Hustro

Conflicts are unpleasant, but inevitable. One key factor that incites an argument is the lack of necessary first-hand information amidst workers. Consider this story of a simple automatic door that happened to malfunction during an ongoing construction project. Costing only 500 dollars, the RFID sensors inside the door can be replaced within a week. However, owing to inadequate data management across the job site, the door’s repairs were delayed, and the contractors in charge forgot about the issue. As usual, the construction work went on, and the door remained unrepaired. As the project approached completion, people noticed the malfunctioning door and began emailing various project heads about the issue. This led to an internal dispute that lasted over a year and later became a legal issue. There were over 782 emails about the door that the lawyer in charge of the case had to review, translating to several billable hours. By the time the dispute was settled, the contractors owed over 20,000 dollars in legal fees. If the site engineers provided adequate information to the construction manager and if they knew how to communicate with the subcontractor at fault in a legally effective manner, the conflict would not be escalated to court level and, even if it did, the legal costs could be 60 percent lesser.

This is just one incident depicting the kind of challenges that arise due to mismanaged and unstructured information; and, the construction industry suffers greatly from this problem.

The lawyer in charge of the case mentioned above is Ernest Szydelski, who today stands as the CEO of Hustro, an organisation dedicated to improving quality and safety management avenues in construction projects. He recognised that with validated and well-structured data, several issues connected to health and the environment could be resolved quickly as well. And thus, Hustro was founded in 2019.

Since then, the company has participated in several construction projects, supporting clients with its robust data-driven construction control software system. The solution helps avoid or resolve disputes and claims that begin on construction sites and end in courts. It gathers and represents data in a format that helps streamline various legal proceedings. “We structure and document all the data and information from a construction site in order to provide lawyers all the data they need to understand the complete story and end disputes,” adds Szydelski.

Hustro’s comprehensive software simplifies and expedites inspection processes via intuitive mobile and web tools. Upon consolidating all necessary information, the solution empowers administrators with easy-to-navigate unified issue resolution, corrective cost settlement, and approval functions. “We have increased the speed of issue resolution by 30 percent and issue detection by 50 across 32 construction sites,” states Szydelski. The software automates report and document generation processes, granting the contractors and subcontractors an opportunity to manage their people and projects better. Hustro also ensured to improve user experience with features that visualise information to improve dispute resolution, while preventing the reoccurrence of similar issues in the future. Additionally, the software can be accessed by all on-site professionals online as well as offline, allowing 24/7 access to all issue resolution services.

The company also maintains a comprehensive understanding of how employees work together on a job site and infuses relevant insights into its solution. In doing so, Hustro has decreased the time spent on inspections and issue management by 75 percent. The construction technology solution provider’s fully automated issue resolution processes are unparalleled in the European market today. Szydelski and his team further enhanced their product’s reliability with functionalities that reduce litigation costs and connect issues with agreements and construction documentation, thereby ensuring secured claims.

With such strong capabilities promising definitive results, Hustro is set to revolutionise data-driven construction control processes. Moving forward, the company intends to use artificial intelligence to aid construction and project managers with decision making functions. “We want to avoid disputes and increase the quality, safety, and productivity across a project with continuously structured data,” concludes Szydelski.