Simple, powerful, affordable and fast: those are just four reasons why Calgary-based SaaS provider VEERUM is growing so rapidly, redefining how some of the world’s largest companies conduct their operations, save time and money, and keep their workers safe.

VEERUM’s Asset Visualization Platform creates 3D visualizations of industrial assets by combining engineering model data—CAD and geospatial data—with satellite and drone imagery, integrating them with IoT sensors and existing documents. It’s an amazing unification of many different kinds of data that traditionally haven’t worked well together, and it’s changing the way oil and gas, mining, utilities and industrial capital projects companies manage their assets. The most astonishing part: VEERUM can get its platform up and running in 48 hours.

“We can digitize an entire mine site on the other side of the world in under two days,” says CEO David Lod. “Where it used to take six months and significant financial investment in project management and set-up fees, we can now help clients reach ROI in one month, saving them millions of dollars on critical construction projects as well as operations management.”

HOW IT WORKS

Instead of taking the user to the site, VEERUM brings the site to the user. The site or asset in question—brownfield, construction site, mining operation, petrochemical plant and all components thereof, etc.—is digitized using drones and laser scanning; in some cases, this first step can be completed within minutes. VEERUM then combines this digitized data with any existing 2D, 3D design, satellite imagery and plot plans to create a rich 3D “digital twin” of the asset.

Decision making and quality control are supported by the ability to continuously compare and analyze project plans in respect to reality. Components that have been digitized at the point of manufacture are virtually assembled and placed on the digital site to help with construction planning. If information about any component is required, it’s easily accessed: just a click reveals all the relevant documentation. Two-way integrations link objects in the digital twin to the document management systems, so you can communicate issues to the rest of the project team and leave location-based action items.

Teams can also see progress measured in heat maps and other visuals. For example, colour-coding instantly communicates which components are installed and in and out of tolerance, as well as where uninstalled items are to go. Progress curves are automatically updated on project roadmaps. VEERUM’s digital twin integrates smoothly with third-party design software and is delivering the future of project execution in today’s digital world.

VEERUM has targeted large industrial asset owners and is seeing huge opportunities in manufacturing, utilities, and construction. “The digital twin market is exploding right now. Our use cases come from our clients' safety walkthroughs, third party contracted management, all these other areas and reasons that we wouldn’t have known without giving them access to these systems. We learn from them,” says Lod.

SEEING IS BELIEVING

Sometimes it’s difficult for asset managers to see the benefit of combining laser scans and site photos, operating manuals, and live sensor data. That is, until they see it.

VEERUM is primarily a visualization layer.

“It’s not just a matter of high-tech coolness,” says Lod. “It’s a way of communicating effectively with humans. We seem to learn much faster when data is presented in a 3D format.”

— David Lod, CEO, VEERUM

Lod believes that the VEERUM platform makes employees far more efficient and effective than ever before, citing scientific studies that find the human brain processes images 60,000 times faster than text, and that we retain data 400 per cent better when presented in a 3D context versus in textual format.

“The world’s platform to see itself,” states VEERUM’s website.

SAVING TIME, MONEY AND LIVES

During a petrochemical plant shutdown, every minute is critical. One of VEERUM’s clients needed to replace 13 primary extraction pumps, a difficult and time-consuming task to field fit. Errors in engineering or fabrication could delay start up, increase shutdown costs and increase the risk of safety incidents.

When VEERUM ran a constructability simulation, virtually assembling digitized components, they discovered that a critical pipe had been built improperly, although the fabricator’s specs showed no issues. Because the affected pipe would be used toward the end of the shutdown, not discovering it before starting would mean having to start over again. The precise nature of the problem would not have been obvious, and a lot of time would be spent figuring out where the problem was. The shutdown would have taken an extra 2-3 days and increased worker stress—not a good thing when people must make solidly logical decisions about safety and process in a potentially dangerous environment.

In the end, VEERUM saved their client 100-200 hours and somewhere between $800 thousand to $2.7 million of extra on-site work and field exposure hours, to which you can add the averted loss of ~90,000 barrels of product per day.

A CALGARIAN CULTURE CLUB

Eighty per cent of VEERUM employees are based in Calgary, with the rest in Toronto, Edmonton and the USA. Lod notes that the city has a deep bench in sales and marketing and finance and—most important—is also a hotbed for geospatial services. He believes that VEERUM’s substantial field-based geospatial experience has made the company’s software development so precise and so deeply useful.

“At VEERUM, we have a combined 200 years of oil and gas and geospatial tech experience. We’ve come from that expertise into tech, and not the other way around.” VEERUM takes experienced employees from oil and gas and field maintenance and brings them onboard as subject matter experts, where they help VEERUM connect with the companies and industries they came from. “We know that it’s important to understand how people work and it’s crucial to speak the same language. We retrain people who have come from a labour-based industry and accelerate their careers in a digital way.”

