Construction Quality Assurance software provider CONQA has paved a meaningful path through the industry since its creation in 2015. Daniel O’Donoghue, Co-Founder and CEO, provides an insight into the company’s origins and ambitions for the future.
Using their background in engineering, as well as the shared experiences of friends who studied civil and structural engineering at university, CONQA Founder Daniel O’Donoghue, along with co-founders Pete Simons and Barney Chunn, identified a gaping hole in the industry.
“They were complaining about the process of quality assurance, which was built upon checklists that help to ensure that everyone on site is doing everything correctly for any given activity,” O’Donoghue says.
“Having to take paper checklists & ITPs (Inspection & Test Plans) out in the field, take photos on their phones, capture site records, capture test records – there was a lot of manual admin involved. They would end up signing off all their QA (Quality Assurance) documentation at the end of the month, before they handed the work back to the client.
“This would be like a pilot doing the pre-flight checklist once they’re at the hotel after the flight.”
As O’Donoghue explains, the lack of a meaningful QA process leaves construction projects significantly at-risk.
“This was a massive problem for the construction industry. Rework is estimated to cost about 21 percent of a project’s construction value, and QA wasn’t working well to prevent it,” O’Donoghue says.
O’Donoghue, Simons and Chunn had identified the problem, but the challenge was developing the solution.
The three co-founders had to venture into the world of software and programming, an area that O’Donoghue concedes the founders had limited experience with before starting CONQA.
“We’d seen people who had started software companies without being a software engineer themselves,” O’Donoghue says.
“Pete, Barney and I have always had a natural entrepreneurial spirit. So, we thought it was worth ‘having a crack’ at solving a big problem, in a scalable way, with a software product.”
After determination and investment, CONQA was founded in 2015 in Auckland, providing software to support managing quality assurance for a range of construction projects and developments.
The company now has head offices in Australia and New Zealand, with sites in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide.
Keeping it simple
CONQA helps to centralise the QA process, by allowing workers to log information & take photos as they go. After identifying issues, staff can log and resolve problems and document the entire process.
CONQA also caters for a variety of working environments and construction roles. Precast suppliers can use the platform to collaborate on QA with remote stakeholders, while infrastructure contractors can complete QA and an ITP in real time while on-site.
“If you’re a supervisor or engineer on-site, it’s really about making the QA process happen as much as you can in the field, so you’re not doing office admin work later on,” O’Donoghue says.
“From a manager’s point of view, it’s about knowing that your team is checking each task off, meaning you don’t have to do as much chasing. By making this process easy, we find that the benefits start to stream from there.”
O’Donoghue adds that the platform was designed for the more experienced, potentially least-tech savvy contractors.
“CONQA is designed to be simple at the end level, so that anyone can use it,” he says.
“CONQA is built to be project specific, meaning you don’t need to think through a lot of detail when getting to the task at hand. It’s fast to complete, and then the information goes straight to the cloud.”
O’Donoghue says that when these contractors see how easy it is to use CONQA, they often become advocates for the platform.
“Quality is very much a cultural thing, like health and safety. It requires discipline and it often requires behavioural change,” he says.
“We’ve had customers who’ve told us that their supervisor – who’s 65 years old – has been able to pick up CONQA and use it in a matter of minutes. Being able to deliver that kind of experience is really meaningful to us.”
Related stories:
- Final stage of $18.2M QLD road repair trial set to begin
- $33M upgrades on the way for major eastern Kimberley roads
- Major works underway on new station for Glen Huntly
CONQA also provides an implementation team as well as a support team who can offer ongoing assistance.
“We can provide a dedicated account manager, who works with the client to ensure that they’re getting the most value from the software for their projects,” O’Donoghue says.
“Our team can introduce clients to the core features, before layering in the different capabilities or functionality as the client becomes more familiar with CONQA.”
With CONQA, clients have achieved savings when it comes to both time and money. Customers have seen an 80 per cent reduction in defects, while supervisors have saved up to 10 hours per week on paperwork.
CONQA’s next steps
CONQA has already been used on major construction works in New Zealand and Australia.
Close to its HQ in Melbourne, CONQA has contributed to works on the Metro Tunnel Project, Level Crossing Removal Project, works on the Footscray Hospital and several other projects for Major Road Projects Victoria, where its benefits have been evident.
A CONQA client was able to complete a $100 million housing development 10 weeks ahead of schedule. Another has been tracking QA and progress on a $300 million airport project in Australia.
CONQA has also received favourable feedback from the precast industry in Australia and New Zealand.
Based on its growing reputation and continued success, O’Donoghue says CONQA is eyeing further expansion across Australia.
“We’re involved in quite a large profile of infrastructure jobs across Australia and New Zealand. We’re now pushing hard in the New South Wales market, where we’ve got some exciting works coming up,” he says.
What now for the industry?
O’Donoghue believes companies such as CONQA, who are focusing on providing accessible platforms, is the best way forward for promoting digitalisation throughout the industry.
He says the notion of having simple and practical technology is the easiest way to improve project outcomes immediately.
“There’s a lot of discussion around the younger generation coming through and being dominant in the workforce and more digitally native,” he says. “I think this notion is missing a massive opportunity that exists with the current workforce, waiting for a generation to grow out of an industry will take too long in my opinion. The chance to develop technology to capture the existing workforce is there.
“I also think that across the supply chain there’s a massive opportunity to be more engaged with technology and digitalisation. From our experiences that’s one of the most glaringly obvious opportunities – to engage the current workforce.”
O’Donoghue says he and his team at CONQA take pride in seeing first-hand the impacts and benefits from the cloud-based platform.
“We had a client who was able to take their rework rates from 10 percent of the project value, down to zero. These workers were going home on a Friday, not having to go back to the site on the weekend and instead spent more time with their families,” he says.
“Having a positive impact on businesses and the people within them is something we’re all very proud of.”
This article was originally published in the May edition of our magazine. To read the magazine, click here.