The new frontier for construction

"Business at the click of a finger." That’s what IcFox Phils., Inc., an online construction information and service company, hopes to achieve in the local construction industry.

"IcFox is not just putting your business on the Internet, it’s about doing business with the top players on a global stage," said IcFox Phils. chairman Malcolm Anderson. "A company must keep on pushing its boundaries and must ford new streams to keep ahead of the pack."

Globally, the online construction trade is estimated at $3.6 trillion; in the Asia-Pacific, the business is placed at $1 trillion.

As an Internet exchange, IcFox contains comprehensive information and useful tools for its more than 3,000 users worldwide. It has a catalogue that allows suppliers, manufacturers, sellers and dealers to describe, classify and specify their products in their own style and language. This catalogue currently has 900 listed items by 3,000 suppliers which then provides a benchmark for pricing materials and building costs.

Aside from having a listing of products from different companies so a prospective buyer or seller can get the best products at the best prices, IcFox subscribers can actually transact business. IcFox, however, does not change commission fees from any transactions completed through its platform.

IC operates like a business-to-business or B2B Internet exchange that provides industry-related information, practical management collaborative tolls, a tendering platform and market access to the global construction industry.

Aside from the information exchange and the business exchange, IcFox also offers a service exchange, where the subscriber can conduct consultations and meetings in real time with its other partners. The real time consultations result in increased efficiencies in terms of time and money.

An offshoot

IcFox Phils. is the fourth of its kind set up by three global construction players: Davis Langdon & Seah International, a quantity surveying, cost engineering and construction cost consultancy firm; the Paul Y-ITC Group, a Hong Kong publicly-listed construction property and information technology company; and Hanny Holdings Ltd., a manufacturing sales and marketing group for magnetic and optical data storage media.

IcFox Phils. has sister companies in Singapore, Hong Kong and Malaysia. There are short-term plans to set up similar companies in Australia and New Zealand.

To date, IcFox has a network of 174 offices worldwide.

"We are not a technology in search of an application. We are the construction industry moving from the old economy to the new, bringing together the best in construction expertise and technology to make our industry more effective and, ultimately, more profitable," said Tom Lau, IcFox International managing director.

Despite the poor state of the local construction industry. Anderson said the presence of IcFox in the Philippines is timely. He believes the local industry will bounce back in the next two to three years. Moreover, he thinks that Asia-Pacific is the new frontier and that the opportunities abound in this region.

Anderson is not a new hand in the country. At the height of the power crisis in 1993, Anderson volunteered to move to Davis Langdon & Seah Phils. Inc. because he saw the Philippines as part of that "new frontier." Four years after his assignment, the local office of Davis Langdon has become the fifth largest among its various offices around the world.