a construction industry blockchain for professional supervision.
The growing gap between the physical and digital worlds exposes a growing existential threat to construction. Simply put: we can't prove who authored the documents, yet we use them to build high-rise buildings. Offices all over the world throughout the supply chain copy, forward, upload, and attach documents generally trusted as the true copy of the licensed professional's instructions.
We purchase, fabricate, ship, install, commission, inspect, and approve occupancy certificates for bridges, buildings, and roads with nothing more than a dose of trust. We trust that nothing was corrupted from the original instructions along the entire supply chain of decisions.
The Build3 Foundation blockchain solves the proof of authorship dilemma, and we need your help.
We are a member-governed research and development blockchain foundation.
​Our blockchain is designed to function as an authorship-proof layer for the construction industry. This can start as early as feasibility work and extends to the certificate of occupancy. Each certificate of occupancy issued to each building, including the initial build and all subsequent renovations will be tied to it.
These certificates persist as immutable records to serve the public for the life of the building. They offer assurance that the construction performed was done so under the direct supervision and control of a qualified professional. Ultimately, at the end of a building's lifetime, when demolished, the certificates serve as historical artifacts to the land itself.
Would you like to contribute? (no fees). Members may contribute as authors, editors, nominators, and developers. Members also retain voting rights in research and publications.
​You are also invited to if you want to get to know some members.
The web page also serves as the main first-time-viewer landing page. A one-pager intended to articulate the mission succinctly.
The knowledgebase.
This is an evolving knowledge base of our active work, ideas, and other plans. We use gitbook because it offers developer documentation tools in a super simple way for non-developers to contribute thoughts and ideas.
This is where a lot of preliminary ideas for governance, game theory, use-case applications, technical specifications, tutorials, and other information about the network will be published.
As the ideas grow more and more stable, they would then be converted into the formal white paper documentation for the build3.foundation website or GitHub as a stable release for production.
This is where the ideas start to organize and develop into the formal and final technical specifications.
Contributing is easy - just join the discord and ask how you can get involved!
Front end for build3 governance. There is no development on this yet, but eventually will be a React-based front-end application rendering the governance features of the build3 foundation.
All our governance work is backend only. If you want to get involved with the front end, let us know!
Front end for build3 transactions. No development here, but the front-end would render whatever features the particular user needs to interact with the blockchain.
All our transactions are backend only. If you want to get involved with the front end, let us know!
This just forwards to build3.foundation right now.
The idea behind this domain is to provide a road map for future funding of continued research in areas of blockchain for the industry.
The .com domain would be the home of paid features similar to the relationship between wordpress.org and wordpress.com or MongoDB vs MongoDB's Atlas service.
The home of day-to-day communications about active research projects to spare the inbox.
Build3 repositories are on GitHub. We haven't made everything public yet - stay tuned!
And we need your help.
The build3.foundation has a working prototype of provable authorship engineering supervision. These prototypes show a proof of concept that we can secure the network.
Our position at build3.foundation is that ethics bind the industry to commit to research and participation since we can now secure the network.
We are not asking for building consulting engineers to become software engineers. There are tons of areas we need help with in terms of publication:
International Code Council: We would enjoy the chance to work together to collaborate on language for
Chapter 1, IBC permitting. This type of modification would help give guidance at the state level.
Section 116 (Certificate of Occupancy): with a secure network of proof of authorship, a C of O becomes a multi-signature transfer record.
For example, an inspector would prove from a cell phone that the document used for a permit does hash to the signature patterns of the engineer of record and plan reviewer. If it did not, they simply would not have the authorization to issue the certificate.
American Institute for Architects: We have ideas for the AIA master contract and master spec.
The professionals can use blockchain to manage submittal and shop drawing requirements. We can now prove that some specific party is the author of any particular document. This authorship proof applies to our licenses but also signatures in general during Construction Administration
more to come...
Blockchain makes it near impossible to make fraudulent engineering judgments with invalid credentials. More on that later. For now, look around at where we are in the documentation. This website serves as a living and breathing documentation of where we are now and where we plan to be.
We will soon release our source code, open-source, and welcome any feedback and new collaborators.
Thank you,
build3.foundation
We're surprisingly far behind in some of the most basic, economically fundamental technologies.
The 2016 paper published by NSPE, "Blockchain Technology: Implications and Opportunities for Professionals Engineers" states that, "today, the institution of professional engineering is struggling for an interface with the digital world."
It's odd to think that engineers of all people are struggling to interface in a digital world. While that is less true today than in 2016, the construction industry is still the least efficient among all businesses today.
The rate of acceleration between licensed professional regulations and the remainder of the world is staggering.
This construction industry exposes us to increasing rates of risk.
Let's qualitatively examine the security between a physical engineering stamp and a DocuSigned signature as a stamp.
