Tim Mutlow is Chief Technical Officer (CTO) at Operance; he oversees everything to do with technology at Operance – from software development to security and making sure we have the best technology there is to serve our customers. 

We caught up with Tim to find out more about his background and vision for the future of construction tech.  

Chief Technology Officer is pretty much exactly what it says on the tin. It covers every aspect of technology in the company.  

My main role is software development, but as we’ve grown, there are other areas I’m responsible for, such as cybersecurity, infrastructure and general IT.  

We have a growing software development team and we’re looking for a Senior Developer to take on some of the work I am doing so I can concentrate on other areas of the business.  

Recently, we’ve been working with two interns, which has been fantastic – it’s our ambition to develop our people and we regularly work with universities and colleges to find and develop the best talent. 

We’re a small and growing company so I’m wearing a lot of hats at the moment, but it’s great to be in a role where I can bring everything I enjoy under one umbrella.  

I have broad experience in technology and digital in lots of industries. For example, one of my first roles was in a banking environment – I helped developed internet banking, web services and secure mobile apps for two big international banks. It was a wide-ranging role, and I believe this has given me a good foundation working in construction when it is becoming more regulated and digitised.   

I’ve also had experience running a small business – I founded Happy Goon with a friend based in New York – and even lived overseas for a time. Happy Goon merged Augmented Reality (AR) and greetings cards, which on the surface sounds vastly different from what we’re doing at Operance. However, AR has a lot of scope in the construction industry – overlaying data on real-world objects.   

It was around this time when I started freelancing – web development and any software that touches the internet. I began working with Operance CEO Ian Yeo and CPO Scott Pilgrim, and this led to a full-time position as my role grew and grew.  

Ian Yeo (CEO), Scott Pilgrim (CPO) and Tim Mutlow (CTO). Photo: Shaun Flannery

Construction is already undergoing a digital transformation – Building Information Modelling (BIM) makes the design and construction process a lot more efficient, saving companies a lot of money.  

At Operance, we’re taking this to the next level and also focusing on building safety.  

There’s an incredible amount of data required in Operations and Maintenance files before a building’s handover. However, this information is rarely looked at again beyond handover. We’re building a product around this problem, making sure people have the confidence in O&M information – creating something trackable, searchable, useable and enforceable.  

As I mentioned, the industry is becoming more regulated and more compliance is required by building owners, contractors and designers. For example, the new Building Safety Bill requires a Golden Thread of information that spans the entire lifecycle of a building.  

It shouldn’t be a stick to hit people with; instead, we’re creating something that unlocks a lot of potential for a building – more insights into your data = operations efficiencies, cost savings and a reduction in environmental impact.  

The fact that I can put my stamp on everything. It’s been a totally blank canvas and that’s been great.  

On top of this, there are so many bits to enjoy – the data transparency we’re trying to create is good for the environment, for tenants, communities and for landlords and builders.

Get in touch with Tim via tim.mutlow@operance.app or via LinkedIn.

The £250,000 funding is from NPIF – Mercia Equity Finance, which is managed by Mercia Asset Management and is part of the Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund. The news is a breakthrough for the Operance smart building information and facilities management software, which we believe will revolutionise the construction industry through the use of digital technology.

It will enable our parent company, Bimsense, to commercialise Operance and create 10 new jobs over the next two years. The funding marks a major milestone in the development of Bimsense, which was launched four years ago by Ian Yeo and Scott Pilgrim, who had become frustrated by the traditional approach to building design, construction and management. Since then Bimsense has advised property owners, developers and contractors on major developments throughout the UK on how to reduce project risks, while helping to digitally transform their operations. At the same time Bimsense has been continually developing the Operance software to make buildings safer, healthier and more efficient.

Based at the Centre for Digital Innovation (C4DI) tech hub in Hull, Bimsense specialises in building information modelling (BIM), which allows construction projects to be digitally built, before they are physically built, in order to address issues normally identified on site or after completion. BIM helps save time and money, improve quality and reduce potential safety risks, while the data it provides also enables building owners to operate and maintain buildings efficiently over the long term. BIM is widely accepted as the best way to achieve the Government’s aim of reducing construction and operating costs by a third, and is in line with the Grenfell Tower report’s recommendation to create a digital lifecycle record. The new funding will be used to develop further and commercialise Operance, which helps meet this challenge by creating a “golden thread” – a digital audit trail covering the entire history of facilities, enabling better decision making and increased accountability.

