing Angoy’s vision.
Along with Angoy and Turrecha’s journey, they realized the importance of Intellectual Property (IP) and were blessed enough to have been joined by Atty. Ma. Janice Tejano as part of its Board of Director. Atty. Tejano was born and raised in Davao Region. She is an IP attorney and AIMHI’s Data Privacy Officer who shares the same passion as the two other women on nurturing and coaching young teams to reach their potential in the startup industry.
These women’s passion towards innovation led them to a realization that there is a huge opportunity to bring AI in the construction industry and at the same time, a big opportunity to empower the wives of the marginalized construction workers.
With AIMHI, Eve on Top eyes to be the first local company to introduce AI and tech innovation in the construction industry in Mindanao and the Philippines.
AIMHI is supported and incubated under the Innovative Startup Knowledge Optimizer (ISKO) Program of UPGRADE, the technology business incubator (TBI) of the University of the Philippines (UP). SPONSORED CONTENT