Start-up Sodex automates data collection on construction sites 

By Hildegard Suntinger

Ralf Pfefferkorn, Bernhard Gantner, and Raphael Ott already had the idea for their start-up Sodex Innovations during their school days at the Höhere Technische Lehranstalt (HTL) Rankweil, where they studied electronics. Back then, they developed the idea of automating excavators as part of a graduation thesis. After graduating in 2020, they set out to find a suitable product for the market. In doing so, they found that construction companies have a high workload in land surveying. So they rethought the topic of their thesis to reduce precisely this surveying workload. The result is a system for automatic data collection and documentation of construction sites controlled by construction machines. In 2021, the company was founded. 

In this episode of the Start-up-of-the-Day series, Sodex CEO Ralf Pfefferkorn talks about the start-up’s innovation and challenges. 

What problem are you solving, and why is that important?

“We have studied the situation in the construction industry intensively and found out that there is a massive shortage of skilled personnel. This problem will increase in the next five to seven years. At the same time, however, the demands of clients are also increasing, especially in terms of adherence to planning, documentation, and accounting. Until now, construction companies have lacked the ability also to capture all the data necessary for correct billing. 

We have developed a system that can record and automate crucial data. In this way, we give construction companies control over their construction projects and help them reduce the amount of work and handle their skilled labor sustainably.” 

How can the workload be reduced?

“In the past, a surveyor always had to travel to the construction site at the end of a construction phase to record the data on-site. At the office, he then had to process this data to work with it. 

We create a digital twin of the construction site and capture the data via the machine. This data can be accessed in real-time by the surveyor and is already processed through a cloud platform. The digital twin enables a virtual tour in 3D. In our case, the 3D data can be, for example, moving cubic meters. But photos can also be stored on the platform. 

Our system greatly increases the productivity of the surveyor. He no longer has to spend time on data acquisition and can immediately start working with the processed data.”

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How is the data recorded?

“The system is mounted on the construction machine and is operated by the operator via a tablet. He only needs to start the system to document his work digitally. In addition, he can take photos via the camera – and manually annotate them in the follow-up. Such photo documentation can be useful, for example, in civil engineering when laying pipelines – for example, when two pipelines cross each other. All recorded data is processed automatically.”

What was the biggest obstacle you had to overcome?

“Systems in construction need to be easy to operate so that the system’s operation does not lead to wasted time and the construction machinery can be operated without major interruptions. Therefore, it was a challenge for us to package the necessary high-tech components into an extremely user-friendly system – to be operated at the touch of a button.” 

What have been the greatest moments so far? 

“One of the greatest moments was definitely when we won the Deutsche Bundesbahn as a customer for pilot projects. When a company of this size relies on our system to improve its documentation, that is an incredibly meaningful result for us. 

But we also already count several well-known companies from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland among our customers. These are experts from the construction industry with many years of experience with digital systems. It makes us proud when they trust our system. That gives us credibility.” 

How difficult was it to get funding?

“We were featured in the program Zwei Minuten – Zwei Mentoren and got Armin Strbac, founder of the second-hand marketplace Shpock, as a mentor. He and his co-founder Dr. Katharina Klausberger have also joined Sodex as investors. This means a lot to us, and the close cooperation with a successful start-up offers us great added value.” 

You founded Sodex in Vorarlberg. What are the conditions like in this location?

“It is unusual to establish a start-up here. But Vorarlberg is an industrial state, and the local chamber of commerce gave us a lot of support in the start-up phase and with legal issues. We founded Sodex right after we graduated from HTL and didn’t know much about starting a company. But with their support, we were able to save a lot of time and focus on developing our products.”  

Where do you want your company to be in five years?

“We are very industry-oriented and work closely with the construction industry to know the real needs of our customers and potential customers. As the industry is rapidly adapting, we see the need to move with it and develop our goals in line with the challenges of the construction industry. 

In two to three years, we want to offer a solution for every construction machine so that we can document the work quickly and completely. That way, we can help take the pressure of skills shortage away from construction companies. There are already many more supporting technical systems in construction than in civil engineering, where we operate. Here we want to become a pioneer in the coming years in the field of mobile mapping, so-called reality capture.”

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What makes your innovation better or different from existing solutions?

“I do not know of any system in the construction industry comparable to ours. We stand out for our power of innovation and have the ability to adapt extremely quickly to given situations. At the same time, we enable every customer to manage their construction site the way they want – because construction processes are a little different in every company and project. We want to be able to provide a solution for every civil engineering project.”

Photo above: Team Sodex (VLNR) Sarah Lechner, Alexandra Mayer, Ralf Pfefferkorn, Markus Haftel © Sodex Innovations