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Mr. Varghese Daniel, Co-founder and CEO, Wrench Solutions

Construction tech is a crowded space, but Wrench has stood the test of time. What do you think you've gotten right that others missed?

Answer: I believe it's our approach, which is and always was, holistic. Meaning, we treat the disease not the symptoms - where project delay is the disease and various inefficiencies across the process, say in collaboration or document management or progress monitoring, construction monitoring, quality management etc., are just symptoms. While others tackled the symptoms we set out to cure the disease and addressed the entire interconnected E, P, and C process as a whole - even though, to be frank, the market wasn't ready for it and wanted only the "painkillers" ie EDMS or collaboration platforms or monitoring tools, and so we gave them that, and once they saw the benefits they would slowly - very slowly! - venture on the actual cure. We call our solution 'integrated' because it addresses project management as a whole and in doing so, cures Delay. And that's what sets us apart.

Your platform claims to cut project costs significantly. What's the catch, or rather, what do clients need to change internally to actually see that result?

Answer: They need to stop being so tolerant of delay! That's the first thing. Delay and overrun have become normalised and that's the root of all the problems. Hence the Wrench motto of #ZeroToleranceToDelay. Second: start trusting technology. And don't cut corners to save a buck; trust the people who make the technology, don't try to do it yourself. I've been shocked and saddened by the low expectations clients had from software (vis-a-vis delay and overrun) and I wish they knew that there is tech today that won't just cut a few costs here and there or make this or that process slightly more efficient, it will utterly transform the way projects get executed. I wish they knew they could deliver every project on time and on budget. Because when you can do that, the savings are very significant and quite dramatic. But the mindset and expectation has to change first.  

You work with firms across 42 countries. How do you handle the vastly different digital maturity levels across regions, especially in legacy-heavy sectors like infrastructure and energy?

Answer: There is indeed great variance in digital maturity but it's never been an issue for us because we're completely customer-driven ie we think like our customers and for them and on their behalf. In a sense we're more consultants than vendors. We understand both EPC and IT so we're uniquely positioned to help every customer regardless of their digital maturity levels or starting points. We can advise and suggest, based on our experiences, but we're also very aware of each organisation's preferences and cultures and we respect that and work with that. Most of our software features started out as a comment or query from a client; we'd fix a problem for one client and then it turned out to be common to that sector or geography, so we learn from our clients and with them, and that's been our guiding force right from the start.  

A lot of project teams are still stuck in old habits, Excel sheets, email threads, siloed approvals. What's been your most effective nudge to get them to switch to your platform?

Answer: Show, don't tell. That's what we learnt. An engineer won't blindly accept a  digitised process over his tried-and-tested one unless you speak his language and use his data, correctly, in his context. But also we don't just replace all the old methods, we optimise and integrate them; many old elements like worksheets and emails still have their part to play alongside drones and AI, but as part of a unified process. Because if someone spent twenty years monitoring projects using worksheets and emails, just saying 'automation will be more efficient' won't work, it can even be counterproductive. So we take the time to show in detail exactly how the process will be automated (with concrete data and templates and files he can relate to not some generic examples) and we show him the benefits, both immediate and over time. And then he sees it as something to be embraced not feared.  

Wrench Academy sounds like a side-project on the surface, but is it also part of your client retention or product strategy in some way?

Answer: Oh yes, in a key way. Wrench Academy started out as our internal customer training wing to help  Wrench customers who had been using our solutions but were not getting as much value as they could from it, for a variety of reasons including the awareness gap and transition troubles mentioned earlier ie they knew everything about executing projects but not much about project tech or industry standards and benchmarks. Then I realised there's a new generation of engineers with impressive theoretical knowledge about project technology and project management but zero practical experience of either. So I partnered with organisations like IIIC to  offer courses from experts with field experience that covered 'hot topics' like standardisation and the impact of digitisation etc. along with training on our own technology, so as to better equip them for their future careers and hopefully bring about a better EPC culture.