Shilakshya and Forefront team up to cut the cost and delays of building a house with digital tools
A builder and a digital engineering firm have signed an agreement to bring building information modelling, virtual reality and LiDAR scanning to homes in Nepal, so owners can see their house before ground is broken.
Anyone who has built a house in Nepal knows how the story usually goes: the design changes halfway through, a beam clashes with a pipe, the bill climbs and the move-in date slips. Two Kathmandu companies say they want to take much of that uncertainty out of the process.
Shilakshya Griha Nirman Pvt. Ltd., a construction company, and Forefront Engineering Pvt. Ltd., a digital engineering firm, have signed a memorandum of understanding to work together on construction projects. Ashit Adhikari and Sayan Pyakurel of Shilakshya and Mahesh Karki and Sudhir Thapa of Forefront exchanged the agreement at a signing ceremony.
Seeing the house before it is built
Under the agreement, the two companies will use building information modelling (BIM), virtual reality (VR), digital twins and LiDAR scanning on construction projects. The aim is for clients to see a digital version of their home before construction begins, make changes to the design while they are still cheap to make, and catch technical problems early.
Each tool does a different job:
- Building information modelling brings the design, the structure, the electrical system and the plumbing into one model, so clashes between them can be found on screen rather than on site. That cuts the risk of rework, wasted material and unplanned spending once building is under way.
- Virtual reality lets clients walk through the house and understand its layout before a single wall goes up.
- LiDAR scanning records the real condition of a building site in digital form.
- A digital twin is a live digital copy of the building that can be used from design through to operation.
"No time to delay"
Mahesh Karki, managing director of Forefront Engineering, said most construction projects in Nepal still rely on traditional two-dimensional drawings, and argued that the industry needs to move to digital methods.
"If Nepal truly wants to enter the era of digital construction, we should not delay adopting BIM any longer," Karki said. "The time has come to extend digital technology across a project, from planning and design to construction and operation, and make the construction sector more organised, effective, transparent and sustainable."
Ashit Adhikari, co-founder of Shilakshya Griha Nirman, said the partnership would help the company bring modern construction technology into real projects, and that the industry needs to move from traditional methods towards modern, technology-led ones.
"We have always put quality, transparency and high efficiency first," Adhikari said. "This partnership will help us bring advanced technologies like BIM, virtual reality and LiDAR scanning into our actual construction projects."
Adhikari said he believed the initiative would reach beyond individual buildings and help make Nepal's construction sector more organised, sustainable and technology-driven.
Who does what
Shilakshya Griha Nirman focuses on construction solutions and physical infrastructure. Forefront Engineering, whose tagline is "Digitizing the Built Environment", works on BIM, digital engineering and technology-based construction services.
The partnership is meant to combine Shilakshya's experience on building sites with Forefront's digital engineering expertise to raise construction quality and efficiency and make better use of materials and money. How much clients actually gain will depend on how well these technologies are put to use on each project.
How this story was made: researched and written by The Standard’s desk with AI assistance, from the published reporting and official data credited below, and checked against those sources. Our standards.
