Understanding the Challenge

“That’s not quite how it happened.”

It’s a phrase you hear on construction projects when two versions of the same event don’t quite match, a delivery that was recorded but never arrived, a milestone marked complete but left unfinished, a materials list updated without explanation. It’s rarely about blame. More often, it’s a side effect of complexity, dozens of contractors, shifting schedules, layered contracts, and systems that struggle to keep up with the pace of physical work.

In 2020, a Dutch startup we’ll call V-Informatica partnered with Circular Clarity, a consultancy focused on advancing the Circular Economy, to explore ways that smarter coordination and better accountability could drive real sustainability outcomes in construction in the Netherlands. Our team was brought in to help design the products and the platform on which they exist.

The idea wasn’t just to digitize paperwork or automate tasks. It was to address why construction projects so often fall into disputes, delays, and inefficiencies, and to do so in a way that fit the industry’s real-world constraints.

We began by mapping four persistent, intertwined challenges:

• System vs. Site Mismatch
  While construction plans, deliveries, and progress logs are often managed digitally, the reality on-site changes fast, sometimes faster than people can update systems. Processes can be inefficient or just ineffective, or arduous and unfollowed. When the records drift from reality, teams lose trust, disputes arise, and costly delays follow.
• Contract Complexity and Fragmentation
  A Construction project isn’t entirely controlled by a single company. It’s a web of contracts, general contractors, subcontractors, suppliers, and third-party vendors, each responsible for different tasks, under different terms. That fragmentation creates room for miscommunication and accountability gaps.
• BIM Bottlenecks
  BIM (Building Information Modelling) tools like Revit and Navisworks (By Autodesk) help plan and coordinate structures in 3D. But during active construction, the models often go underused, either because they’re not shared widely, aren’t current, or aren’t easy to interpret on-site.
• Inefficient Logistics
  Deliveries may show up too early, too late, or not at all, triggering delays, storage issues, or disputes about who’s at fault. Every misstep in logistics can ripple across the timeline and the budget.

These challenges are well-known in the industry. But taken together, they offered a powerful opportunity: the chance to design a platform that not only improved project execution, but also supported long-term sustainability in the built environment.

 

The Vision, A Platform Built on Trust, Transparency, and Timing

When V-Informatica approached us, they weren’t just looking to build a technology solution, they wanted to launch a SaaS product for the construction industry. The platform needed to deliver measurable improvements in trust, coordination, and site efficiency, while also supporting a clear commercial model: software services that could be sold to construction firms, architecture practices, and project managers.

Circular Clarity supported the early design process, helping ensure the solution aligned with Circular Economy principles, a growing driver of policy and procurement and business efficiency in the Netherlands. Their guidance didn’t define the business model, but it made the offering more attractive to environmentally conscious firms and public-sector buyers and baked in a focus on efficiencies.

Our role was to make the platform real. Working closely with V-Informatica, we designed a system built around three integrated technologies: Blockchain, BIM, and IoT.

• Blockchain anchored trust through tamper-proof records and enabled smart contracts, self-executing agreements tied to deliveries, milestones, and approvals.
• BIM (Building Information Modelling) gave structure to the data, tying real-world activity to design elements, and helping teams work from a shared spatial understanding.
• IoT (Internet of Things) and Extended Tech Stack, brought live data from the field, verifying site conditions, tracking materials, and ensuring logistics aligned with reality.

But the real insight wasn’t technical, it was strategic. We designed the platform to:

• Create market advantage for V-Informatica by solving pain points no one else had addressed well.
• Minimize disruption for contractors, suppliers, and project teams by integrating with the systems and workflows they already knew.

It wasn’t about forcing change. It was about enabling better outcomes, in a way that felt familiar, not foreign. In this case that was critical because too many adoption barriers might have been a risk to the success of the project.

 

Blockchain, Building the Integrity Layer

For many in construction, the word blockchain can feel distant, more hype than help. But in this platform, blockchain wasn’t about buzzwords. It was about solving a very real problem: the lack of a trusted, tamper-proof source of truth in multi-party construction projects. A verified and tamper proof source of truth can be useful in many ways in the construction industry.

Disputes are common when records can be quietly changed, deliveries aren’t independently verified, or milestone signoffs happen out of sync. And with dozens of contracts in play, that uncertainty can slow down progress or trigger costly delays.

