Where Are They Now: Novoville
We caught up with Novoville's Business Development Director, Louis Daillencourt, to see how the company has grown since taking part in CivTech 4 and CivTech7.
Louis Daillencourt, presenting at CivTech 4 Demo Day.
Novoville was founded in 2016 because we could see a growing need for more participatory, accountable, and inclusive local governance - particularly when it came to how people organise themselves where they live.
We have taken part in CivTech 4 and CivTech 7, and it was during CivTech 4 that we created an app to help owners in shared buildings stay on track with building repairs, called “Shared Repairs.” The app was successfully rolled out in Edinburgh first, where it now supports around 8,000 properties across Edinburgh in carrying out £1m+ worth of much needed repairs to improve the condition of blocks of flats around the city.
Shared Repairs helps organise and implement a shared (or "common") repair within Scottish tenements and buildings. It is designed to accompany users all the way from first noticing a problem to having works carried out and paid for. It’s an efficient way for property owners, including councils, to organise work in a building that isn’t factored and has multiple owners all responsible for the upkeep of the common areas (like the roof, garden, staircase, etc.).
Image of the ‘Shared Repairs’ app.
We are now operating across several other local authorities in Scotland including Perth & Kinross and Glasgow Councils. Over the summer we launched Shared Repairs in Dundee, and by the end of the year we expect to have announced that we’re active across ten local authorities in Scotland, with Aberdeen and Falkirk about to come online as well. So far we have around 10,000 individual homes signed up to the app, which is free to download.
We haven’t stopped there, though. Earlier this year we presented our latest venture, Novoville Shared Works at Civtech 7’s Demo Day. Novoville Shared Works is in many ways the continuation of Shared Repairs. It’s a marketplace for decarbonisation and retrofit work which will enable homeowners and communities (including tenements!) to create an improvement plan for their home, and connect with the local supply chain to carry it out.
At the heart of this latest innovation is the drive to decarbonise homes and reduce domestic carbon emissions. We have been working with South of Scotland Enterprise and CENSIS who sponsored the Challenge last year. All over Scotland, homes and workplaces account for around a fifth of total greenhouse gas emissions. With energy bills rising fast, and set to continue rising, solutions like Shared Works will be needed to coordinate the sustained efforts needed to make whole communities more energy efficient - including tenements and apartment blocks.
We are looking ahead to 2024 being a big year for us with continued expansion, much like we have been this past year. Having taken part in two CivTech Accelerators, we highly recommend the experience to other tech companies looking for opportunities to innovate with a purpose, and build long term sustainable products and services for good.