Digital Platform Development to Promote Construction Sustainability

Business challenge

Construction technology is evolving at a record pace and is driving the construction industry to become safer, more resource-efficient, and more eco-friendly. Our client plays a significant role in this process as a frontrunner in revolutionizing the construction domain and promoting sustainable building solutions. The company has partnered with Intellias to create a unified platform to accelerate digital transformation in the construction industry and unite visionary builders in a single space.

As our client is dedicated to sustainable and ecologically friendly construction, they are committed to continuously improving building practices and sharing their forward-thinking ideas within a network of professionals. The digital platform we’re developing is a unique resource-, technology-, and knowledge-sharing portal that opens new horizons in the construction sector. The platform seeks to empower our client’s peers and partners with modern concepts, showcase innovative projects, provide client matchmaking, and inspire builders to build for the future. We drew on the expertise of Intellias specialists in digital platform development to help our client incorporate their know-how into a common knowledge base.

Solution delivered

To meet our client’s goal of equipping construction industry facilitators with sustainable building practices, we started to develop a digital platform from scratch. The platform is a comprehensive content portal where experts can publish industry-related articles and educational materials, take courses, attract new clients, meet contractors or suppliers, promote eco-friendly technology, and socialize by interacting and discussing topics.

We focused our digital platform engineering on users’ ever-evolving needs, their vision, and specific requirements for the construction practices of the future. Our expert team provides full-scale technology expertise, including in digital solution architectures, comprehensive application development, quality assurance, and user experience design.

Solution architecture and design

Our hands-on experience and clients’ success stories prove that any project with the right start has every chance to succeed. That’s why we initiated digital platform development with a discovery phase.

Intellias architects and designers cooperated in collecting and processing essential data — business requirements, project objectives, and user needs. Based on accumulated solution discovery knowledge, we elicited the platform architecture and preliminary design. The discovery phase helped us ensure we were on the same page with our client and understood their aspirations.

In addressing fundamental functional and non-functional needs, we implemented design-driven development practices. Since our platform is all about the construction community, it should provide top-notch experiences. The design-led perspective allowed us to create usable prototypes and wireframes of a web portal that is accessible on multiple devices and a native application.

Intellias offered initiative, creativity, and all competencies required for the project. Together with a progressive technology solution and organized architecture, our approach managed to speed up the development cycle.

Web application development

Following the discovery phase, we took our first steps in developing a unified architecture that would allow us to incorporate technology solutions.

First, Intellias created a minimum viable product (MVP) to ensure our platform becomes an efficient, feature-packed portal that satisfies users’ needs. Having started with web application development, we continued with developing various laptop, mobile, and tablet extensions. The web application allows users to register in the portal, browse content, explore projects of other users and companies, and check users’ and companies’ profiles with services, products, and contact information.

At the same time, we developed a service infrastructure from scratch on Azure. Our team of mature DevOps, frontend, and backend engineers worked together to amplify platform capabilities. We used only the latest progressive technologies to make the solution scale on demand and handle peak loads when the number of portal users increases. Our serverless architecture decreases overhead and optimizes resources, resulting in reduced costs.

Business outcome

Our client aims at digitalizing the construction industry and promoting greener building practices. Intellias advances their mission through the development of an engagement platform that unites forward thinkers across the globe in one professional network.

During our successful two-year partnership, our client has won the World Summit Award. The platform we’re developing was recognized for its innovation and pioneering approach to building traditions. Another prominent achievement of the company has been becoming part of the WSA Congress, an international knowledge-sharing and networking event on the use of digital technology to achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

Together with our client, Intellias engineers have built flexible, fully automated infrastructure that allows environment deployment in one click. Our cooperation continues to unfold, and a web application is just the first milestone in our long-term relationship. Right now, we’re working on developing a native application and ensuring offline portal accessibility. The digital platform will also become an educational hub with expert courses to support the community and nurture construction professionals.

Intellias will apply its vast artificial intelligence and big data expertise to better understand the needs of the platform’s end users and to offer personalized content. Behavioral and predictive analytics will allow our client to define growth opportunities and smartly invest resources.

The innovative platform will also help our client enter new markets, expanding from Europe to the Americas, Australia, and Asia. We’re building a comprehensive community ecosystem that is rapidly scaling and globalizing. Our collaboration has already evolved into a strategic partnership that drives the digital transformation of the construction industry and is taking sustainable building and the ConTech industry to the next level.