Our approach was to use a private Ethereum-compatible blockchain to create time-stamped, verifiable logs of key project events, including deliveries, inspections, and digital approvals. These records weren’t stored as bulky files on-chain, but as hashes, digital fingerprints of the actual documents, files, or confirmations stored off-chain. This gave us the integrity of blockchain without the complexity or cost of a public network.

Even more importantly, we designed smart contracts that could execute automatically once defined conditions were met. For example:

• A delivery confirmed on-site could trigger a partial payment to a supplier.
• A milestone verified by a sensor and digital signoff could unlock the next construction phase.
• A change in project state could update dependent parties or systems.

By embedding contract logic into the system, we reduced reliance on manual coordination, while still allowing for human oversight and exception handling.

But the decision to use blockchain wasn’t just technical, it was political and strategic.

V-Informatica was entering an established industry in the Netherlands, with long-standing vendor relationships and high trust barriers. Attempting to disrupt those networks head-on would’ve created friction, and possibly resistance, that a startup couldn’t afford. Instead, the platform was designed to work alongside existing structures, offering value, most often without demanding change.

This wasn’t a show of force. It was an invitation to cooperate, one that respected the realities of how construction projects are run and how decisions get made. One which was to the benefit of the entire industry.

Blockchain gave us the foundation for trust, but the real innovation was in how we applied it: quietly, pragmatically, and always with respect for the stakeholder landscape.

 

 

BIM, Linking Digital Plans to Physical Progress

In modern construction, BIM (Building Information Modelling) tools like Revit and Navisworks (By Autodesk) are used to plan structures in rich spatial detail, from geometry to materials to installation sequences. But on the job site, BIM’s value often fades. Models may be out of date, inaccessible, or too complex for field teams to use in real time.

For this platform, BIM wasn’t just a design tool, it became the structural backbone for coordinating what should be happening with what actually is.

We designed the system to integrate with existing BIM tools rather than replace them. It introduced three practical enhancements that turned BIM into a usable, reliable source of truth throughout construction:

1. Milestone-Based Snapshots
   At key points in the build, foundations, framing, services, finishing, the platform captured a snapshot of the current BIM model. These were hashed and anchored to blockchain, creating a verifiable record of project intent at that moment in time. If disputes arose later, everyone could refer back to what the plan actually looked like.
2. Linking Field Events to Model Elements
   The platform allowed deliveries, inspections, and task completions to be tied to specific parts of the model. A tile delivery could be linked to a floor finish spec; an HVAC install could be matched to the mechanical layout. This reduced ambiguity and helped align physical work with the digital plan.
3. Simplified Access for the Field
   Not every contractor needs a full BIM model. So we built in support for task-specific, partial views, filtered for just the relevant space or trade, viewable on tablets or mobile devices. This made it easier for on-site teams to work with the model without technical friction.

Importantly, we didn’t try to deliver a real-time “digital twin” of the site. That would’ve added overhead without practical benefit. Instead, we focused on strategic snapshots, selective linking, and reliable documentation.

This approach made BIM more useful in the moment, and more defensible after the fact. The right information in the right hands in time, often at exactly the right time, makes a useable, practical difference for members of a project team in construction. For instance, a person checking and accepting the delivery of materials will benefit from knowing the exact details, SKU numbers, descriptions, names, quantities, expected dates, order numbers, contract numbers, transport company names, driver names, and so on for a specific delivery of good and materials.

The result was a shared visual language, and access to exactly the relevant data in exactly the right format, when they were needed, for construction teams and stakeholders alike. Not just design intent, but verified execution, one model, grounded in data, visible to all.

 

IoT, Giving the Site a Voice

Construction sites are living, shifting environments. Plans may call for a delivery on Wednesday, but the real world might not be ready. Storage space isn’t clear, open, available for the next shipment. The wall isn’t dry. The access route is blocked and will be until Tuesday. And often, no one knows until the delivery truck is already reversing in.

That’s where IoT (Internet of Things) came in. The platform used sensors and smart devices not as a gimmick, but as a quiet enabler, gathering real-time data from the site to inform better decisions, reduce delays, and improve accountability.

