The Catenda year of 2021

At Catenda we aim to make the AECO industry data driven, using open standards (Industry Foundation Classes and BIM Collaboration Format) to achieve breakthrough performance and sustainability. Throughout 2021 thousands of projects have benefited from our tools, saving countless hours every month, reducing unstructured email correspondence by 80%, avoiding costly mistakes and dramatically reducing waste. It is clear that we have had an impact on our industry and the impact has moved us closer to our vision.

With our tools and platform, we make communication easier, dramatically improving collaboration during the design process. We provide structured data to learn from. We provide open access to our APIs with Catenda Boost allowing organizations to integrate and use their data in new and valuable ways. We bring your data to the construction site and we allow you to efficiently operate your buildings with Catenda Duo – our Building Operating System (BOS), a first of its kind, which connects the physical building with the digital twin.

In our quest to make it easier for our users to become more data driven, we have focused on four things:

• Be really good at managing and visualizing models, so that all the BIMs in a project are easily accessible to everyone, visually and formally so that the project knows which revision is the latest and who uploaded it.
• Give projects an efficient way to manage documents, both visually and formally. Document workflows, document history, access control, document drafts, shared versions and published versions.
• Issues, tasks, decisions, meetings, RFIs, collisions, etc, are managed in a powerful but simple to use interface. Data is structured, traceable and interoperable, giving the project a treasure trove of information to learn from.
• Connecting the dots between all three data repositories. It should be easy to attach a document to an object in any model. Seeing what issues, decisions or tasks, for example, that are related to a document should be quick and intuitive. Getting to a specific viewpoint in your model from an issue should be fast, either inside our tools, or outside in your favorite design tool.

All of this is available in our open Common Data Environment (CDE), Catenda Hub (previously Bimsync), in our mobile version, Catenda Site (previously Bimsync Mobile) and through our APIs with Catenda Boost. In fact, our Catenda Site for Android and iOS are built entirely on our APIs.

This year we were able to soft launch Catenda Duo (previously Catenda BOS), our Building Operating System solution. It takes advantage of all this connected data to fully exploit it during the operations phase of the building, and even connect it all to the physical building itself. Through Catenda Duo (previously Catenda BOS) you can see if a window is open or closed in our 3D viewer and you can turn off the lights in the meeting room on the third floor.

In addition to bringing our new Catenda Duo (previously Catenda BOS) product to market, we also significantly improved our viewer (e.g Point Cloud support) and our Catenda Site (previously Bimsync Mobile). We are also investing heavily in massively improving our support for 2D-based workflows. This is important as we want the industry to grow with us. By supporting the way the industry works today, and the way we will work tomorrow, it is possible for you to start using our tools, no matter how far you are on the digital ladder or how deeply you have implemented BIM. Our tools will adapt to your workflows and needs, and grow with you as you continuously advance your workflows at your own pace. Based on user feedback we believe we have succeeded in achieving just that.

Watch the webinar “Improve Design collaboration with the Point Cloud integration in Catenda Hub (previously Bimsync)” here.

Catenda consists of a diverse set of people, dedicated to helping improve our industry. I am amazed at how much the workforce has produced and achieved in 2021. The results already described above are thanks to a very focused effort from our Product team. In close collaboration with some of our users, they have delivered more than expected.

Our presence in social media and traditional media has increased thanks to a massive effort from our Marketing team. Through steady but surely hard work, patience, smartness and dedication, they have lifted the visibility of Catenda to new heights. 

Instead of having a pure sales team, we have a “commercial team” whose primary motive is to help our industry become more data driven. Often this involves our tools, but the main focus is always on the end-user and how we can help improve that person’s workflows. We have multidisciplinary teams of industry experts like Customer Success Technicians, focusing on helping our clients in their workflows and digitalization strategies. This approach works extremely well in addition to all the valuable content the team has produced. For example 14 webinars and more than 30 articles that are available for anyone at any time in any language.

We have also worked at delivering  a business model that better supports  the business model of our users and the industry as a whole. This has resulted in several new ways of using our products. For example our “flat rate” offering supports internal usage patterns from many of our clients and our just released Freemium version, an open CDE completely free to use, to help anyone.

That is a big accomplishment from the entire Catenda team.

So, who works for Catenda and achieves all this? That is a tough question to answer as the workforce is so diverse. For example, we have staff that used to serve on submarines, speak 20+ languages, worked as a lifeguard for The Rolling Stones, had a secret life as a bouncer in the Spanish night club scene, won national competitions in dancing, worked as a carpenter on site, worked as a site manager on site, is considered a BIM guru, wrote code for the Iter fusion plant under construction, has a PhD in social economics, worked in the chocolate industry, helped develop the IFC standard, has a PhD in data collection for the construction industry, helped develop the bSDD services, built factories in Vietnam, helped develop the BCF standard, created investment vehicles in the shipping industry, has a beautiful singing voice, plays rugby, met with the Crown Prince of Norway, etc.. Most of us, though, have real background from our industry, which is where we find the greatest synergy .

I am very excited about 2022 for Catenda. We will reach a lot more of our industry and have an even bigger impact toward our goal of making the AECO industry sustainable. We will grow our team, welcoming new talents to join Catenda. And with all the cool new features in our products and business model, it will have great meaning for me to continue on this amazing Catenda journey.

Grow with us in 2022.

Håvard Bell, CSO and Co-founder at Catenda.