We had a conversation with entrepreneur Lameck Owesi, who is the Founder of JenziSmart and DezynBild Consult. He shed some light on his entrepreneurial journey, experience, and aspirations so far. Lameck is currently an Entrepreneur-in-Training at MEST Africa in Accra, Ghana. Enjoy and be inspired!
Lameck tell us about yourself what do you do?
Hi, I’m Lameck Owesi, I’m an architect with a great interest in technology as well. In architecture, I offered architectural services to a number of projects – over 20 projects in Kenya and beyond.
Most of these projects have been ranging in various typologies, residential, commercial, institutional a bit of hospitality as well. And through that,
I’ve gathered somegood experience in architectural design, construction management, and site supervision, and all of that has given me a fulfilling experience to be able to build something that can transform how construction happens in Africa.
You’ve embraced technology and incorporated it into a business, would you tell us what led to that and how did you decide to actually venture into technology?
Well, offering my services in architecture and construction supervision I’ve noticed something, in architecture, there’s a lot of digital operations within the design but there’s very little of that when it comes to operations on construction sites and we’ve seen that across Africa.
So talk about ho labor is acquired, how materials are acquired and how the monitoring process is being done; we noted issues with that. There are occasions when as an architect once I’ve designed, my clients would ask “how will I actualize this, how can I get this done by the right person, where can I get the right materials and then we thought like well, we can make life easy for our clients and even for contractors and people of that industry by digitizing some of these things.
What would you say is the kind of project you’re most proud of, what are the biggest highlights of your venture to tech in construction?
Tech in construction, firstly it’s interesting. I started off with my experience as an architect because I was doing a lot of projects.
As I mentioned I have a lot of tech interest. So when I see problems and I feel like, this can actually be solved using tech.
And one of the things I started doing was research, I did a lot of research on how site operations are happening in Kenya and we packaged our findings in an article published by the Architectural Association of Kenya, showing how technology can be applied in construction.
We then began building a product called JenziSmart. We are trying to loop the whole model of how the acquisition is done, including financing in construction projects to reduce the inefficiency in construction.
So what we’re trying to do is look at Africa the way operations are done we’re trying to look at the whole model of how the acquisition is done.
And then how financing should also happen.
We’re trying to bring all of these things to one model that can limit a few inefficiency and ineffectiveness in construction.
Where do you see your company being in the next 3 years?
We have a product currently as I said, but we’ve been able to test the product, we’ve been able to do a number of things, and even deliver a service to a few people.
But we learned how capital-intensive you know how this process is difficult to get in Africa.
We’re looking at proper data acquisition, we’re looking at proper marketing so one big thing we’re trying to do is to raise funds by talking to a number of investors, and anyone who is interested in transforming how the operation in construction work is invited to talk to us.
In the next three years, we aim to digitalize the entire construction operation chain and be the go-to platform for all digital solutions in construction.
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