Driven by data, obsessed by insights by Maarten Herelikxa

Maarten is one of Neanex’ newer assets. As a graduate in international business (Ghent, Paris), he first gained experience as a business analyst in the fashion industry before joining the Neanex team, where he applies his vision on the Business Intelligence (B.I.) aspect of their business. 

The reason for the move towards a more complex sector, where the stakes are higher can easily be explained. ‘I love how new insights can be drawn from data-stacks once you know how to work with them. I loved my work in the fashion industry, but in the end, you always depend on trends and the success of collections. In the building industry, there’s more stability in the output and the workflow, and the challenges are vast, complex and need a long-term vision. This is an environment where I can thrive and grow.’

Neanex supports your team to aim higher.

‘My tasks are extremely varied because we offer a wide range of services. Throughout the entire process of building, constructing, and maintaining a site, we work together with the different parties involved. Our job as consultants is to advise on both the requirements and the flow and treatment of data. 

Now we’re aiming one step higher. As you know the Neanex-Digital Asset Register aims to extract useful information from the data sources provided by all parties involved in a building process. Those data are turned into useful instruments for maintenance, cost efficiency and management of the building process.

Business Intelligence & Building Information Management connected.

In fact, there’s no reason to stop at this point. In view of the wide variety of our current clients, there’s also a possibility to use the data in the Business decision process. 

It’s all about structuring and streamlining the information flow, rather than drowning in a sea of data. Once you have processed and integrated the data, you can derive knowledge and insights about the current building site. 

And once you have more projects, all systematically monitored and managed in the same way, you get new data sets, new insights, that can help with financial analysis, with capital structure, with more complex business decisions. 

Business intelligence in itself isn’t new, but it is fascinating to see that technology allows us to dive deeper into those data, not necessarily to obtain more details (which is an interesting side effect), but more specifically to develop new data sets, to gain insights in the business processes. 

In doing so we allow our clients, be it the contractors or the asset owners, to gain insights in these very complex building cycles. Insights of on a higher level, allowing them to spread risks, speed up investments and/or group and predict purchases of raw materials. 

Rail Baltica, Riga Central Station, at the first stepping stone towards more insights.

I’ve spent a substantial part om my time actively working on these kinds of insights, directly with our team, working in Riga on the new Central Railway Station, an ambitious  part of the Rail Baltica project     

Of course, all this will not be realized overnight, but prospects are promising. 

It’s a fabulous experience to be able to work with highly skilled and driven professionals. 

My specific ‘added value’ is that I do not think as an engineer but rather develop my reflections from a business perspective. 

In that sense, our target industry, the AECO sector,  is a rather traditional one, with limited harmonisation in and between projects. Every project is considered as a specific and unique assignment. A one off project with a one off process. We believe you can standaardize the process on building projects. Looking for common denominators and differences will allow us to add even more value. That’s what I am set out to achieve within Neanex.