• 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^[1] - 3 May 2021 - Nova MSC Berhad^[2]'s ("Nova MSC" or "the Company") subsidiary novaCITYNETS launches FORNAX™ Cloud ^[3] ( www.fornaxcloud.com ^[4]) 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.

References

1. ^{^} Media OutReach (www.media-outreach.com)
2. ^{^} Nova MSC Berhad (www.nova-hub.com)
3. ^{^} FORNAX™ Cloud (www.fornaxcloud.com)
4. ^{^} www.fornaxcloud.com (www.fornaxcloud.com)