With a boom of investment in construction software from both venture capitalists and vertical players with established business solutions, some contractors may not think of Microsoft technologies as their business backbone.
But Swiss systems integrator and Microsoft Gold Partner SoftwareOne is out to change that by repping the RIB CCS construction software suite in North America. RIB is owned by Schneider Electric, having been acquired in 2020 in a $1.5 billion transaction.
"This key transaction strengthens Schneider Electric’s position as a major player in the digital transformation of the engineering and construction industry, and brings significant benefits to our customers, streamlining their digital journey from the building to the operation phase," Schneider Electric Chairman and CEO Jean-Pascal Tricoire said in a statement at the time.
RIB’s offering is comprehensive, and includes:
- RIB Candy, for on-screen quantity takeoff, estimating and project planning
- RIB BuildSmart, for enterprise cost management across contractors, equipment, time cards, overhead and balance sheets
- RIB Connect for strategic and tactical decision support
- RIB 4.0 for 5D BIM project lifecycle management including BI and AI
The suite encompasses supporting functions including procurement, valuations, inventory, subcontractor management, payroll and more. Stuttgart, Germany-based RIB is not a small company—it has about 1,000 employees and offices around the world. But SoftwareOne is about nine times that size in terms of headcount, with 200 devoted entirely to architecture, engineering and construction (AEC). This makes SoftwareOne an attractive and likely stable partner able to find new friends for the RIB solutions and then onboard and support contractors once they are live. According to SoftwareOne North American Industry Marketing Leader David DeRego in a 2023 discovery call, the company goes to market in North American through four sales reps, and established customers are supported by a team of 10.
“We are unique in that we are a reseller or solution provider for RIB,” DeRego said. “They are the developer of the product MTWO, which is what we are selling.”
DeRego said MTWO includes some of SoftwareOne’s own technology, and the agreement is deeper than those with the 7,500 other software publishers the company works with.
“The arrangement between RIB is similar but different in that SoftwareOne decided it was time to expand into vertical solutions,” DeRego said. “After signing that agreement, we went through a massive recruiting process to recruit 200 from around the globe with a footprint in construction industry.”
RIB had bundled its construction solutions into a the ITWO 4.0 enterprise control software suite, which according to DeRego was sold as an on-premise solution.
ITWO Construction Software in the Cloud
SoftwareOne was able to revisit this architecture and launch the solution on the Microsoft Azure Cloud.
“We decided the time was right to offer this in the cloud on subscription,” DeRego said. “The M in MTWO stands for Microsoft. The TWO stands for digital twin.”
With MTWO, construction teams and companies get a single application that extends across the design, build, operate maintain asset lifecycle.
“The MTWO product is a complete and end-to-end integrated solution for plan, build and operate,” DeRego said. “We handle BIM model management, estimating and quantity takeoffs. The beauty of our solutions is the hundreds of configurable models, open APIs and our position as a platform rather than just a solution. A lot of organizations are using an estimating solution or Primavera for project management. We can actually bring all the sourced data into MTWO.”
The bulk of MTWO’s horsepower is aimed at preconstruction, including the ability to do 5D what-if simulations by bringing in a REVIT model and layering on the schedule and estimate to capture cost.
“We don’t have any job costing but can pull in any ERP solution to pull in actual costs,” DeRego said.
Once a project is won, SoftwareOne’s MTWO continues to drive value with resource planning and project control, field productivity including mobile job ticketing, and progress reporting.
MTWO includes workflow management functionality that streamlines standard workflows. This tool can be configured for full automation, according to DeRego.
MTWO includes its own scheduling tool, but users can also extend the application with Primavera P6. ling but can use P6 to help with that. DeRego stressed there was also functionality for prefabrication.
The return on the MTWO investment comes through lowered cost and better owner experience.
“Our customers wind up winning more purposeful work because they can collaborate more effectively with all the stakeholders and provide a better service to the owner,” DeRego said. “Talk about reducing cost, one way to have very little rework.”
But the ability to manage projects across multiple dynamics including nonfinancial ones like environmental impact.
“The sustainability conversation is really important for us, and we're doing a lot there,” SoftwareOne President and Global Head of AEC Dustin Anderson said in a video interview at CONEXPO-CON/AGG 2023. “We can actually look at that early estimation process, material and products. If you build it this way, here's your carbon footprint. This way, we can reduce carbon. We can look at things like transportation costs by a material vendor that is 20 miles away versus 2000 miles away.”
MTWO Pricing and Market
Software One’s MTWO is sold on a per-user, named user basis, according to DeRego. While the application is designed to span the entire project lifecycle, DeRego said buyers might subscribe just to estimating. Each user account can be extended outside of the company through an associated six external users that are allowed to collaborate in the system.
Due to the pan-lifecycle scope of the product, owners and generals with more than $75 million in revenue are all solid fits for MTWO.
“We are targeting the general and the owner or developer,” DeRego said. “The focus is on the general contractor building heavy civil projects or commercial and industrial projects. There is functionality for subcontractor management. Our resource management module enables you to keep track of the people, equipment, collect bids and manage subcontractors.”
BOTTOM LINE: Construction contractors and owners/developers have a growing number of Procore alternatives at their disposal, from vendors including Sage, Trimble, Autodesk and others. SoftwareOne offers not only this encapsulated construction software suite, but deep hooks into other software vendors and global reach. Its 5D modeling capability, process automation and global footprint may make SoftwareOne MTWO an attractive choice for larger contractors straddling international boundaries. The company, traded on the Swiss Stock Exchange, has been courted by private buyers and recently rebuffed a bid from Bain Capital. Serious prospects with large project budgets may want to learn what they can about company’s roadmap under NDA during a selection process. But given its size and its focus on provisioning and servicing software versus development, an acquisition may have negligible impact on MTWO users.
