The BSV blockchain has the power to fundamentally change the construction industry, says Maximillian Korkmaz, creator of the Bau app.
Korkmaz, a civil engineer with 17 years of experience in the construction industry, founded his start-up to address the challenges currently facing the sector. The company’s app ‘Bau’, which means ‘build’ in German, is a super app built on the BSV Blockchain aimed at making the sector both fairer and more efficient.
‘My experience in the real environment at construction sites was frustrating because the construction is broken,’ he said. Korkmaz cited data which shows that the construction industry is one of the most inefficient in the world. He further pointed to specific issues with payment problems across the various stakeholders on construction projects.
‘’Blockchain technology has tremendous potential to solve many of these problems, especially in the construction project management part of the industry.’
‘Especially for small companies. These are mostly subcontractors, which have difficulties getting their payments on time or at all from larger companies. The payments aren’t made or they aren’t made on time, which leads to tremendous problems in terms of cash flow.’
Korkmaz said the Bau App addresses this through its use of the BSV blockchain and smart contracts. This means that subcontractors and other stakeholders know the money will be paid, he said.
‘Smart contracts are basically contracts that are executed through machines. So no human intervention is necessary – to create an honest environment in the construction industry. The company that does a job will know that the money will be paid. Secondly, the company that does that completes the job will know that the money will be paid on time because it’s a machine.’
Identification and tokenisation
Korkmaz said that smart contracts are only a part of the Bau app, and he noted that the BSV blockchain can also be used to tokenise the credentials of entities and individuals involved in projects.
This will lead to further transparency on construction builds, acting as a single source of immutable truth and a de facto form of record-keeping should a dispute ever arise during the project, he said.
‘After the project has been carried out, the participants will rate each other and this will be also stored on the blockchain. Reputation is also an important part of the game and the certificates of entities and individuals,’ he said.
‘For example, an ISO certificate of a construction company will be stored and tokenized on the blockchain and will be used directly for future projects without needing to check IDs for every project by a human.’
Construction in the metaverse and the role of IoT
Korkmaz said the construction industry can also benefit from the metaverse, which helps encourage circular construction practices.
‘Circular construction is a subset of the circular economy. In the current economy and the current construction industry, the construction materials and components and equipment are used only once and then thrown away.’
‘We will let companies use construction materials, components and equipment more than once, and companies can see where a building has been torn down and use that material somewhere else.’
Korkmaz expects IoT to play a similarly important role in the construction industry going forward.
‘Internet of things can be used for many purposes in the construction industry – specifically at construction sites. The sensors we use send their data directly to the construction manager so that (he) can monitor what’s going on, what temperature we have at certain places at the construction site, or what humidity we have at certain places at the construction site.’
Korkmaz said these sensors will all reduce the number of accidents seen at construction sites, with sensors attached directly to the clothes of workers to monitor their vital information.