Ian Yeo, CEO of Bimsense, said: “We’re delighted and excited to secure this investment to deliver our long-term ambition of digitising and ‘humanising’ building information to help create safer, healthier places for people to live, work and spend their leisure time. “We know the devastating effects that poor, mismanaged information and ill-informed decisions can have on people’s lives. This funding helps us to tackle these issues, by enabling project teams to develop better quality information for end-users to access in a really easy, user-friendly way.”

Maurice Disai, Investment Associate at Mercia, said: “Although construction and property management is the fourth biggest contributor to GDP, it is one of the least digitised sectors. The Operance system could have a huge impact in terms of reducing costs and improving safety and quality of life for building users. “The proof of concept version of this software has already generated a great deal of interest within the industry by showing the cost and performance benefits of using a digital building information platform. The funding will allow Bimsense to further enhance the product and bring it to market.”

Stephen Parnaby OBE, Chair of the Humber Local Enterprise Partnership, said: “We are delighted to see another Humber business benefit from the Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund, which continues to bring vital finance to the region’s businesses. This funding will not only create additional local employment and opportunities within the supply chain, but will also help many other construction companies through its innovative software.”

Mark Wilcockson, of the British Business Bank, said: “Since its launch in 2017, NPIF’s impact on businesses has been wide-ranging, providing funding to launch new products, employ new staff, enter new markets and acquire new facilities. We are pleased that NPIF is continuing to unlock the Humber’s growth potential by supporting small growing businesses with vital investment, particularly those that have the potential to revolutionise their respective sector.” The Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund project is supported financially by the European Union using funding from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) as part of the European Structural and Investment Funds Growth Programme 2014-2020 and the European Investment Bank. We would like to take this opportunity to thank our funding partners for their support for our exciting vision and look forward for delivering on the game-changing potential of Operance.

Scott Pilgrim   scott.pilgrim@bimsense.co.uk   0113 3281282   Twitter   LinkedIn

The exercise led us to design an entirely new and innovative Operance O&M Coordination web-app solution that provides the following benefits;

O&M: clients can now define, automate and standardise uniform organisational Operations and Maintenance (O&M) information requirements, workflows, handover procedures and 24/7 O&M manual anytime, anywhere access.
BIM: end-users can now easily understand the benefits of BIM and COBie data and information, accessing models to create automated works packages for their supply chain to populate.
Golden-Thread: working with the UK’s biggest social housing developers and global standards developers, we are helping not only create new Development Handover Data Standards that will provide clarity and uniformity in respect of building safety information but also create an ownership and responsibility audit trail.
With this product vision in place, we are about to release some big news in respect of how this will be funded; in the meantime, we are looking for developers to help build the vision!

Because we are a small team at the moment, you will be expected to wear many different “hats” during the workday; you will produce code as you’d expect, but also provide analysis and contribute to testing other developers’ work.

As we are a growing development team, you will play an important role in helping to define our process and best practice as well as the tools, platforms, and even languages that we use! There is a lot of responsibility, but also a lot of creative freedom and chance to express yourself, grow and learn which makes for truly rewarding work.

Click here for more details.

Becoming a Junior Developer within our software development team, the successful candidate would be working on our digital solutions which tackle various scenarios from the construction industry. You will work alongside our lead developer to help build cloud software solutions by developing new features, fixing bugs, and generally producing quality code and getting stuck into the development process.

As well as producing your own code, you will also get to perform code reviews on other developers code which will help enhance your knowledge of the language and the system we are building. Unlike some other roles, you will also be helping to test other developers’ code against requirements.

As we are a growing development team, you will play an important role in helping to define our process and best practice as well as the tools, platforms, and even languages that we use! There is a lot of creative freedom afforded here and the work you do will be visible to stakeholders making this a great opportunity to show what you can do as well as grow, learn, and really contribute to some amazing products.

Click here for more details.

Further reading

Building Information Modelling (BIM) – Wikipedia

BIM Glossary of Terms – Bimsense

Scott Pilgrim scott.pilgrim@bimsense.co.uk 0113 3281282 Twitter LinkedIn