DocuSign: You'll have to pass through two-factor authentication to log in. To steal this signature, you need the password and the physical device used for the second authentication point (usually a phone).
Physical Stamp: Google their license, buy a stamp online, and stamp a drawing.
We are not advocating DocuSign as the solution. However, this demonstrates that our industry is so far behind that we'd sooner have the system hacked than learn new engineering techniques which could solve many of our problems. Taken at its extreme, this unwillingness to act could be a violation of the .
A surprising number of states attempted to address the growing virtual world we live in and how that even impacts the meaning of "direct supervision." Laws today were written for offices of yesterday when an engineer was physically in the same space with the unlicensed staff.
The regulations in our industry give off a tone of either someone that genuinely wrote them in the 80s and forgot ever to update them or someone that still thinks the internet is a fad.
Either way, it is entirely untrue to say that engineering can only happen when two or more humans physically share a room during the process. Meanwhile, are permanent remote work companies.
Each state's laws provide authorities to organize a board of directors. The board has varying power, usually reviewing and approving licenses and issuing disciplinary actions.
With one board for each state, that leaves us with only 50 board of director groups to regulate in building construction. We can't expect that level of responsibility to fall on that small group of people. We have technology that can solve these problems (more on that later)
Assuming we live in an ethically perfect world, this is still too much work for one person to manage directly. How can we reliably track this level of complexity in a way such that public safety is dramatically improved?
These protocols worked when the industry's technology was born onto paper and lived on writing until the completion of the project.
Our engineering design data now lives on a transistor state on some computer somewhere in the world and it's never coming back. We have to go find it.
Have you had to dig out your checkbook for a $75 transaction lately? If so, we're willing to guess it wasn't at a place you associate with engineering?
Let's start with the National Society of Professional Engineers.
The National Society of Professional Engineers (NSPE) was established in 1934 to protect engineers and the public from unqualified engineering practitioners.
This process includes strict university accreditation requirements, years of full-time engineering training experience, and two or more examinations.
While not as rigorous as a surgeon's training, it is a long process that requires a minimum of eight years and often longer.
So now we have highly educated and experienced super nerds ready to show the world what they can do. So, what's the problem?
Let's talk about NSPE a bit more. From their website, the vision is
...a world where the public can be confident that engineering decisions affecting their lives are made by qualified and ethically accountable professionals.
We love this vision, and we agree. Being an engineer is more than showing off a pocket protector at parties! Every decision made impacts public safety quite often for 20 or more years! And so we agree: qualified and ethically accountable professionals are essential.
NSPE has a clear and targeted mission reinforced by its published . Those values are
Ethics and Accountability
Qualifications
Professional Advancement
Unity
So while NSPE works to help secure the network, it increases the barrier of entry. The problem working against everyone else is: that sometimes it isn't all that hard to get money for a development loan (to the tune of $20T a year).
The unavoidable challenge: rigorous standards and regulations will invariably reduce supply in a regularly high-demand market.
This problem is compounded by the fact we are the are have proven a reluctance toward adopting technologies.
How can we resolve the supply and scalability problem? It is precisely that problem that increases the risk to public welfare even further. How can that enormous demand pushing keep building often, cheap, and fast, be cooled down in a way that meets the professionals where they need to be: concerned with the public welfare?
How can we design a system that will, given those conditions, exhibit transparency to those willing to turn an ethically questionable blind eye?
How can we prove if the seal hasn't been taken and used by someone else fraudulently? How do we ensure the practitioner's competence in making a judgment in a given field?
Long story short: it's not.
Still, governing bodies treat violations as criminal acts. Let's take a look at a few examples:
§ 1001.552. CRIMINAL PENALTY. (a) A person commits an offense if the person: (1) engages in the practice of engineering without being licensed or exempted from the licensing requirement under this chapter; (2) violates this chapter with respect to the regulation of engineering; (3) presents or attempts to use as the person's own the engineering license or seal of another; or (4) gives false evidence of any kind to the board or a board member in obtaining an engineering license. (b) An offense under this section is a Class A misdemeanor
IC 25-31-1-27 Practicing without license and other specific violations
Sec. 27. A person who:
(1) practices or offers to practice engineering without being registered or exempted under the laws of this state;
(2) presents as the person's own the certificate of registration or the seal of another;
(3) gives any false or forged evidence of any kind to the board or to any member of the board in obtaining a certificate of registration;
(4) impersonates any other registrant;
(5) uses an expired, suspended, or revoked certificate of registration; or
(6) otherwise violates this chapter;
Blockchain technology can prove the authorship of digital documents offering a form of digital DNA. This mechanism is helpful and essential in due process for the industry. Continuing to enforce these regulations without blockchain is nearly equivalent to a court dismissing the scientific relevance of DNA in criminal proceedings.
commits a Class B misdemeanor.