'A partnership in anticipation of rapid growth’

Future Insight envisages a great future for the digitalisation of processes and activities within the public domain. Their platform helps people to make the right choices in projects involving the living environment, such as infrastructure, development and the repurposing of sites and buildings. In partnership with Levi9, vision and ambition are becoming a reality. ‘The partnership enables us to think big and also put our ideas into action,’ says CTO and co-founder Rick Klooster.

The company provides three separately developed software solutions designed to optimise collaboration and shape successful projects: Clearly.Projects for construction projects; Clearly.BIM for optimum viewing and interrogation of BIM models; and Clearly.3D-City for accessing 3D-city models (Digital Twins). All three involve software that brings together and makes available data from different sources.

‘This means that the parties involved in construction projects, works on physical infrastructure, or the life-cycle of a building can access the right up-to-date data and tools to enable smart collaboration,’ explains Klooster. ‘We have built our reputation on this. In 2022, Clearly.BIM secured us the Building Smart Award in Estonia, based on the implementation of a BIM-based planning permission process.’

With the assistance of Levi9 Technology Services, these solutions are being further developed and increasingly integrated. ‘Together, we’re building a growing ecosystem of all kinds of services,’ says the CTO. ‘This Open Urban Platform enables us to easily access specific solutions from third parties. Some of these relate to AI. As a result, we no longer need to develop everything ourselves, and other parties can serve part of their market using our platform.’

The Open Urban Platform is part of the Future Insights Clearly.Suite. It represents the combined vision and ambitions of CTO Rick Klooster and CCO Bas Hoorn. ‘It’s a dream that’s becoming a reality,’ says Hoorn, originally an engineer. For his part, Klooster has a lot of experience working with government. Future Insight has now become a genuine knowledge company with highly qualified specialists.

In anticipation of its rapid growth, Future Insight decided to expand its own development team with external knowledge and experience in 2021. Klooster: ‘The key aim is to achieve a stable and rapidly scalable platform. In view of the intended growth, we also aim to organise ourselves and our teams more effectively and professionally. That’s why we made the decision to have a partner develop our technology.’ Following a thorough search, Klooster and Hoorn came into contact with Levi9.

It has been a genuine partnership from the outset. ‘We have a similar culture and way of working,’ explains Albert Klingenberg, account manager at Levi9. ‘Future Insight are completely open with us about their vision and strategy. That’s reciprocated. This openness gives us the opportunity to keep each other on our toes and make real progress. Our people also really love working on the Future Insight platform.’

The founders are convinced that there are genuine global opportunities when it comes to sharing information in urban areas. For example, there are as yet no widely embraced worldwide standards when it comes to smart cities, buildings, areas, and infrastructures. With the help of Levi9, Future Insight is determined to and capable of playing a crucial role in this development. An important motivator in this is the desire to address this global social challenge.

It is also helped by the fact that government authorities across the world are increasingly open to the cloud. CTO Rick Klooster: ‘That will potentially result in an increasingly wider application of international standards in the future. It will then become increasingly easier even for smaller municipalities to engage and collaborate in an integrated way without any form of vendor lock-in.’

Future Insight has the wind in its sails. The company has doubled its staff numbers in the last six months alone. ‘Things are really moving, and we’re working on all kinds of things simultaneously and clearly proving remarkably successful. The people working for us based in Serbia are actually our development department. That’s where our ideas really take shape.’

Source: itexecutive.nl