Redesign roulette eliminated by Irish architecture start-up

FenestraPro co-founder Dave Palmer admits that many architects may find the company’s new building design solution invaluable because, above all else, “it lets them prove they’re right”.

The architectural technologist by trade, and former DIT lecturer in the School of Architecture, began the company in 2012 alongside Simon Whelan after the pair had run their own firm for several years.

Palmer had just completed a master’s degree in façade engineering from the University of Bath, and as part of his final dissertation he developed the algorithms that would become the basis of FenestraPro.

The cloud-based software allows architects to design the key parameters of a commercial building façade from the outset. Focused on environmentally-efficient, cost-effective and standards-compliant parameters, early road testing from “some of Ireland’s biggest architectural firms” confirmed Palmer was on to something.

He and Whelan began working on the company from DIT’s Hothouse innovation hub and, as market testing continued, investment from Enterprise Ireland in the shape of competitive start-up funding followed.

Currently in the process of closing a seed round of investment, Palmer experienced start-up success previously in the late 1990s with BuildOnline.com – a document management system for the construction industry.

“We raised around €35 million and became one of the biggest players around Europe,” he says. Palmer left the business in 2002.

Now, Palmer says the big selling point for this start-up is the fact that it’s “an early-stage design tool as opposed to an analysis tool”.

“A lot of our competitors are focused on analysis and that’s where you get a chicken and egg scenario,” he says.

“ In other words, you have to have the building practically designed or somewhat designed before you can actually start to do analysis.

“What our software does is that at an early stage in the design process, once the architect knows the shape or mass of the building, they can use FenestraPro.

Redesign loop
"It tells them – based on the performance of the wall and the glazing – how much glass you can have on the building.

“Based on its location and orientation you know where it is best to distribute that glass around the building to maximise the heat gain or to control overheating, which is a major problem in commercial buildings, even in our climate.”

All of which, says Palmer, makes life a lot easier of the architect and everyone else involved in the construction process.

“The problem in the industry at the moment is there’s a redesign loop, so whereby the architect will design the building, they’ll use the rules of thumb and do a certain amount of analysis as he or she goes through the process.

“However, typically when the mechanical engineer gets involved they say ‘there’s too much glass on the south side’ or that a particular glass configuration can be problematic, then comes the redesign process.

“With us, that late-stage redesign is eliminated and therefore improves the process dramatically for the architect, as well as saving time, money and optimising the performance of the façade.”

Palmer adds that as any design progresses “you can use FenestraPro to re-establish the performance characteristics of the façade” if needed as well.

Targeting “large scale architectural practices”, industry leaders both here and in the UK have already signed up to use the product.

In the meantime, Palmer adds that FenestraPro has “a deployment with a team on a particular project at the moment who are from the largest architectural firm in the world, Gensler, who employ 4,000 staff”.

Should that project and others continue to go well, and seed funding come in as expected, FenestraPro itself hopes to double its workforce – though that means a far more modest bump from four to eight employees.

Currently working on the development of a FenestraPro plug-in for the industry-leading Autodesk 3D design software as well, Palmer says confidence is high.

“The industry quite frustrated by the problem of redesign, and our software is quite intuitive, easy to use and helps solve that problem.”