Projects
Fonn
Building a management suite for construction projects #2: Scaling up

Supporting a scaling SaaS with product development amids market pivot and growing demands.

Customer

Fonn

Maturity

Scale-ups

Industry

Construction

Country

Norway

Start

2017

Duration

ongoing

Team size

11 people

Building a management suite for construction projects #2: Scaling up by zaven

Technologies

Services

Dedicated Teams on Demand

Front-end Software Development

Back-end Software Development

Web App Development

Mobile App Development

Product Development

Goal

Adapting to dynamic requirements while aligning with changing budgets mirrored common startup challenges at early stages. That meant a need for continuous team and process evolution to keep up.

Challenge

After the first rollout it turned out that business model requires adjustments and commercial focus shifts towards construction companies instead of end customers.

A very distinctive factor of United Kingdom and United States markets compared to Norway is a need for RFI and Submittal tools (formal processes around documentation and information sign-offs). This built up a need for rapid development of those 2 features to preserve product sales momentum in those markets.

A modern Construction Management tool especially in Scandinavia needs to support BIM Building Information Modeling (BIM). It is a digital representation of physical and functional characteristics of a facility. This created a need to build a Fonn in-app tool to preview and interact with BIM models in 3D.

Additionally, no support for Android phones meant the new platform had to be covered as well as soon as possible.

Solution

Unlike in-house teams, software houses enable dynamic resource allocation, allowing for quick scalability. Even if budget constraints temporarily reallocate some team members, their knowledge remains within reach, expediting scaling efforts and reducing onboarding time.

We followed the open-closed principle (part of SOLID) so the codebase was open for extensions. We added an Organization wrapper around already existing Projects. This allowed bigger Customers to effectively manage their Portfolio without disrupting existing processes.

In order to present BIM models in 3D our curious and resourceful team of engineers had to carry on technical research on the IFC standard and conversion methods so it could be displayed in the web and mobile applications.

Outcome

Introduction of feature toggles allowed product customization for different markets. When it turned out that US and UK markets need additional features we were able to instantly amplify development capacity and rapidly deliver MVP of the new functionality to validate both the need and solution quickly.

Thanks to the initial web and mobile MVP built on top of open source technologies, the Fonn BIM viewer got enough traction to allow us to switch to a commercial solution which made the user experience even better.

Lastly, a new Android app has been written very quickly, as API communication has already been mature due to developing the iOS version earlier.

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No better technical solution or team could have been chosen to make this system. The choice of technology, pace of production, cost and quality is beyond anything we’ve seen earlier.

Jan Tore Grindheim (CEO of Fonn)

client

Fonn (Norway)

Fonn offers user-friendly project management software tailored specifically for the construction industry. The platform centralizes drawing storage, progress tracking, on-site communication, and off-site monitoring, providing a unified tool for both field and office teams. Praised for its simplicity and efficiency, Fonn streamlines collaboration, enhancing productivity, and reducing errors, and caters to a diverse clientele including Commercial GCs, Residential Builders, Developers, and Architects and Engineers.