Nova MSC launches FORNAX™ Cloud to perform BIM automated check in the Cloud

• Service offered will simplify the laborious nature
  of building plan checks and shorten the time taken to completion from weeks or months
  to mere hours
• The Cloud-based automated BIM Checking as a
  service will help BIM managers and QPs to get on board at much lower upfront
  costs and ensure a sustainable and recurring income for Nova MSC
• Improve data quality in emerging technologies
  such as Digital Twins and 5D BIM Model

 

KUALA LUMPUR,
MALAYSIA – Media OutReach – 3 May 2021 – Nova MSC Berhad‘s (“Nova MSC” or “the
Company”) subsidiary novaCITYNETS launches FORNAX™ Cloud ( www.fornaxcloud.com ) today to enable customer cloud adoption to
accelerate the digitalisation process of the architecture, engineering and
construction (AEC) industry.

 

FORNAX™ Cloud is the Software as a
Service (SaaS) arm of its FORNAX ™
ePlanCheck system. The service will provide the Qualified Persons (QPs) and
Building Information Modeling (BIM) managers an avenue to perform automated
checks on BIM models to audit for data completeness, modelling quality
according to best practices, compare models between iterations and detect
critical clashes of vital elements as part of the process required in a typical
BIM Executive Plan (BEP), thereby improving data quality in the existing
methodologies as well as in emerging technologies such as Digital Twins
and 5D BIM Model.

 

Nova MSC’s Group Chief Executive
Officer, Mr Lai Teik Kin , said: “With
the launch, we are making it easier for the QPs and BIM managers to discover
new powerful applications that will provide them with data-driven insights and
eventually drive substantial productivity gain.”

 

According to Lai, the Group’s
state-of-the-art FORNAX ™
ePlanCheck system has been in development since 2002 and has undergone many
cycles of improvements with the incorporation of Artificial Intelligence (AI)
to automate the checking process.

 

“BIM is envisaged to be the de-facto in
the building and construction industries, and the aim of our FORNAX ™ ePlanCheck is dedicated to managing
information of BIM and leveraging it to enhance the process in design,
regulatory requirements, and construction of building projects as well as
operation and maintenance of built assets.

 

The service that we offer will help to
change the industry as the laborious nature of building plan checks could be
simplified and what normally takes weeks or even months for completion, would
only require mere hours with our FORNAX ™
ePlanCheck, giving a tremendous boost in productivity to the industry,” Lai
added.

 

The combination of BIM and the cloud is
also another area of improvement for an industry that is traditionally
fragmented. The cloud-based automated BIM checking service at its core will
help to facilitate collaborations. As the construction and building process
involves various parties such as the owners, architects and contractors, such
collaboration will ensure better integration of ideas. It allows sharing of
information to be done seamless and encourage more frequent exchanges of data,
information and ideas among the stakeholders, which adds more depth to the
planning process.

 

Aside from that, the features offered
in FORNAX™ Cloud for BEP requirement also enable QPs and BIM Managers to
conduct preliminary regulatory compliance check in a single BIM portal before
committing their BIM models to the authorities for official check and approval.
This is important as it would help to save costs from rectification due to
error during the BIM construction stage.

 

The additional benefit includes the
improvement in terms of productivity as Nova MSC’s proprietary AI algorithm
will generate a variety of simple and complex relational queries to extract
relevant information within a BIM model for analytic purposes and to validate
against design expectations and requirements. The automation of these analyses
at various stages of the life cycle of the project will ensure the project to
continue without any disruption.

 

The automated BIM check is also
critical for the successful implementation of Digital Twin as most of the flaws
within existing design software are mainly due to the inaccuracy within the BIM
model. The services offered by Nova MSC will perform automated checks on BIM
models to audit for data completeness, modelling quality according to best
practices, comparison of models between design iterations and detection of
critical clashes of vital elements to ensure the accuracy of the model.

 

“With
our cloud services, we hope to help motivate and spread the use of automated
regulatory compliance checking to the industry. During the initial launch, the
service will be available to selected QPs and BIM Managers on the invitation.
It will be made available to all other industry practitioners on a later
stage,” Lai said.

 

By offering FORNAX™ Cloud in a SasS
model, the Group will allow BIM Managers and QPs to get on board with a lower
upfront cost. At the same time, this would help to generate a sustainable and
recurring income for the Group.  

 

The Group’s AI-driven module, FORNAX™,
is widely recognized and known for its strength. In Singapore, novaCITYNETS has
recently been awarded contracts by Singapore Public Utilities Board (PUB),
Jurong Town Council (JTC), Building and Construction Auhority (BCA) and Urban
Redevelopment Authority (URA) of Singapore for its cutting-edge solutions
FORNAX™ ePlanCheck system.

 

Aside from Singapore, the Holy Makkah
Municipality of Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has also commissioned a project to
implement an Automated Regulatory Compliance System (ACRS) that will automate
the checking of building plan regulatory compliance submitted to the
municipality. The ARCS implementation is also based on Nova MSC’s FORNAX™
ePlanCheck system.

 

According to the Group, the new
launches will target the US, China and Malaysia market at the initial stage.
Based on Nova MSC’s research, there are about 1.3 million building permits
issued yearly in the United States. The building permits fee constitutes around
0.5 to 1.0% of construction value, of which the plan-check fee comprises 75% of
it. In total, Nova MSC estimated that the plan-check fee in the United States
to range between USD4.8 billion to USD9.6 billion annually. Meanwhile, in
China, the plan-check fee within the city of Shanghai alone is about CNY1.8
billion annually. As for Malaysia, the plan-check fee amounts to RM1.5 billion
per year.

 

This is in line with a third party
independent report by Report Ocea, a market research-based in the US, which
forecast the BIM in construction market size to grow at a compounded annual
growth rate (CAGR) of 15.0% from 2020 to 2027 with the market being dominated
in North America.