Sitowie acquires solid means to revolutionize the predictive maintenance of buildings

Sitowie announces raising 1,7 million euros from the PRVF managed by Karista, Paris Business Angels, Femmes Business Angels as well as investment companies WinEquity and Unico to accelerate its development in France. The Paris-based start-up aims to provide real estate players and asset managers with an innovative solution to predict the deterioration of their assets and extend the life of buildings while combating carbon emissions. . It already has several clients: social landlords, local authorities, landlords, real estate departments are in fact asking for more rationalization in their programming.

Created in 2018 by Pauline Koch – an architect by profession and a graduate of the École des Ponts ParisTech – Sitowie today brings together a team of around fifteen employees with high-level technical and scientific profiles (doctors in digital simulation, materials, engineering civilian, developer…). Scientific management is provided by Yann Lefeuvre, who himself has 20 years' experience in the construction sector.

Intelligent aging of buildings: an issue for which to mobilize

Aging well is an essential issue that does not only affect humans: buildings are also concerned. Thus, many real estate professionals in France are finally taking the measure of the challenge of the aging of their real estate assets.

However, many fleet managers find themselves helpless when it comes to combating this problem. What is the optimal budget to properly maintain my fleet? In a constrained budget, how to go about it? How can I make my work plans more reliable and considerably reduce budget overruns? Will the scheduled work bring substantial savings and the expected ROI? How to reconcile increased yields and obtaining the SRI label, which is very important for the company's reputation and financing?

So many questions which, until now, did not find simple and direct answers, in particular because the available data is often insufficient, companies are not yet data-driven enough and do not know where to obtain the necessary missing data. , complicated and too expensive BIM models…

The innovative solution provided by Sitowie

Faced with this diagnosis, Sitowie provides a concrete solution to companies managing a real estate portfolio, regardless of their maturity in the field of data use, to set up effective predictive maintenance, meaningful and generating savings and of financial gain.

The start-up markets a SaaS platform called Predibat which, based on existing data at the client's, automatically generates a technical repository structured around a simple but sufficient BIM model in operation. The datasets are supplemented by open-data. Depending on the state of the data, it is possible to generate the BIM model of a building in 1 minute. From this reliable and structured repository, the user has access to current and future risk and degradation scores for each component. Thanks to the tool, he has an initial work strategy optimized according to a target budget, a strategy that he can amend if necessary. He will be able to follow the progress of the work and compare the forecast with the reality.

The challenges faced by Sitowie are crucial for the entire sector since extending the lifespan of buildings makes it possible to:

• Contribute positively to the fight against global warming: Sitowie makes it possible to reduce the carbon footprint of buildings by up to 34% and is now working to reduce energy consumption. Extending the lifespan of a building's components reduces its carbon footprint, consumes fewer raw resources and better controls energy consumption. While regulations are tightening on these points (tertiary decree, SRI label, etc.), the current shortage of materials and energy reinforces the relevance of these reflections.
• Improve the financial profitability of real estate assets: thanks to Sitowie, it is possible to move from curative, purely reactive maintenance to a predictive strategy and save up to 35% on maintenance and investment budgets.
  Sitowie also offers a solution to digitize real estate data easily and inexpensively. According to initial customer feedback, the solution saves at least 25% on internal processes by considerably facilitating the generation of a technical baseline, the construction and costing of work schedules as well as their monitoring.

“Real estate professionals absolutely must mobilize for the planet and for themselves. The building sector is the largest consumer of energy: it represents 43% of French energy consumption. Each year, it produces more than 120 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, or nearly a quarter of national emissions, according to the Ministry of the Environment. There are now reliable, economical and efficient solutions to ensure greater sustainability and profitability of buildings. This is all the more important in the current context of shortages. Let's go! », explains Pauline Koch, CEO of Sitowie.

“The construction sector is the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, but few solutions address the existing stock and the post-construction building life cycle. The Sitowie solution is at the heart of the concerns of real estate players: making the building more sustainable while controlling maintenance costs which can represent up to 80% of the costs of a project along the life cycle. We are proud to support Pauline and Sitowie in this ambitious project”, concludes Benjamin Zerbib investment director at Karista.

The company is also surrounded by mentors such as:

• Christian Cleret, Honorary President of ADI, Co-president of the RBR Group 2020-2050 Sustainable Building Plan;
• Philippe Jouan, President Jouan & Associés, Former President RICS France;
• Pierre Schoeffler, Global Asset Allocation & Sustainable Investing Advisor, Advisor to the Chairman of La Française;
• Thierry Thibaux, Former Technical Director of EIFFAGE Travaux Publics;
• Jean-Michel Torrenti, Researcher at Gustave Eiffel University, Professor at École des Ponts ParisTech.