Data Gumbo, a leader in blockchain for the oil and gas sectors, is moving into the construction sector and has hired Michael Matthews (above) as industry principal to bring his expertise in streamlining capital projects to maximise performance and efficiency.
Data Gumbo believes its blockchain system of “smart contracts” can help eliminate construction’s historic problems with productivity and cost overruns.
The company claims its GumboNet platform enables the automation of contracts by capturing data from existing systems, then using the data to independently validate performance against terms and conditions, and posting the results on an immutable, distributed ledger for approval by the contractual parties. It says: “GumboNet directly addresses the industry’s ‘pain points’ by fostering trust among project stakeholders, establishing a single source of truth and delivering visibility into productivity, cost, schedule and safety performance.”
Matthews added: “The construction industry lags far behind other industries in both productivity improvement and technology adoption, resulting in billions of lost values. The way companies come together to execute projects remains essentially the same despite technology’s improvement and we have to make fundamental, disruptive changes to deliver more value.
“Prevailing contracting models and disparate systems greatly limit the movement of information and harden distrust between companies, resulting in up to 30-40% of project costs being hidden in transaction burden. I want to fundamentally change our industry by eliminating those costs and the GumboNet platform is a low hurdle, big impact solution that I am excited to bring to construction.”
Matthews comes to Data Gumbo with more than 30 years’ experience in the construction industry as an owner, contractor and consultant. He was previously vice president of strategy & consulting at tech provider Enstoa where he worked on accelerating digital transformations for clients in the building and industrial sectors.
Prior to this, he was director at PWC and before that held senior management positions with Faithful+Gould and Honeywell after starting his career with Texaco.
Image: Data Gumbo
