Welcome, to the dawn of the value-based era!

Benefit-sharing agreements, stored in a digital environment, enable a virtual company on top of a consortium. This is a “new” business model. Eliminating bullshit-jobs. Letting internet-companies rise as a new industry. Made possible by blockchain.

The construction industry is one of the last industries to be disrupted. Bas Weber, director and sector leader Engineering and Construction — PwC, warns the sector for the fact that a revolution is nowhere to be found, here (in Dutch). He mentions that change will probably come with the new digital generation of employees.

The potential is huge!

Think of:
- Collaborative engineering in a cloud environment.
- Integrated design with virtual reality.
- Structures consisting out of pre-fabricated elements for circular re-use.
- Robots to automate construction activities.
- Drones and sensors surveying the construction site.

Buildings would have their own passport. Identifying every component and the materials it’s made out of. Artifically intelligent systems would make it possible to communicate with our buildings. Buildings will become a form of life. Shifting the ownership paradigm towards buildings as a service. That’s the value-based era in its essence.

This level of drastic innovation is currently hard to find. Because, no business models exist to support it.

As long as it’s not profitable it’s not going to happen!

With the traditional tender approach, in which everybody pursues their own goal, their is no room for trying new things. Everybody is too busy reinventing the wheel over and over again. Nothing is going to change as long as there is no profitable overarching goal for the whole construction supply chain. Nothing is going to change if we can’t transcend our partnerships over multiple projects. Nothing is going to change if consortia can’t work together as one virtual company!

A virtual company with its own revenue model, able to exist throughout the whole lifecycle of the building. That’s what we need!

During the research for my master thesis I got very excited about all the potential. The timing for a start-up seems to be perfect.

This series of blog posts signals the start of my online journal on the adventures to come. Which would be useful for documenting new thoughts, insights and lessons. I reckoned other people might also be interested in following this. So I hope you enjoyed this first series!

Please follow me on Twitter and Linkedin and stay tuned.

Take a second, imagine the possibilities … !

Creating a virtual company. Making everybody work together in a transparent and reliable manner. Creating an enviroment were every cultural work-style can blossom. Creating the opportunity to tap into the collective human intellect.

Avirtual company, running its governance and administrattion on software instead of human management. With no limits to its growth. Blockchain is able to make that happen.
No more need for centralised bureaucratic institutions. Just passionate people collaborating to pursue their dreams. Without any paperwork!

Agreements with shareholders, employees, lenders and customers will all be stored on the blockchain. A blockchain is basically a shared administrative system. All participants in the organisation have their own encrypted copy of the administration. The software continuously checks if all these versions correspond. This way nobody can mess with it. Everybody can see the made agreements. Nobody can change them from the outside. This results in full transparency. It creates trust by design.

An overarching goal for all participants is the only requirement. Everybody needs to be incentivised to deliver the highest possible value. This is why blockchain will create a value-based economy. Which is a beautiful thing!

No more bullshit jobs.

In 1930 John Maynard Kenyes predicted that by the end of the century the West would have achieved a 15-hour work week.
In technological terms we are quite capable of doing this. But, somehow we’ve figured out ways to work more. A large part of the working class secretly believes they’re performing unnecessary tasks. Dealing big blows on our moral and spirituality.
Productive jobs have been automated away. While mangerial, clerical and service workers have tripled. Bankers, lawyers and consultants are idolised and receive bloated wages. We resent real, productive workers. Whose work has clear and undeniable social value. The current work regime is perfectly designed to maintain the power of finance capital.

This part was paraphrased. Based on the article:
On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs by David Graeber.

“Hell is a collection of individuals who are spending the bulk of their time working on a task they don’t like and are not especially good at.”

More and more people are slowly realising this. Resulting in the many corporate refugees.

Blockchain is going to serve the final blow!

Bitcoin is the first financial application of blockchain. Aiming to take out the banks. Entire firms are next. Decentralised Autonomous Organisations, DAO’s, are organisations governed by blockchain-software. New business models will be necessary. New industries will enter society. A new value-based era is dawning.

Let’s get back to the construction industry.

Currently construction projects require more lawyers then engineers. Bulky contracts are dictating every move. Leaving no room for changing circumstances. We’re fixing variables like time and money. Quality becomes an inferior priority.

Fixing your budget and deadline is calling for problems.

This might sound counter-inuitive at first. But, there’s a much saner thing you can do. The thing we should fix is the relationship between the different stakeholders. Also known as benefit-sharing. Similar to what actual partnerships in a company do. Everybody owns their slice of the pie. Together they aim to bake the biggest possible pie. There’s your overarching goal!