We focused on three roles for the IoT layer:

1. Site Readiness Detection
   Low-cost sensors, for humidity, light, motion, and air quality, helped determine whether an area was actually ready for a delivery or task. Rather than relying on assumption or outdated schedules, the system could check conditions and prompt a human confirmation before the next step. This reduced unnecessary deliveries and helped ensure work could proceed on arrival.
2. Material and Logistics Tracking
   While not all strictly speaking IoT technologies, I’ve included them in this category. RFID tags, barcode scanners, and mobile GPS devices helped track materials from gate to storage to installation. Every movement, a tile drop-off, a tool return, a pallet transfer, could be verified, time-stamped, and linked to the appropriate phase of the build. This made disputes less likely and billing more transparent.
3. Long-Term Asset Enablement
   Unlike most temporary construction tech, many of the sensors were designed to stay in place after handover. That enabled future services for building operators, like:
4. • Environmental monitoring (e.g. air quality, temperature)
   • Predictive maintenance (e.g. detecting wear or faults before failure)
   • Usage analytics (e.g. occupancy patterns)
   • Warranty validation and compliance tracking

Importantly, the IoT infrastructure was designed to be non-disruptive:

• No rewiring or custom installs, existing cable routes and mounting points were reused
• Edge-friendly and modular, designed for Zigbee, LoRa, or Wi-Fi networks
• Selectively integrated, customers could start with basic tracking and scale up later

By giving the site a voice, quietly, flexibly, and affordably, the platform bridged the gap between what was planned and what was actually happening. And it did so in a way that created both short-term efficiency and long-term value.

Logistics and Contract Complexity, Designed for the Real Supply Chain

Construction projects don’t follow a neat top-down structure. Instead, they’re built on networks of contracts, subcontractors supplying their own materials, general contractors owning logistics firms, and vendors serving multiple jobs simultaneously. Each relationship is unique, shaped by commercial logic, personal trust, and practical constraints.

For V-Informatica’s platform to succeed, it had to accommodate this complexity, not ignore or fight it.

We designed the system to flex and adapt to the real world, supporting three key challenges:

1. Nested and Layered Contracts
   A single delivery might fulfil multiple subcontracts. A milestone payment might be split between a contractor, supplier, and installer. The platform’s smart contracts were built to model these structures, composable, reusable, and chainable, with logic that reflected who was responsible for what, and when.
2. Asymmetry of Control
   Not everyone needs (or wants) the same level of access. The general contractor may need project-wide visibility. A tiling subcontractor only needs to see their portion. A shared logistics firm may just scan and confirm deliveries. The platform handled this with role-based access controls, ensuring that every party had the right view, and nothing more.
3. Flexible Pricing Models
   Construction doesn’t run on seat-based SaaS. We supported:
4. • Per-project licensing
   • Per-milestone or per-delivery fees (Usage Based, or Up Front Commitment)
   • Stakeholder-specific billing (e.g., builder pays for delivery tracking, landlord pays for post-handover services) This gave V-Informatica the commercial agility to fit into different sales conversations, from a small job site to a public infrastructure tender.

We also accounted for broader regulatory and institutional relationships, especially in countries like the Netherlands, where planning authorities, inspection agencies, and sustainability goals shape how projects unfold. The platform didn’t replace regulatory systems, but it made it easier to:

• Anchor inspections and approvals to immutable records
• Provide verifiable documentation to authorities
• Prepare for future integrations with compliance and permitting platforms

This section of the design may not have been the flashiest, but it was the most commercially important. Without it, the platform would have been a technical showcase with no place to land.

By respecting the contracting norms of the industry and offering just enough structure to improve coordination, the platform made itself welcome in a space where resistance to change is often not about fear, but about risk.

 

Product Design with Sales in Mind

From the beginning, the platform wasn’t just built for technical elegance, it was built to sell.

That meant understanding not only the needs of construction sites, but also the pressures and incentives of those who fund and operate them. The design process kept one question front and centre:

“What will make someone say yes to this?”

