Investing a few coins in innovation pays off

For those wishing to find out which new innovations are on the horizon, there was plenty to whet the appetite of contractors' in-house disrupters who were attending the Coins User Conference this week.

The two-day event brought all sorts of stakeholders in the construction industry together, from main contractors and tech start-ups to housebuilders and consultants, to explore how they could better use technology.

The Media City UK development, built on the former wasteland that once upon a time housed Manchester’s docks, was a fitting location. Now home to the BBC, ITV and Salford University, countless attendees cited the development as an example of the industry’s undoubted ability to transform an area and positively affect lives.

The glowing praise did, however, come with the caveat that construction has the potential to achieve so much more through improved productivity and better sustainability.

To this end, the event's host launched the Coins Grand Challenge five years ago – a global innovation competition that seeks to unearth innovators, entrepreneurs and leaders.

This year’s open competition was scooped by the UK’s Michael Evans, who developed a carbon capture and utilisation system that can inform design, building material, operation, demolition and waste-treatment decisions to limit a project’s carbon footprint.

Meanwhile, the fiercely competed undergraduate gong went to Sri Lanka’s Chathurangi Edussuriya, a student at the University of Peradeniya.

Ms Edussuriya’s soil-testing innovation, which can be used on site, with the results fed into a smartphone, also scooped the Coins Investment Award, which goes to the entry that judges consider to be the most promising business idea.

Given her aspiration to continue studying to do a PhD and the fact she has not launched a business on the back of the idea, Coins has pledged to fund Ms Edussuriya’s postgraduate studies and continue its relationship with her.

The winner of last year’s investment award, Ardalan Khosrowpour (pictured), used his $150,000 cash prize to further develop his business, OnSiteIQ, a build-progress tracking platform that is now being used on live construction sites across the US; it will soon be integrated into Coins’ supplier-payment platform to evidence completed work and speed up the payment process.

As the construction industry’s biggest players rethink their business models to allow them to invest more substantially in R&D, it is encouraging to see a tech supplier routinely supporting tomorrow’s innovators.