Building CATALYST provides the American building construction industry’s first SaaS (Software as a Service) application for automating planning, preconstruction and cost management, based on the facility’s functions and other key attributes. See “Building CATALYST Commercialization Use” below.
Building CATALYST predicts and analyzes a facility’s space program, building and site parameters, schedule and construction costs. See “Building CATALYST Baseline Use” below.
The use of CATALYST is most successful when the subscriber enters and applies its own project data history. See “Subscriber Benchmark Use” below.The subscriber controls the information and data entered into Building CATALYST, and can add, edit or delete project data in part or in total. Deleting a project will prevent any internal user from accessing that data. To permanently destroy data, the subscriber must contact Building CATALYST and request the same.
Building CATALYST agrees that subscriber data is strictly confidential, in that there will be no means by which other parties, including other subscribers, can view or identify aggregated or discrete data in relation to a subscriber or project, unless expressly agreed to or otherwise provided for in the Building CATALYST IT Data Security and Privacy Policy and Employment Agreement. All Building CATALYST employees are required to sign and comply with this Security and Privacy Policy. Subscriber agrees that Building CATALYST may identify subscriber as a data contributor and/or CATALYST subscriber for marketing purposes.
Each user account is to be used by no more than one person for purposes of adding, editing or accessing project information. Subscriber agrees that its users will not allow others to use their account.
If the subscriber is dissatisfied with Building CATALYST, it may, with 7 days written notice, terminate its subscription and stop paying on the subscription.
The current (2024) development status of Building CATALYST includes over 60 building types with defaulted value predictions, ready to receive real-world completed project data. About 40% of these building types have sufficient sampling of real-world data to make reliable predictions on many projects.
Building CATALYST subscribers also serve as data contributors and application collaborators, helping with new feature development and current feature improvement, and by notifying Building CATALYST of inconsistencies or bugs detected in its use. Historically, completed construction cost data is not captured in a consistent or useful format. This has required significant data conditioning to achieve the above data survey results, and greater reliability on new projects. CATALYST collaborates with subscribers to establish and apply consensus data standards to continue to improve outcomes, while also expanding data resources to capture more building types.
Building CATALYST predicts the ranges of outcomes based on the user’s selection of key program-related and other attributes. Building CATALYST performs multiple calculation passes to predict program, building and site parameters, schedule and cost outcomes. CATALYST starts out by establishing default or placeholder values, algorithms and adjustment factors to make initial hypothetical predictions. These predictions are then applied and compared to real world project results from past project data submitted by multiple sources, across differing building types, builders, geographical locations, etc. The Building CATALYST team studies these results and performs calibration to resolve variations from the space program to the construction cost. This is performed by comparing aggregated predictions to actual, and then revising the values, algorithms and adjustment factors accordingly. This calibration from actual market data results in the Building CATALYST Baseline (Mean, Low and High Range). The range values are intended to represent one standard deviation (68% probability of actual results falling between the low and high range). Building CATALYST displays a warning for building types that do not have underlying actual market results from which to calibrate more accurate outcomes.
The best results are achieved when subscribers record a sufficient sampling of their own actual completed project data – the first several of which should be reviewed with the Building Catalyst team. These completed projects serve as more useful benchmarks from which to predict and analyze likely outcomes for prospective or active preconstruction stage projects. It is incumbent upon the subscriber to record benchmark projects and to satisfy themselves as to the suitability of benchmark data provided. Building CATALYST provides a variety of reports and outputs needed for subscribers to do a detailed analysis of predicted-to-actual in order to determine suitability. Building CATALYST does not warrant or endorse predicted outcomes, and the use of Building CATALYST does not imply endorsement by Building CATALYST, LLC to the output generated. Any budgeting or contract determination of a building’s program, parameters, schedule and/or cost is to be evaluated and established by appropriate construction industry professionals. For the reasons described above, Building CATALYST LLC makes no claims apart from and assumes no liability with respect to the use of, or for damages resulting from the use of, the information produced by the Building CATALYST.
