Entries roll in for £10m innovation fund

Colmore Tang and Virgin’s startup programme seeks ideas to improve construction productivity, reports Neil Gerrard.

A pioneering £10m innovation fund designed to improve productivity in the construction sector attracted more than 60 entries
in a little over a week when it launched at the end of March.

Birmingham-based contractor Colmore Tang has put up £10m of its own money to launch the ConstrucTech programme with the help of Virgin StartUp, a not-for-profit offshoot of the Richard Branson empire – the first time the organisation has worked with a company outside the Virgin group.

Ideas from startups that have applied for funding so far include: an internet of things (IoT) and machine learning company that helps equipment users make smart decisions about how to manage their fleet; platform technology to improve estimates with digital data collection and automation to auto-generate quotes; and autonomous software designed to work with construction and earthmoving equipment.

Colmore Tang, which had a turnover of £49m in the year to May 2017, is looking for businesses that offer solutions in three key areas: people, data and smart materials.

Virgin StartUp, which has supported 11,000 entrepreneurs across the UK with startup loans, mentorship and business advice, has a remit to encourage entries from its network of entrepreneurs and startups around the world.

Jonathon Spanos, head of commercial and innovation at Virgin StartUp, said he hoped to see around 120 entries in total.

He said: “There are always startups with great solutions that are ready to test their offering in market and looking to scale.

“The construction industry hasn’t embraced this in the past – they haven’t looked to external organisations and allowed access to them, so it does require industry leaders like Colmore Tang to not only recognise the importance of partnering with external startups but also to provide the resourcing, both funding and in-house expertise, to help these great minds access what has traditionally been a closed and slow-moving industry.”

Meanwhile, Colmore Tang group chief executive Andy Robinson admitted that £10m is a major commitment but hoped that the ConstrucTech programme would unearth good ideas, good people, or both.

He said: “We can then use our sites as live testing grounds for any ideas. It could be a material, it could be a process, it could be a piece of software, it could be all kinds of things.

“We are prepared to invest in those new businesses to take that idea and bring it to market. It may be something that is marketable outside of our own organisation so it is not a completely altruistic process. We do hope that something commercial comes out of it at the end and therefore we are prepared to invest quite heavily to see if we can get there.”

Applications close on 31 May. Startups can apply to be part of ConstrucTech at: virginstartup.org/constructech

The government has made £72m in funding available for construction as part of its Industrial Strategy Challenge fund. It will support collaboration between industry and academia to transform the construction sector.

The funding is for UK-based research and technology organisations that already have existing facilities and expertise. Constructing Excellence and BRE have both confirmed they are bidding for the fund.

Where Colmore Tang sees construction tech opportunities

The UK construction industry’s track record in innovation is poor, according to Colmore Tang group chief executive Andy Robinson (pictured).

“There will always be a combination of reasons but the industry is very traditional. A bricklayer today may have better mortar or tools but the way they lay bricks is essentially the same as it was 50-100 years ago,” he says.

Robinson places the blame on the industry’s cycle of boom and bust and its reliance on self-employed tradespeople. “I kept reading about proptech and fintech and how new technologies were disrupting other sectors,”Robinson says.

“It made me think whether there were new technologies, new processes, new pieces of equipment or new materials that can help us improve both our productivity, quality and delivery to the client.”

Colmore Tang had already started working with the University of Birmingham in its quest to find new ideas when Robinson heard from a friend who had worked at the university and had since joined Virgin about the Virgin StartUp scheme, paving the way for the partnership and ConstrucTech’s launch.