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Cambridge Enterprise has joined in a £2.2 million seed round for BKwai, a construction data company that helps engineers develop smarter, more sustainable infrastructure. The round was led by Octopus Ventures, one of Europe’s largest early-stage investors, with participation from Deeptech Labs.
In many countries aging infrastructure is performing beyond its design life and intended capacity. In the UK, construction is an industry that has 2-8% profit margins and is going through a period of rapid digitization. This shift has been given an initial push by Government regulation, such as the mandate for BIM Level 2, and accelerated by requirements imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic.
In order to get more out of existing assets with minimal resources, the construction industry needs to better understand how they are performing. Assessing the condition of assets can be difficult, however. There are logistical challenges—visually inspecting remote and hard to access assets can be expensive and hazardous. Even in new construction, it is important to ensure safe environments and understand the short- and long-term environmental impact of a site.
Recently COVID-19 has compounded these challenges by limiting the number of people allowed onsite. In the longer term, the industry is under pressures associated with the climate crisis and extreme weather events, which add strain to the condition and structural health of assets, making assessing their condition increasingly important.
The BKwai software platform brings together data from multiple sources—onsite sensors, environmental data, and remote satellite data—providing a comprehensive view of an asset as well as its surrounding environment. Bkwai applies advanced data techniques to help engineers sift through huge volumes of data to find patterns, identify early warning signs, and predict what could happen. The platform puts this insight into the site engineer’s hands quickly and in real time, enabling construction companies and asset owners to make more timely, cost-effective, and safe decisions.
Although only founded in 2019, BKwai is already used by some of the biggest names in UK construction and on existing major infrastructure assets. Current customers include Thames Tideway, Laing O’Rourke, Kier, WSP, and Highways England.
BKwai’s founder, Sakthy Selvakumaran, has over a decade of international experience in design, construction, and maintenance of infrastructure assets. She combines this with a PhD and academic research in satellite monitoring and data analysis methods in the University of Cambridge Department of Engineering. The company is also supported by Geovation, part of Ordnance Survey, UK.
Bkwai is growing rapidly and is taking on investment to scale operations and build out its roadmap.
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