GagaMuller’s Timmy Falvey spoke with Irish building magazine about the company’s specialist approach to project management bringing together digital construction and DFMA to deliver the best possible value for clients.

GagaMuller Group was established in 2018 by Paddy Ryan and Thomas Gillen after they identified a gap to address the disjointed adoption of digital construction in the industry. It has impressively grown to cater for 40 staff working on property development and data centre projects across EMEA and South East Asia.

Offering

GagaMuller Operations Manager, Timmy Falvey gives us an insight into the company and its unique offering. “What we do is completely different than most of the industry. There is an acceptance in the industry of ‘playing the game’ with teams leveraging digital construction to protect themselves and deflect blame. All the while this is overseen by consultancies that don’t utilise digital construction principles, allowing this issue to develop. At the core of it, is a client faced with finger-pointing and delayed work.

“At GagaMuller, we debunk this. We are a project management consultancy utilising digital construction principles from the earliest inception of a project, creating an environment of integrated engagement across all tiers. Subsequently, this eliminates a large bulk of time attributed to ‘playing the game’, which can then be focused on delivering the project on time and budget for the client.”

GagaMuller had implemented these principles on a project in Europe when COVID hit and travel restrictions were enforced. Timmy explains how companies’ labour resources were now having to operate at 50% – 60% capacity and thus expecting a dip in activity completion on site. In contrast, activity completion trended higher at 75% which proved as an industry, that with the correct environment and use of digitalisation supplemented with GagaMuller’s early engagement, they could achieve more productivity with less resources.

Understanding

Timmy has been at the forefront of BIM implementation with several industry-leading companies. “BIM was supposed to change the way we built in the construction industry; but we still use the same old processes and old contract scopes that haven’t adapted to new technology. Everything is disjointed and it’s important to realise there is more to digital construction than Revit models, Navisworks clash tests and BIM 360; for me, these are just the basic tools in a much bigger process.”

It was this rationale that led to Timmy joining GagaMuller, assisting with expanding the company’s profile and reach. “Too many times the client has been led by instruction rather than understanding. We use digital construction to take data centre investors, property developers or even open-minded contractors on a journey from inception to completion, providing customised live dashboards, insights and rationales that demonstrate the substantial ROI in using digital construction correctly.”

Timmy explains it is not just project management that GagaMuller is involved in. “We are big advocates for DFMA (Design for Manufacture and Assembly) and have a catalogue of different DFMA options developed for the data centre sector. We get involved in managing the entire Modern Methods of Construction (MMC) process, recording savings through risk mitigation of up to €12.7m to the client and safeguard their project schedule – without the correct management, a lot of DFMA and MMC options never get off the drawing board.”

Integrators

In-house software & hardware development for the construction industry is another area GagaMuller is active in, with two apps launching in Q4 2020. GagaMuller believes that if the construction industry planned projects like other industries over 50% of waste could be prevented. Timmy informs us, “Now more than ever we must plan projects and utilise the power of digital to protect the risk to project schedule and budget.” The founders are responsible for PlanLoader, a location-based activity tracker allowing complete project management oversight using Last Planner principles which launches in November. “Our COVID-19 wearable sensors & app was developed as a response to the pandemic, a wearable solution for contact source tracing, warning construction staff of breaches in social distancing. This will also allow for rapid response in the event of a positive COVID case on site.”

The company is unique in digital construction. “We have often been christened as ‘disruptors’, but I truly believe we are integrators. We challenge the status quo and provide metrics for businesses that demonstrate our restless passion and need to deliver. We want to take the industry on the journey with us – continually improving digital construction so that what we are currently doing, will one day be the norm for everyone else.”