You determine an allocation key by calculating every parties’ contribution in the consortium. This key is stored in a personal blockchain environment. This virtual environment would be integrated with chat-rooms and decision-making tools. The partnership aims to reach consensus over every occuring change in circumstances. The contracts get automatically updated. A dashboard could show the real-time status of the project.

We could even go as far as keeping track of each partner’s reputation. Did the sub-contractor accomplish its activity as agreed upon? Did he finish it in time? Did the main-contractor pay in time? Does everybody present valuable contributions to occuring problems?
Everything could be tracked. Increasing or decreasing your weight in the voting processes. Creating an incentive for proper behaviour. Without any financial triggers.

Budget and delivery date will become an indirect consequence of the joined activities. Not the goal, as what happens when you fix your budget and deadline. Over time, more reliable estimates can be made. Turning succesfull projects into the norm, instead of the exception.

Benefit-sharing agreements, stored in a personal blockchain environment, enable a virtual company on top of a consortium.

This is a “new” business model (based on an old principle). Eliminating bullshit-jobs. Letting internet-companies rise as a new industry. Made possible by blockchain.

Welcome, to the dawn of the value-based era!

In the next, and last post, of this series I will visualise the potential we could tap into for the future of the construction industry.

I feel like I’m rising from my ashes.

Recently we received the last nail in the coffin for Hydrogen Speedup. I knew from the beginning it was very broad and ambitious. I also knew it concealed a lot of potential. I knew this initiative would be a good starting point for my entrepreneurial journey. Solving the reasons preventing it to work became the new goal.

Let me tell you how!

Hydrogen Speedup basically was a student project that got out of hand. Organising a conference with an American professor as guest-speaker.

Traveling the Middle-East for a trade mission.

Having an overall great experience with two amazing friends.

Unfortunately we had to conclude our approach was not going to work out. For the following two reasons:

• Cultural differences prevented an effective global collaboration.
  We envisioned an international eco-system for innovation in hydrogen technology.
  We were based in the “start-up friendly” Netherlands. We concluded Qatar was the ideal place to realise a proof of concept for our hydrogen plant. We had a professor in America willing to collaborate in the research and development of the technology.
  This mix of cultural differences presented some interesting challenges.
  Apparently universities in America are highly competitive. “Surprisingly”, resulting in carefull handling of intellectual property.
  Apparently research insititutes in the Middle-East get top-down instructions, of their government, about what kind of topics they can research. Surprisingly, Hydrogen was not one of them.
  Both differences would make a long-term collaboration unlikely.
• Construction consortia don’t work in a project-transcending manner.
  We envisioned effective partnerships for building the hydrogen plants. Surprisingly, most construction partnerships have the lifespan of just one project. Apparently construction projects end up in big fights after delivering their project too late and over budget.

In a nutshell; the world wasn’t ready yet.

Currently I’m finishing up my master-thesis. I’m researching a solution for construction partnerships to do work in a project-transending manner. It basically comes down to creating a overarching goal for the whole consortium.

Let me explain this.

In a construction project you have a commisioner, main-contractor and sub-contractors. A consortium is a team of the main-contractor and its sub-contractors. Together they aim to solve the problem owned by the commisioner.
A tender is a competition were different consortia offer their solution for a construction problem. Usually the cheapest submission wins. This is why consortia usually make promises they cannot live up to.
With the traditional tender approach all parties pursue their own goal. They all try to maximise their own profit. This is done by taking it away from others and shifting-of responsibilities. Eventually this turns in to big legal disputes, delays and budget overruns. In the end they will never want to work together again. A succesfull construction project is the exception, not the norm.

With each construction project the wheel has to be reinvented. Both design and organisation wise.

What if…

you could create a virtual company on top of a consortium? Making everybody work together in a transparent and committed manner. Building long-term relations that transcend over projects for multiple years. Creating room to experiment new things and implement innovations. Turning succesfull projects into the norm, instead of the exception.

I’m doing my research in collaboration with a mid-sized contractor. They are experimenting with building such a virtual company. This way I learned that the timing for this solution is exactly right. Obviously there is much to gain for companies in the construction industry. This is why I decided to pivot my entrepreneurial journey into this new direction. As a phoenix rising out of its ashes.

What if…

this new direction would even dare to solve the cultural difference problem? Creating a virtual company running its governance and administrattion on software, instead of human management. Creating an enviroment were every cultural work-style can blossom. Creating the opportunity to tap into the collective human intellect. How cool would that be!?

