Maria Hudson, Chief Marketing Officer at Zutec, shares insights on their rebranding journey and the future of digital construction compliance
BuildData Group’s recent consolidation of its brands—Createmaster, Createmaster Information Management, and Resi-Sense—into Zutec, signals a significant shift in the landscape of construction technology.
Maria Hudson, CMO at Zutec, led the rebrand with a clear mission: to streamline building data management and process, while supporting compliance with the latest safety and sustainability regulations.
Could you start by telling us a bit about your journey to becoming the CMO at Zutec and your vision as a company in the new digital era?
Having headed up marketing teams in SaaS businesses for several years, working for some time in telecoms and then moving into content management, I made my way into the construction tech sector pre-covid, and have been working in this area ever since, joining Zutec in May 2022 as CMO.
As an industry only truly embracing technology now, driven by regulatory changes and requirements, as well as the need for increased safety, efficiencies, and more effective processes, there is a huge opportunity within construction and property ownership/management.
Bringing products to market that can support the industry’s digital transformation journey and help companies better manage information, and buildings that create a safer built environment is really compelling for me, and Zutec as a business.
As a leading ConTech and PropTech software provider, Zutec has been digitising construction and property management processes and building information for over 20 years and our vision to help digitise the least digital industry in the world – construction.
Today, our cloud-based and mobile solutions enable data for over 13,000 buildings and 1.5 million units supporting asset owners, contractors, housebuilders, and developers in saving time and money while supporting safety and compliance throughout the building lifecycle with document management, quality management, handover management, and asset management.
The Zutec platform consolidates building information and processes, facilitating asset registration, document management, evidence management, inspections, checklists, actions, auditing, approvals, communication, and compliance.
This approach helps deliver a “golden thread” of information, critical for building regulation compliance, decision-making, and operational efficiency across construction and existing built assets.
What was the key motivation behind merging several brands into Zutec, particularly from a safety compliance perspective?
While the brands under the BuildData Group (Zutec, Createmaster, and Createmaster Information Management and Resi-Sense), largely operated independently before the rebrand, serving the construction and property industries across the stages of a building lifecycle, we had been acting as one integrated business for a while.
This, alongside changing market dynamics primarily driven by regulatory reform, meant that by operating under one brand as Zutec we could provide customers with a joined-up approach to managing building data as a single touch point and digital ecosystem across our solutions.
The construction and property industries are rapidly adopting digital technologies, as they adapt to changing data requirements driven by new regulations and sustainability.
With a focus on compliance, Zutec’s software solutions address areas such as fire and structural safety information in response to the Building Safety Act, evidence collection for sustainability regulations such as Part L, and handover contract compliance providing digital O&M and asset information to contractors for handover to asset owners during construction as it moves towards completion.
As one company with pooled expertise, Zutec is joining the information management dots across the built environment with a combined vision, and solutions that support document management, quality management, handover management and asset management.
We remain dedicated to staying one step ahead in building digitisation and, importantly, we want to give peace of mind to our customers that their data is better connected and structured with us, as the industry continues to digitise and moves towards a golden thread of information.
How does Zutec ensure that building data management adheres to the Building Safety Act?
Based on registers, forms, checklists and workflows, the Zutec platform has been developed in such a way that it is perfect for housing and managing building data that adheres to the Building Safety Act (BSA) 2022.
Having aligned with BSA’s digital data requirements, and working closely with customers, we have created templates that streamline process and enable our customers to capture and store information and evidence in ways that support regulatory compliance and provides insight for more effective building management.
With all building information in one place, and dedicated dashboards for different use cases, our customers can conduct inspections, capture photographic evidence, upload data and documents during construction and from in-use buildings, identify data gaps and fill them, and track changes so they have an audit trail of data.
This gives customers a golden thread of information, which can be used to control risk, make more informed decisions and share with key stakeholders including the Building Safety Regulator.
Customers get a single source of truth to manage BSA compliance, compile reports for safety cases and gateway applications, and manage building assessment certificates, as an example.
One platform for everything BSA related!
