“There is one permit issued every five minutes through Civit systems.” With over one lakh architects, 7,000 contractors, several developers, and over 800 municipalities using the Civit platform, this statement by SoftTech Engineers Limited founder and CEO, Vijay Gupta, is significant. Indian Architects, Engineers, and Construction (AEC) professionals still struggle to meet established norms due to the complexity of rules, multiple governing agencies, and subjective interpretations.

IIT Mumbai alumnus Vijay Gupta has spent over 26 years as a first-generation entrepreneur, creating technologies that would bring ease of use to working professionals in the construction sector. The journey of Civit is one of continuous innovation. However, to make it accessible to AEC professionals, the platform integrates easy-to-use technologies that align with codes to ensure compliance. CivitPERMIT, CivitPLAN, CivitINFRA, CivitBUILD and CivitOPERATE – is a platform designed for all stakeholders in the AEC sector. The aim is to address the vertical from planning to permitting to infrastructure building and management as well as construction and assets management.

Initial products on different platforms were consolidated, renamed, and re-architected with new technologies into a single Civit suite in 2022. It is designed to use Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to meet the needs of the construction industry.  It was designed to be seamless and available on the cloud.

CivitPERMIT: Designed for urban planning and permits, it tracks sanctioned vs as built for authorised construction. The government is the largest user of the Civit suite, utilizing it for multiple infrastructure projects that involve architects, contractors, builders, and developers. Rules were complex and there were multiple stakeholders involved. Rules were also not static for a city or state. The subjectivity in their usage could be removed by connecting technology to drawings. This has been made easier with AI and Machine Learning. In 2005-6 the Pune Municipal Corporation became the first user of the CivitPERMIT prototype. Today 800-900 municipalities use that product. About 110 local bodies in Andhra Pradesh use CivitPERMIT, and it powers the backend in 19 states, accounting for approximately 80 percent of the building permits market in India.

CivitBUILD: The struggle for industry professionals could be because of project delays, cost overruns, data fragmentation and challenging resource management scenarios. As a construction ERP software, CivitBUILD is essential mainly for architects, contractors and builders to streamline project management, budgeting, resource allocation, and compliance. It integrates various processes like designing, procurement, scheduling, and accounting, enabling better decision-making, cost control, and efficient collaboration across teams, ensuring timely project completion and profitability.

CivitINFRA: This tool for public infrastructure management is used by contractors, developers and city officials. It handles permit stages and data for continuing management. It aims to transform the way the city strategizes and acquires resources, oversees contractors and manages projects for timely and cost-effective completion of public infrastructure projects. It ensures end-to-end monitoring, seamless contractor-department collaboration with digital workflow and AI driven predictive analysis for operational, financial and project health. Other features include financial and cost management, a materials library for smart procurement, and centralized asset and inventory management. It also has tender, bid and contractor management, seamless integration of systems between the agency, GIS and third-party systems and smart applications that can be easily configured and scaled.

CivitPLAN: This is the industry’s first AI-powered pre-submission building plan validation tool for compliance to all the building bye laws and building codes in the city. It helps architects and construction professionals check if the building plan adheres to city and state regulations, before the plan is submitted for approval. This saves architects and other professionals time, and money spent in correcting building plans for code compliance when it is rejected by the approval authorities. The CivitPLAN ensures that the CAD drawing and Building Information Models are in line with sustainability and construction norms in the city.

CivitOPERATE: This product suite is built to handle different pre- and post-construction levels. The newest product on the block, CivitOPERATE, focuses on management of the performance of the assets of a building. It conforms to the Energy Conservation Building Codes (ECBC). The compliance level is assessed and monitored by the systems. This includes chillers, Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) pumps and different assets such as escalators and lifts in malls.  The data sets are managed to assess where energy can be optimised. Since 40 percent of global carbon emissions come from buildings and infrastructure, meeting compliance goals is challenging. However, by mapping technology to rules and regulations and then data sets to project goals, long-term assessment of the carrying capacity of the project, locality or even the city is possible.

Countering the first challenge of inertia at various levels, understanding the requirements of multiple professionals and systems as well as mapping the existing data sets to what can eventually be master sets is the challenge that Civit Suites and its earlier avatars have dealt with. Today, the task is to take this forward to managing climate change driven environmental norms to reach the global carbon targets.