Take a second, imagine the possibilities … !

In the next part I will explain how I intend to make this happen.

The rise of a new energy era!

While times are getting exciting with my start-up, I wanted to give family and friends a bit more context on what I’m actually doing. A blog seemed like the most fitting way. With this entry I would like to launch Hydrogen Speedup to my close relations and everybody else interested. This will be the place where I’ll share my thoughts, experiences and anecdotes of the adventures lying ahead.

The idea of initiating this blog started after I watched the movie “This Changes Everything” by Naomi Klein. The incomplete information, regarding the causes of climate change, got me slightly annoyed. Lots of argumentation was factually wrong, backed with selective footage and no real solutions were presented. The realization hit me that finally I knew enough, about something, to make some sensible judgement-calls.

The movie is mostly about organized protests against large energy corporations, in efforts that seem quite futile. It’s important to realize that these protests are held mainly because their living situation is negatively affected and becoming harmful to their health. Like contamination of groundwater. Not because of the negative consequences of climate change on humanity. Such social injustices by multinationals, against the poor, are happening all over the world. Only the people in third-world countries don’t have the resources and equipment to make a fancy movie about it.

Next to that, they focus solely on fossil fuels as the cause of climate change. While this is only a part of the total amount of greenhouse gas emissions. Land-use, deforestation and the food industry also contribute considerably.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great thing Naomi Klein is raising awareness on this topic! I believe the movie is right in saying that the capitalistic system is the cause of these social injustices. That’s the link that should have been explained more extensively.
In order to really start solving this problem its important to start asking the right question. How are we going to repair this broken system?

But to save humanity from climate change I don’t believe we necessarily need to repair the capitalistic system, we just need to use it against itself. We’re not going to overthrow the “masters of mankind” (the supranational corporations and financial institutions that dominate the world economy, including international trade) anytime soon and waiting for that will be to late. So if you can’t beat them, join them and change it from the inside. Give the established parties in power (from now on “the establishment”) the prospect of continuing to make more money by doing the right thing.

Renewable energy sources are not the answer to this, because the establishment is heavily invested in fossil fuels. They’re not (yet) able to make money from renewables, so they put the brake on every development heading in that direction.
Besides, an immediate switch to renewables would be disastrous to humanity as well. Renewables themselves are not able to fully support our energy needs. Political establishments would collapse, societies revolt and the world would live in chaos.

That’s why we need a transition in which we’re able to use fossil fuels in a clean way. To buy more time. So the establishment can adjust and develop ways to satisfy our energy needs in a non-polluting way.

That’s exactly what hydrogen can offer us!

Hydrogen can be produced from methane, the main component of natural gas. It has the potential to fully replace fossil fuels and become the foundation of our future. Providing fuel for transport, electricity and heating. The vision of a hydrogen based economy is nothing new, but until recently it wasn’t technically and financially feasible to realize it.

The arguments against the use of hydrogen were that the conventional way of producing hydrogen, from methane, emit 3 to 5 times more CO2 then you’ll save by using it. The other half of the problem was that hydrogen is the smallest existing molecule, with an extremely low boiling point. This made it very expensive to store and transport the gas. Next to that, Elon Musk is of course famous for his condescending remarks about hydrogen fuel cell technology.

All these hurdles are in the past!

With Hydrogen Speedup we’ve discovered that technologies have advanced in such a way that all these core problems could be solved relatively easy. On our website you can read precisely how we aim to solve this. The core concept is converting methane to hydrogen with sunlight. Hydrogen Speedup has the goal to reach the tipping point towards hydrogen, replacing fossil fuels, in 2050. We do this by organizing student based projects, to realize CO2 neutral hydrogen production plants. We’re aiming to become a collaborative, global community joining forces with all major energy players.

Collaboration is the key-concept here. Putting the brightest people in the world together to restore the balance between the sun and the earth. To realize the green transition that can be sustained indefinitely.
Like mentioned in the beginning: fossil fuels, and the energy sector, are only a part of the total greenhouse gas emissions. Solving that part alone will not completely save us of the consequences from climate change. But, luckily, most of those can be obviated by changing our individual lifestyle. We can only overcome the threat, of climate change, by collaborating and all taking responsibility for our own part.

Now it has become possible to convert sunlight to fuel, a new energy era has dawned. This is the unavoidable step energy companies have to take In order to stay ahead of their competition in the current capitalistic system.

Let’s speed up!