Could you discuss how the consolidation has influenced Zutec’s approach to customer support, especially in navigating new safety regulations?
By consolidating as Zutec, we now have increased visibility across our teams and businesses to provide better support to our customers.
As one business it is easier to share and navigate insight and information, particularly around safety regulations, which avoids duplication of effort, removes any disjointedness amongst teams, and ensures one knowledgebase and consistent approach for our customers.
When it comes to supporting requests, these now come into one place and are managed by one team, that can be prioritised based on request or issue, which builds customer confidence and satisfaction.
Our support CSAT is also consistently above 4, and we strive to maintain this standard, to ensure our customers always get the best out of our platform at all times.
What specific features of Zutec’s platforms aid clients in managing and understanding building safety data?
Our customers consistently say that our solution dashboards are stand out features of our platform, when it comes to managing and understanding building safety data.
With one dashboard, our clients have visibility of all their data, which they can use for analysis and reporting, understanding and identifying data gaps and risks, and make more informed decisions to better manage buildings.
Information is easy to find and view, providing an audit trail of information, so users can quickly track progress of projects and changes to information, while also compiling evidence to demonstrate compliance.
With one place to manage building information, this make meeting BSA compliance easier and means buildings are safer.
How does Zutec’s strategy differ when addressing building and fire safety in various types of construction projects?
With a focus on the residential space, Zutec is one of the only providers in the UK that has drilled into regulatory market, with a strategy to identify and focus on white spots where the industry needs support across construction projects to demonstrate compliance.
With this in mind, and depending on the customer type and asset type, our strategy differs from other providers as we address needs across the various stages of the construction lifecycle.
As an example, we work with contractors during the build stage of a project to deliver building manuals, which can be handed over to asset owners in our platform at project completion.
Based on industry-proven templates, fire safety and health and safety files are produced, structured and reviewed by Zutec to ensure information quality that meets standards and obligations, and can form part of a golden thread of information.
For asset owners, our strategy is to help them with bringing all their building information into one place.
At construction project handover, we can host building manuals in our building document management solution, so information is structured in industry-proven templates for enhanced management and to support BSA compliance.
We can also work with asset owners to bring existing in-use building information together in a standardised template, where we can support filling gaps where fire and structural information is missing and provide templates for safety case production to reduce the risk of non-compliance risks.
Our templates also differ for residential projects, commercial projects and more technical construction projects, meaning we can support our customers no matter what type of construction project they have.
Can you highlight any upcoming innovations at Zutec that will further enhance building safety management?
We are continually innovating across our business and have recently launched a solution for Building Risk Assessment Management which helps asset owners assess the emergency preparedness of each building from one dashboard and ensure the safety of occupants and properties in line with the Building Safety Act.
With our solution, users can capture, manage and track building documents and compliance status, as well as identify outstanding issues and information, with a single source of truth that combines Digital O&Ms, an Asset Register and Risk Assessment.
Document inspections and risk assessments, such as auditing fire doors on site can be conducted, and photographic evidence incorporated into evidence inspections done, so accurate asset registers can be maintained and validated.
Building information is easily available to share results and suggestions with building owners, managers, inspectors, regulators, and residents, so risk can be mitigated or reduced.
Alongside this, and in line with Regulation 38, we are also working with housebuilders to support fire barrier assessments during construction and ensure photographic evidence can be captured as part of this.
These are just a few areas where we are innovating in this space.
Looking to the future, what steps is Zutec taking to remain at the forefront of safety technology in the construction industry?
We make it our business to stay one step ahead of regulation with a research team that keeps their eye on the pulse of regulatory change and updates, and how that will impact the industry, our customers, and what we can do to support any changes with development of solutions within our platform.
We are continually developing proof of concepts ahead of taking solutions to market, which we test on customers, get feedback on and refine so when we take a solution fully to market, we know it has product-market fit and will land.
This approach allows us to get feedback continually, but also bring solutions to market, that we know will help our customers with compliance now and further down the line.
This article was originally published in the September 2024 issue of International Fire & Safety Journal. To read your FREE digital copy, click here.