The New Technologies Working To Address Key Climate & Housing Challenges The Propcast

 In the ninth episode of Season 11 of the Propcast, host Louisa Dickins is joined by Mateo Zimmermann, Investment Manager at CEMEX Ventures,  Chris Bone, Co-Founder & CEO at Modulous and Tim Davies, CEO at HiiROC Ltd.

Episode Highlights:
• The work that each of the businesses do and how they collaborate
• The work HiiROC are doing to try and make hydrogen more affordable
• The main issues currently facing the construction industry and the work being undertaken to try and find solutions 
• How these issues can impair innovation and make the industry quite risk averse
• The work Modulous are doing on ESG 
• The challenge with bringing new talent into the industry who can help drive innovation and technology adoption
Why it can take longer to see the rollout of new technologies within the space
The different speed of innovation adoption across the industry and the frustrations this can cause
• The investments CEMEX are making in companies working on green construction
• The issues with supply/ delivery of materials and the work CEMEX are doing to try and resolve this
• The future they all see for construction

Resources:
• LMRE Global Recruitment and Search Consultancy
• LMRE YouTube Interviews
• PropTech Salary Report, LMRE 2022
• Leaplab | CEMEX Ventures
• Construction Startup Competition
• McKinsey
• Modulous
• Synhelion
• PartRunner – Home

Key Takeaways:
• CEMEX have been amazing for us through this process because they're thought leaders in their space. They have great views on how the industry can be changed and that's something that we're very keen to help facilitate. Our vision is to help solve the housing crisis while protecting the planet. - Chris
• We are rolling out the production of hydrogen, but we're working with partners like CEMEX to say how do we use it in the right setting? So how do you use it to produce cement? How do you use it to produce steel or for transport? - Tim
• We can only tackle the challenges our industry are facing, and I want to emphasise on that,  if we industry players collaborate to build a better future. - Mateo
• We're continually looking at both the physical product and the carbon content of that product. And until you understand the carbon content, it's very difficult to drive change, to improve that, or to be able to track it and understand exactly what level of carbon is, in our instance being put in our buildings. - Chris
• It’s a very tight margin business. Therefore, when you look at cement or steel and the like to suddenly introduce a much higher energy cost because you're using hydrogen, not natural gas or whatever else is nigh on impossible. So we as technology providers have to provide the solution that makes it affordable. - Tim
• I think the paces are also a little bit different. There's obviously a lot of innovations in terms of materials that are happening, but not necessarily there is an adoption on the job site right on construction. - Mateo
• It's very inefficient and obviously materials are a large part of the construction budget. So from 40 to 60% depending on the country and it's highly inefficient. It's actually one of the biggest  reasons for delays in construction. - Mateo

About Our Guests:
Mateo Zimmermann
Mateo Zimmermann is Investment Manager at CEMEX Ventures, responsible for the Corporate Venture Capital Investments in startups in the Construction technology space.
Before joining CEMEX Ventures, Mateo worked at The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) from 2013 to 2017 as a Management Consultant, where he promoted to Project Leader. He previously worked at StepOne as an Advisor for startups and corporates in their Digital Strategies. Before that he worked as an Investment Analyst in Private Equity and Corporate Debt at the Asset Management division of Arcano. He also worked for UBS and Electrolux Group. Mateo has a double degree in Engineering and Management. H