Bravo International: Bringing a Powerful PMIS into Construction Projects

The story of Bravo International traces back to the days when the ambitious construction project of Taipei 101—the former tallest building in the world—was set in motion, in Taiwan. During that stint, Willie Tseng and Lin Yong-Cheng—founders of Bravo International—were still employees at Turner International. And due to the scale of the Taipei 101 tower project, Turner introduced a project management information system (PMIS). After the completion of the project, Tseng and Lin recognized the value of a PMIS and the potential for its increasing requirement in the future of the construction industry. Subsequently, after working in the construction space for over two decades, the duo put their heads together to establish Bravo International to offer a cloud-based PMIS named Bravopm. “Bravopm is the result of three decades’ worth of project management experiences and users’ feedback from various types of construction projects,” says Willie Tseng, co-founder of Bravo International.

According to Lin, CIOs in the construction industry face two primary challenges that revolve around information and communication. In case of information, as there are numerous project participants, a majority of project-related information is scattered across multiple databases and computers in different locations. This causes inefficiency in the matter of finding a specific document and obtaining the latest project-related information. Bravopm comprises six categories of modules (Communication, Design, Engineering, Tender, Contract, Quality & Safety) to manage the information and documents generated during all phases of a construction project lifecycle. In addition, PMIS allows all members in a project to create, edit, read, share, store, collaborate, and search the required information on a single, integrated cloud platform. Further, the lengthy process of RFI (request-answer), submittals (submit-approve) and quality matters on paper, and the heavy reliance on email leads to a massive waste of time. Bravopm offers a true collaboration platform that enables all project participants to execute document and communication related tasks in the system, which then sends automated notifications that indicates the real-time status of RFIs, Submittals, and non-conformity items.

“Bravopm turns email into a way to notify the participants instead of regarding it as a place to attach documents or give RFI replies and assists users to avoid searching the specific information in tons of mails,” explains Lin.

Bravo International’s mission is to drive collaboration by allowing all project teams to use their system, irrespective of the roles, number of users, and scale of the undertaking. “Every project may differ at its scale, but the fundamental structure remains the same. This allows Bravopm to be highly adaptive to all kinds of projects,” adds Tseng. Bravopm offers various other features such as professional implementation advice, bilingual capabilities, comprehensive data fields for document attributes, and a powerful search engine with the ability to filter or combine data fields. Apart from this, PMIS also includes a featured dashboard that can track outstanding and open items, and built-in forms that include the most frequently used, and all the major types of documents for construction management and control, such as RFI, submittals, and NCR that can printed as official records, which are ready for signature.

To highlight the effectiveness of Bravopm, Lin cites a case scenario where Bravo International helped the Alma Resort in Vietnam, a mega project that occupies an area of 30 hectares, to mitigate the gaps in communication created due to the stakeholders’ diverse locations worldwide. With Bravopm’s bilingual capabilities, the local Vietnam members were able to input and display information in Vietnamese, and comply with the construction-related policies of the Vietnamese authorities, while the global participants chose English as their preferred language.

Traditionally, with a big undertaking like the Alma Resort, the practice of returning the wrong documents and missing information back to the submitter is common. However, when this task is executed using email, the seemingly straightforward process becomes inefficient and problematic. With Bravopm’s ‘Return’ functionality, the project participants of the Alma Resort project were able to return the documents through the PMIS. This coupled with Bravopm’s ability to streamline the lengthy RFI and Submittal processes through collaboration allowed Alma stakeholders to correct incomplete or missing responses through the product’s collaborative nature.

Looking ahead, Bravo International is planning to connect their SaaS to scheduling systems like Microsoft Project or P3, connect BIM (Building Information Model), and develop a budget-cost control system. Also, the company is aiming to expand their services out of the South Asian markets, into Europe, America, and Mainland China.

Tseng and Lin firmly believe in the great potential of the wider applications of PMIS, and with their extensive background in the construction space, the pair is looking ahead to introduce Bravopm to more professionals in the industry.