KOPE at Advancing Prefabrication 2023 Phoenix

Phoenix

As a member of the KOPE team, attending the Advancing Prefabrication conference in Phoenix was an exciting and valuable experience. This leading conference in the offsite construction industry brought together professionals and innovators from across North America to discuss the latest advancements, challenges, and opportunities in the field. The conference provided a platform for suppliers, specifiers, and industry experts to share their insights and expertise and collaborate on ways to progress and improve offsite construction. In this post, I would like to share some of the highlights of our experience from attending the event.

The conference attracted a diverse range of attendees from across the construction industry, including contractors, consultants, engineers, architects, manufacturers, and suppliers. The conference program focused on the theme of "Informed Design," highlighting the importance of incorporating data and analytics into the design process early on and how it can enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of offsite construction. The program featured keynote speakers, panel discussions, and workshop sessions, covering topics such as digital design tools, supply chain optimisation, EDI and sustainable building practices. At KOPE, we are passionate about enabling informed design in the offsite construction industry, and we were thrilled to feature in one of the keynote speeches by Amy Marks. 

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Keynote

As part of the keynote, the audience was asked a number of questions to consider around informed design. One question that really stood out was “What could enable you to productize your construction processes into customizable building products?”

The top two answers which came in overwhelmingly higher than other options were:

1.    A digitally connected marketplace so decision makers are informed upfront and can use my products in their designs.
2.   Technology that would allow me to understand the right products based on the variations we’ve made over the years.

Both these answers point directly to the two fundamental technologies of our KOPE platform, our marketplace and the product application platform respectively. There is a clear need and desire for a platform like KOPE, and we believe KOPE will be instrumental in accelerating our industry’s transition to a productized supply chain.

Following the keynote, we had the opportunity to participate in the Tech Slam, where our CEO, Mark Thorley, demonstrated KOPE end-to-end. This was one of the first unveils of our entire platform publicly.
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Mark walked the audience through the platform, showcasing how users can create a personalized supply chain of organizations and products, upload project design models, and automate the application of products from the marketplace to the project, all while receiving instant feedback. This process allows users to review and compare different product systems, from different manufacturers whilst leveraging data to enable users to make informed decisions about materials, costs, and environmental impact.

KOPE

Our presentation demonstrated how KOPE is working towards the goal of facilitating true DfMA and informed design. Bringing manufacturing-led data into the design process earlier, ensures decisions aren’t made that will impact or restrict the choice of products and systems further down the line. This ensures we maintain our design creativity whilst ensuring we don’t need to go through extensive value-engineering later on, highlighting the importance of data-driven decision making in the future of offsite construction.

In addition to the presentation and Tech Slam, we had a booth where we showcased KOPE and its capabilities. Mark and I were there to talk people through the platform and its features. It was a hub of activity, with contractors, consultants and engineers stopping by to learn more about KOPE, its benefits and ask questions. We had many engaging conversations with potential clients and industry experts who were impressed with our offsite marketplace, immediately understanding its value as a resource for a progressing industry; enabling visibility and connections between suppliers and specifiers whilst showcasing the positive outcomes achieved. Our product application platform, KOPE Construct, received an overwhelmingly positive response given its ability to enable data-driven decisions earlier in the design process.

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Overall, it was an exciting and valuable experience for our team and it was great to see our alignment with leading industry ideas and the value that our platform can bring whilst contributing to the advancement of prefabrication in construction. We had a great time talking to potential clients and building relationships with like-minded people. Thanks to everyone who stopped by our booth and helped make the conference a huge success!