Townsville, North Queensland might be more than 11,000 kilometres away from California’s Silicon Valley but a North Queensland scaffolder is making his mark in the tech innovation space.
ScaffPlan is the award-winning brainchild of Simon Boyes, the Managing Director of Benchmark Scaffolding, one of Queensland’s leading industrial scaffolding companies. The revolutionary 3D modelling solution for scaffolders was recently recognised at the 2022 Tekla Global Building Information Modelling (BIM) Awards, a biennial competition showcasing the world’s most advanced construction projects using the Tekla Structures platform.
“I didn’t like any of the design programs on the market. I’d used all of them and they just didn’t do what I needed them to do,” Simon explains.
“Designing a scaffold is unique and specific to each job. Every project has different requirements, entry points, it needs to go around structures, and take into consideration every aspect of a project from start to finish. ScaffPlan gives us the ability to consider all the pain points of a purpose-built structure that other programs don’t.”
ScaffPlan is the culmination of three years of development, working in synergy with scaffolders, engineers and software developers to create a product that ultimately saves time, money, and makes things easier for all the key stakeholders of a project.
“ScaffPlan was created mainly because of Simon’s love of scaffolding.”
“Simon is a scaffolder, it’s what he does. Building businesses and solving problems in an inventive way, is him. He doesn’t like to follow the flow; if there’s a way to do it better, he’ll have a go,” says Aimee Schafer, Chief of Operations for ScaffPlan.
“Previously, our drafters were building scaffolds stick-by-stick which takes a lot of time. When your structures get to a certain size, or depending on which company is building or requiring the scaffold, it needs to be engineered. Engineering costs a lot of money.
“With ScaffPlan, it has the engineering built into the program but to be compliant it still needs to be signed off by an engineer. So once your design is built in ScaffPlan, you can run a report, send off the fully engineered drawing to the engineer and get that signed off for a few hundred dollars, instead of the thousands it costs to get an engineer to do every drawing.”
With ScaffPlan existing on the Tekla Structures 3D modelling software, it would be safe to assume that international uptake of the program would follow, especially given its intuitive user experience and the cost savings benefits the software provides. Neither Simon nor Aimee could have predicted it would only take their second customer to break into the international market.
“We released in Australia and New Zealand initially because our engineering specs are set up for Australia and New Zealand. We didn’t think it would go worldwide straight up, but it did,” Aimee laughs.
Going global so quickly posed another set of problems for ScaffPlan and that was setting up international support.
“Globally, the biggest hurdles that we face is the communication between Tekla re-sellers and clients. Because the program is licenced through Tekla, it has been a little difficult but it’s a relationship we’re working on,” Simon says.
“Then there’s the time differences; sales, support and marketing are all based in Australia so that’s been a bit of a challenge but we’re thankful that the clients have been supportive.
“They know we’re Australian-based and we don’t hide it. There’s a great understanding that we’re growing and scaling and we are working on getting support in their time zone. Many of our international customers were already Tekla users and they haven’t really needed us too much anyway.”
Simon credits much of the success to the team he and Aimee have built around them.
“We have a very impressive team. In the last four months, our Support Manager has built an entire online video help library with nearly 200 modules,” Simon remarks.
“Then there’s our Sales & Partnerships Manager who has got us into the door with Tekla so we can discuss a potential OEM (original equipment manufacturer) model. No other company in the world has one with them. A start-up software company in Townsville is meeting with a multibillion dollar tech giant and they’re taking notice of us.”
With such rapid growth happening with the company, Simon and Aimee both agree that there are no plans to move ScaffPlan or Benchmark Scaffolding from its Townsville base.
“Simon likes his barra fishing far too much!” Aimee laughs.
“We are the only two in Townsville now. Initially we couldn’t find the right fit for what we were looking for in Townsville but we also didn’t have the connections. One of the things that has happened is Smart Precinct NQ have hooked us up with so many people in Townsville now.”
“Townsville will always be home,” Simon adds.
“It’ll always be the home and birthplace of Benchmark Scaffolding, it’ll always been the birthplace of ScaffPlan and it will probably be the home of ScaffPlan for as long as we can see.”
Image credits: Phil Copp, Phil Copp Photos
Click here to see our Movers, Shakers & Changemakers post about ScaffPlan.