But there are so many opportunities for tech specialists in Calgary these days, and Lod is aware that VEERUM must compete for talent in terms of flexibility and pay— especially in terms of culture. “Are we creating something worthy of their time, talent and interest?” is how Lod puts it. He’s confident that VEERUM offers a compelling workplace. First off, they’re changing the way entire industries are working, saving massive amounts of time and money, and making people’s lives safer along the way. That’s an attractive proposition.

And then there’s VEERUM’s culture, which, according to a third-party HR firm brought in to assess the situation, is healthy in the extreme. “They’d never seen a company of VEERUM’s size that was so off the charts,” says Lod. “We had an average 94 per cent engagement and effectiveness—in the middle of a pandemic.”

Perhaps part of this success stems from the company’s commitment to continuous improvement, encouraging and enabling employees to keep learning and growing, especially when it comes to the tech skills that Lod believes will help future-proof both them and the company.

VEERUM has adopted the acronym SOLID to set their expectations of one another and to measure their relationships with each other, with clients, and with the community. It stands for Supportive, Optimistic, Listening, Innovative, and Dedicated. “When we’re evaluating a candidate, we just ask ourselves whether they’re ‘solid,’ and if they are, welcome to the team.”

Currently, VEERUM has around 35 employees; among them, they speak 17 languages. Sales presentations go out in Spanish, French, and English. “Our strength lives in our diversity,” says Lod. “We build on our different backgrounds and industry expertise. Diverse views are exciting and valuable for us.”

A TEN-YEAR-LONG OVERNIGHT SUCCESS

VEERUM was incubated by Calgary’s Zone Startups, and benefited from strategic and tactical guidance as well as access to investors and partners provided by the accelerator. They’ve also had funding from the National Research Council, the Government of Canada’s Western Innovation (WINN) initiative and Calgary-based geospatial accelerator, Tecterra. Having successfully completed these steps, which were critical for its early-stage growth, the company is now working with local venture capital to help fuel its continuing growth.

Lod observes that VEERUM isn’t the only local tech company experiencing success right now—there’s a huge surge in enthusiasm and capital around high-tech success in Alberta and in Calgary specifically.

“It’s a ten-year-long overnight success. It’s great to see the startups and scaleups hitting the radar; there have been so many years of driving forward and now all that effort is bearing fruit.”

— David Lod, CEO, VEERUM

Lod and other VEERUM employees participate regularly in industry roundtables and updates, mentoring other CEOS and startups, and helping them make connections within the industry. VEERUM has relationships with geospatial and software development groups and other industry-based associations, and Lod recently gave the keynote address to the 1,000 members of the Canadian Building Information Modeling (BIM) association, in which he discussed how to build a better world with digital collaboration.

VEERUM is building strong relationships with the city’s institutions of higher learning. They recently brought in three full-time interns from SAIT and the University of Calgary, using this informal arrangement as a way to draw new talent. Other VEERUM employees have spoken to computer science groups, participate in career days and give speeches and presentations, including within engineering departments. In 2019, VEERUM participated in a curriculum review with the University of Calgary’s Schulich School of Engineering, consulting on how engineering departments can adopt the latest tech trends in the marketplace.

WHAT’S NEXT

With clients in South Africa, Singapore, Japan, China and the United States, VEERUM is achieving both scale and growth and is now looking to accelerate. The company is involved in the two largest capital projects in Canada at the moment ($10-40 billion). “We’re working with companies with half a trillion in market capital, and here we are, a small business in Calgary, transforming the way they work,” says Lod.

VEERUM is about to lean heavily into artificial intelligence as it becomes more deeply incorporated into their app. “We’ve become an incredible framework by which AI can be layered into our clients’ data. Watch for some exciting announcements relating to Alberta AI initiatives. There is a great skill set of data scientists in the province. We’ve hired a lot of them and that will be a key part of our success going forward.”

Quite apart from any financial good news, Lod is excited and proud about the way VEERUM is having a positive impact on its clients.

“I get good news stories every day, which is so exciting. Clients are giving kudos to individuals on the team for efforts and accomplishments—one of our teammates was called a client’s ‘personal superhero’! Clearly, we’re providing epic client experiences and we’re going to grow with reference-based exposure. Our clients need to trust us, and they do.”

Are you ready to make moves in Calgary’s tech scene, working with forward-thinking companies like VEERUM? Head to our Live Tech Love Life careers page and see what opportunities might be out there for you.

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VEERUM: Digital twin technology