Sodex Innovations is a company founded in 2021 in Tschagguns/Austria. They are focusing on making state of the art technology available for anybody in the construction industry. The company’s main focus is to make their system as simple to use as possible so that anybody can gain advantage out of the latest state. Sodex Innovations is focused on developing data capturing algorithms and artificial intelligence to elaborate and calculate reality capture data in high speed.
Interview with Ralf Pfefferkorn, CEO of Sodex Innovations.
Easy Engineering: What are the main areas of activity of the company?
Ralf Pfefferkorn: The main areas we are active in are surveying, documentation and management of civil engineering, earthworks, road, line and pipeline construction.
E.E: What’s the news about new products?
R.P: Our new product is a mobile mapping solution that can be easily installed on any construction machinery. We are able to retrofit a machine in no time so it can capture data from sites. A huge advantage of our system is the ability of accessing the data at any time from anywhere via our Sodex Cloud. All the data the systems are collecting are transmitted automatically and in real time into our cloud solution where project manager, surveyors and leading manager in the company have full overview of the current state and progress on site. The data can be exported in several common formats and can therefore be used for billing. Due to the real-time availability and processing on the machine billing can be done faster and clients of construction companies get seamless documentations that have been created fully automatically.
E.E: What are the ranges of products?
R.P: Our SDX-Compact is available now for any kind of construction machinery. Due to the flexibility and the fast implementation on any machine a wide range of applications can be covered with our system. The system is available with different Laser scanner configurations to also be able to cover mining machinery and to assist in quarries with big dumps.
E.E: At what stage is the market where you are currently active?
R.P: The market at the moment is strongly influenced by digital transformation at the moment. A lot of companies are looking for solutions that are meeting future requirements and optimize their processes. The construction industry is influenced a lot by the shortage of skilled workers and a lot of CEOs and company owners try to find solutions to be able to overcome the future challenges. Our product can assist companies in speeding up their processes and at the same time help about the shortage of skilled workers.
E.E: What can you tell us about market trends?
R.P: The construction industry is getting more and more digital at the moment. Companies that are not transforming there processes now will have huge problems in a few years as requirements, especially for big projects, are getting harder and harder every single year. Especially for companies working a lot in the infrastructure and public area it is important to work on projects using digital methods as these things make companies more competitive and clients will choose digital workflows more often in the future because of its transparency and ability to further process that data.
E.E: What are the most innovative products marketed?
R.P: Drones for surveying and scanning solutions are some of the most innovative solutions marketed at the moment. GNSS Rovers are used since several years for surveying but often companies need to additionally survey with drones and scanning products to meet requirements of their clients. Additionally the productivity with these solutions can be increased as there is more data captured in less time.
Our system and product is optimized for efficiency as all the data is collected already while working and therefore no additional work except to finishing the work with the construction machinery is needed. Combining working and surveying in the same process is an optimal approach to increase efficiency on site and in the office.
E.E: What estimations do you have for 2023?
R.P: 2023 is a year of transformation for the construction industry. In recent years, there have been full order books and companies have been busy working off existing orders and have hardly been able to take on new ones. This year we are seeing that the order situation has calmed down a bit, which is not necessarily bad for the industry. Companies can concentrate on the digital transformation right now in this period and focus on their competitiveness in the coming years! We at Sodex Innovations notice every day that the companies want to change something and hope for a strong business year, especially through the massive will of the companies to take the next steps for BIM and digital construction management.
