NOVA Building IT was founded in 2014. With its online service NOVA BIM 5D, the company has established an important innovation for the construction software industry: The very first entirely web-based application for construction cost management and project control.
NOVA BIM is a software for all operating systems and all devices with internet access. Its steadily growing user community from all over the world shows that architects, project planners and civil engineers are successfully using the advantages of cloud-based collaboration.
Interview with Felix Grau, Managing Director of NOVA Building IT GmbH.
Easy Engineering: What are the main areas of activity of the company?
Felix Grau: NOVA Building IT offers innovative software solutions for an efficient construction cost management combining cloud computing with 3D Building Information Modeling (BIM) as a toolbox for enhanced quality.
The online service NOVA BIM offers everything you would expect from any state-of-the-art software ensuring a successful construction cost management, including:
- cost planning
- quantity determination
- tendering platform
- price comparison
- awarding contracts
- bills of quantities
- target-performance comparison
- invoicing and cost analysis.
But NOVA BIM goes far beyond, because the entire workflow benefits from a cloud solution as it leaves time-consuming data exchange behind. Moreover, the BIM add-on brings live 3D model-based construction cost management to the web. For the first time, 3D (IFC) models developed according to the BIM method are available for all construction cost management processes as an online service. In NOVA BIM the 3D model was extended to so called 5D connecting even the time and cost planning dimension to it.
E.E: What’s the news about new products?
F.G: Since NOVA BIM is a web-based software it offers a lot of opportunities to develop innovative features and practical benefits for users:
The NOVA Smart Pool is an intelligent service for text descriptions and prices that supports the creation of your bills of quantities. Using the shared knowledge of the user community it complements the common tendering text systems and offers realistic cost estimations at current and even local prices.
Measurement apps (??) enable visualized construction cost control and convenient billing.
The feature for reverse auctions allows the bidders in a closed tendering process to further improve their bids.
E.E: At what stage is the market where you are currently active?
F.G: Concerning the use of construction cost management tools, the German market is “ready” since the 90ies. When it comes to adopting that to the “Cloud” and to “BIM”, we see a huge interest among our clients to aline their workflows to these two main aspects of digitization.
E.E: What can you tell us about market trends?
F.G: For the last couple of years, we have seen “Cloud First – Mobile First” strategies successfully been implemented in the construction industry. Beyond this still ongoing trend artificial intelligence and blockchain technology for “Smart contracts” will push new developments and innovation.
E.E: What estimations do you have for 2023?
F.G: Proceeding digitization will further increase the worldwide demand for advanced and reliable web solutions in our industry. That’s why we will continue to internationalize our offers with NOVA BIM to open up new markets.