How did your career influence your decision to found a company that 3D prints concrete?
I started as a geologist and then did a Ph.D. in cosmochemistry, so I’m more of a scientist than an engineer. Following that, I spent started my career in the development of building materials and concrete products. I was at Holcim, one of the largest building material firms in the world and it was there that I learned most of my technical and marketing skills in concrete construction, through working on the development of high-level strategic products. Then in my career, I went from developing new concrete products to new production processes and then doing business development. When I was doing business development I realized the potential of being a small and agile company offering the technology to many customers. So it was a natural move to found a company.

Is it harder to shake up an industry like construction?
The industry is extremely traditional, I know that from 25 years in the business. It’s conservative and slow to adapt but that is really what gets me out of bed in the morning — I want to change the industry and set new standards. I want to bring in technology that has been hugely effective elsewhere to make the actual process of building far more efficient.

What made you see the need for 3D printing in building?
During the years I spent at a concrete manufacturer – Creabeton, we worked on a lot of projects in civil engineering and building and we constantly ran up against the same problems. We would develop products and then when they were being installed underground or built, we would come up against obstacles in the ground which meant that we needed to modify or change the product. This would increase costs and take more time to build out the project. So, through this daily difficulty and my pain as an engineer, I realized we needed to use digital fabrication much more to push down costs and streamline processes.

“Through my pain as an engineer, I realized we needed to use digital fabrication much more.”

Why did you zero in on 3D printing concrete chambers for utilities and telecoms?
When I was working with Creabeton, we had many different cable chamber customers. We were doing the same process again and again and it was obvious that we needed to find a more efficient way of doing it. We were confronted daily with this problem – of drilling into the road and then finding several obstacles – like other cables or water pipes we had to work around. This means the project takes longer and you need to pay more for labor but also more to the city in fines for keeping the road closed longer than anticipated. So I kept thinking about how to make it more efficient and then I started developing a 3D printer.

What made you decide to leave the corporate world and found a startup instead of developing it in-house with a major player in the industry?
I think within the corporate environment you are more constrained when trying out new ideas. But as a startup, you are much freer to try out different ideas and learn from mistakes that help you progress. Another major benefit is that we are not bound in with one construction company. We are a neutral player that can work with many customers, which also means more use cases and more opportunity to refine our idea.

What are the major things you’ve learned so far?
That we need to provide a robust but also an intuitive and user-friendly system for the customer that can be operated by a worker. So that goes beyond being the technology. It’s both robust hardware and a User Experience centric software. We’ve tried to make it simple to use and not over-engineer everything. Thinking about what the customer needs is the central aspect. Our technology should not scare the customer.

What other potential applications do you see for Mobbot down the line?
The first application is the electrical cable chambers. So we have focused there as 3D printing the chamber for the cables provides a real answer to a real need. It’s also the best first door to knock on for any construction company as it’s a tricky problem that everyone is wrestling with. We can also address the telecommunication and water utility products. But beyond that, there are other structures in buildings, such as non-load bearing walls, which would make sense for us to be thinking about. We’re also very interested in the entire movement to make the construction business more sustainable as we have strong proof points that 3D printing has a big effect here.

What makes Mobbot a more environmentally sustainable choice?
It’s one of the clear ways we differentiate from our competition. Our competitors often use a proprietary mix of concrete for 3D printing. We’re allowing construction companies to use their usual concrete mix, which means local raw materials with a lower carbon footprint. We also decrease the amount of concrete that they use thanks to higher concrete performance, so that’s a plus on sustainability as well as being more efficient and cheaper for the company as well. They get the same product produced 25 x faster.

What motivates you?
We want to bring efficiency and to set a new standard on how concrete elements are produced — we want to be the Tesla of the construction industry.

How has COVID 19 impacted the business so far?
At the moment, we perceive the coronavirus as an opportunity. Construction is one of the few areas of the economy in which projects are continuing and ongoing. Industry leaders are thinking more about the ways people work. Construction is one industry where workers are often bunched up together in small enclosed spaces. They are starting to perceive such situations as something where automation and robotics can be a big help. We don’t want to replace people but we do want to enable more automation so people don’t have to work so closely together.