DISRUPTOR COMPLIANCE PLATFORM IN DEVELOPMENT

BuildFIT, located at https://www.buildfit.net buildfit.net, is the brainchild of Founder and Director Peter Mulherin, a construction industry specialist committed to ensuring better environmental, safety and quality outcomes in the building sector. He describes the platform as “a lifecycle network for manufactured construction products.”

“BuildFIT is designed to leverage third party verification to authenticate claims made by manufacturers, by breaking down buildings into assemblies of manufactured parts,” Mulherin told Built Offsite, adding that this had relevance for the offsite construction sector. “The more that is fabricated offsite, the more we have to be sure of compliance, quality and dimensional control.”

“The BuildFIT mechanism, which uses a proprietary sequential data-cleansing process, effectively does due diligence on any uploaded product.”

Mulherin said building component manufacturers would be drawn to utilise the platform by its inbuilt credentials; it won’t be used for advertising, but instead will likely evolve organically into a “go-to” authority for product authentication.

“Up to 50 per cent of products in some sectors of the construction industry are non-compliant,” said Mulherin. “Copycat products look exactly the same and often it’s only once the warranty has run out, that problems emerge.”

“BuildFIT will empower architects, builders, planners, policy specialists and government procurement players to carry out due diligence on sourced products and control the chain of responsibility.”

He described BuildFIT’s business model as “profit for purpose”, with a business-to-business-to-consumer (B2B2C) bias. “Suppliers can be assured they are competing on a level playing field with other ethically led suppliers. Consumers will have peace of mind knowing that the inherent risk in their new build or renovation will be minimised. I see a future in which house buyers expect a BuildFIT ‘tick of approval’ on the Section 32 they receive from vendors.”

“Ultimately BuildFIT will support Australian made products if they are of a sufficiently high quality; but we live in a globalised world; any global product can be authenticated by BuildFIT, if it complies with Australian standards.”

Mass market, price-driven appeal was not the immediate aim of the project, he said. “You’ve got to start somewhere. If one per cent of people involved in the construction supply chain does the right thing, that’s one per cent market adoption across the construction, manufacturing and building sectors of a $400 billion industry.”

“Organisations that have informed our design or contributed to date include ProductWise, RMIT University, Mersys, Egans, Data61 and others contributing cash and in-kind support, along with early investors and stakeholders,” Mulherin said. ■

BuiltFIT Founder and Director, Peter Mulberin