We identified four things that would make or break adoption, and built for all of them:

1. No Forklift Required
   Construction companies don’t have time (or appetite) for wholesale change. So the platform was built to slot into existing systems, not replace them. BIM tools, delivery workflows, contract structures, and supplier relationships stayed intact. The platform simply made them smarter, more trusted, and more connected.
2. Proof Over Promise
   Buyers needed to see ROI, not just a feature list. So the platform delivered:
3. • Fewer disputes (with blockchain records to back it)
   • Better coordination (via IoT-enabled logistics)
   • Faster approvals (through smart contracts and verified milestones) Every benefit could be demonstrated with real-world examples, no need to imagine the upside.
4. Stakeholder Fit
   We designed different value propositions for each buyer type:
5. • For contractors: fewer project delays and payment conflicts
   • For developers: traceable sustainability and compliance records
   • For facility managers: handover data that enabled long-term efficiency This wasn’t just construction tech, it was a bridge from project execution to asset performance.
6. A Platform with a Future
   The initial sale was the build phase, but the long-term opportunity was in post-handover services. Because the platform embedded sensors and retained BIM + blockchain data, it could continue delivering value long after the scaffolding came down. That meant V-Informatica could grow recurring revenue through analytics, maintenance, and facilities insights.

Perhaps most importantly, the product didn’t try to “teach construction how to work.” It respected the way the industry already worked and quietly improved it from within.

This mindset gave the platform credibility in sales conversations. It showed that the design team understood not just what could be built, but what could be adopted and what would make a difference on the ground. We avoided theoretical improvements or forced processes.

And that’s why it mattered: because a product that works in theory isn’t a product, it’s a prototype.

A product that fits into the way people already do business? That’s a business or revenue stream.

The Full Flow, From Plan to Proof

Technology doesn’t make a difference unless it fits into the real world, and in construction, that means working across dozens of moving parts, shifting schedules, and overlapping responsibilities.

What made the V-Informatica platform different wasn’t just the tech, it was the way the parts worked together to mirror the actual flow of a construction project. Here’s how that looked, start to finish:

Step 1: Design & Intent

• Architects use BIM tools (like Revit) to model the project.
• The platform captures a hashed snapshot of key model milestones.
• This creates a verifiable reference for what was intended, locked into the blockchain.

 

Step 2: Delivery Scheduling

• A subcontractor requests a tile delivery.
• IoT sensors check site conditions: Is the space clear? Is humidity acceptable, what’s on the palate?
• Once confirmed, the delivery is scheduled, based on reality, not assumptions.

 

Step 3: Materials Arrival

• The tiles arrive and are scanned at the gate.
• RFID tags match the manifest. Photos and site foreman sign-off are collected.
• A smart contract records the event, stores a hash on-chain, and notifies all relevant parties.

 

Step 4: Work Execution

• The tiler installs the tiles, referencing a simplified BIM view.
• IoT sensors confirm activity in the area.
• The system verifies milestone conditions are met or allows for remote inspection.

 

Step 5: Automated Approval

• Smart contracts confirm milestone completion.
• A partial payment is released automatically.
• The event is time-stamped and anchored to the BIM model.

 

Step 6: Handover & Long-Term Value

• The as-built BIM model includes material batch numbers and install data.
• IoT sensors, optionally, remain in place for facilities monitoring.
• The platform transitions into a post-construction asset, powering predictive maintenance, warranty tracking, and compliance reporting.

 

This wasn’t just a better way to track construction. It was a system that turned plans into proof, bridging the digital and physical worlds, reducing ambiguity, and adding long-term value for every stakeholder involved.

Reflections and Lessons, Designing for Change Without Forcing It

Looking back, this wasn’t just a project about digital infrastructure. It was about finding ways to bring trust, clarity, and coordination into one of the most complex industries in the world, without alienating the people doing the work.

We weren’t trying to disrupt construction for the sake of it. We were trying to make it easier for real teams to do real work, and to do it with less waste, more accountability, and better long-term outcomes.

The real lesson was this:

Technology should follow the work, not try to redefine it.

That meant:

• Working with existing BIM tools, not replacing them
• Supporting contract complexity, not flattening it
• Aligning with regulatory expectations, not dodging them or procrastinating
• Building value that lasts beyond handover, not just during delivery

 

The platform succeeded because it respected the ecosystem it served. It gave contractors a way to collaborate without sacrificing control. It gave developers tools for traceability without micromanagement. And it gave startups like V-Informatica a blueprint for selling software in an industry that doesn’t buy software lightly.

It was innovation with empathy. Strategy shaped by adoption.

A system that didn’t just work, it fit.