The issue of sustainability has never been more important today, and companies are increasingly turning towards technology and innovation to create meaningful change that’s good for business, society and the planet. Here at LeapThought, we're driven by our deep-seated passion and commitment to challenge the status quo and innovate for the greater good, in line with our mission to enable tomorrow’s socially inclusive, environmentally sustainable, and progressive infrastructure.
By unifying human and machine intelligence into next-generation and deep tech solutions, we help secure the long-term sustainable development goals of our communities and local economies, as well as the regional and global governments, construction value chains, industry affiliates and research and educational institutions that we work with.
How do we achieve that? We work to continuously amplify the rate of innovation to do things better and more productively, building leading-edge software packages that deliver transformative solutions targeting real-world challenges together with our partners.
Our collaboration with the United Nations
LeapThought has a well-established record of working with United Nations agencies and the broader development community in their efforts to pursue equitable and sustainable development. Since 2016, Ratnakar Garikipati, our Founder & CEO, has engaged extensively with governments and their development agency partners throughout Asia and Europe, personally conducting over 50 on-site missions to Germany, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Bhutan, and the Philippines.
There, we offered technology solutions support directly to governments and their principal development partners, including the United Nations, World Bank, Asian Development Bank, and USAID.
Our Director and North America General Manager, Jeffrey Avina, also served in the United Nations for 17 years in Asia, Africa and Latin America, managing billions of dollars in government and IFI funding in various public and private developmental initiatives. Jeffrey played a network facilitation role throughout the LeapThought engagement in Asia while working for Microsoft as Director of Government Affairs for Asia.
Given LeapThoughts’ performance and commitment, Microsoft came to rely exclusively on LeapThought to support its Governance for Global Good initiative throughout Asia, and our packaged offerings supported good governance, environmental management, fiscal transparency, construction management and youth skilling.
In a separate collaboration with the UN Office of Volunteers (UNV) based in Bonn, we helped the agency restructure its overall IT management strategy and approach. Reflecting on the joint collaboration, Ratnakar noted that “Jeffrey’s vast experience as a development expert and lawyer, and his substantive engagement with government and civil society leaders globally makes him the perfect leader to ensure our tools land in the right hands at the right time to promote the SDGs."
Aligning with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
In 2015, United Nations member states adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, a shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet. At the center of this lies the 17 Sustainable Development Goals which recognize that reducing poverty requires strategies to improve health and education, reduce inequality and spur sustainable economic growth.
At LeapThought, we embrace our responsibility to truly make a difference through the creation of innovative products, services, and solutions developed alongside our valued partners. We do so with the full knowledge that what we do each day should positively impact people, communities, and our environment.
We recognize that our mission and technological capacity positions us to enable our public and private sector partners to make substantive advances in support of the following SDGs:
SDG Goal 8: Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all
We help our public and private sector partners work smarter and better by harnessing the power of Artificial Intelligence for the AEC sector—an economic segment with continuous, double-digit growth that accounts for trillions of dollars in spending globally. We ensure that invested capital goes farther, swifter and in a more sustained and environmentally conscious manner. As we help to modernize the AEC sector, we help expand and redefine employment opportunities in cutting-edge IT segments that are higher paid and characterized by greater flexibility and work-life balance.
SDG Goal 9: Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation
LeapThought’s core mission closely aligns with this, and FulcrumHQ, our cutting-edge AI-driven platform, has been designed to incorporate all key considerations for inclusivity, sustainability and effective growth in the planning, pre-build and build process of all infrastructure developments, both public and private.
FulcrumHQ is based on an innovative design approach that consistently evolves to meet the requirements of our clients and an SDG-conscious policy landscape. As governmental policies reconfigure to capture more SDG-related concerns, we capture all new developmental and engineering indicators, cross-checks, logs and reports on all design and ongoing construction processes against these criteria.
SDG Goal 11: Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable
The core of Goal 11 is fully reflected in our corporate mission. We specifically focus on making cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable alongside our public and private sector partners, and our ongoing partnership with the Government of Singapore clearly highlights the strength of our technology to help partners attain this outcome.
Singapore tasked LeapThought to construct an “All of Government” platform which ensures that the entire Architectural, Engineering and Construction (AEC) community works on a unified government platform to achieve national goals driven by the same concerns encapsulated in Goal 11—Singapore is a regional leader in its efforts to pursue inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable urban development, and we proudly support them with our expertise.
SDG Goal 13: Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impact
At LeapThought, we believe that climate and environmental concerns should be at the heart of all construction and build decisions. LeapThought technologies are specifically designed to prove all construction, in the design stage to ensure that each project is in full conformity with government environmental regulations pre-build. Access to our "model checker" technology on a single “All of Government” platform enables all constituents including regulatory, research, civil society and AEC to “pre-proof” construction to promote environmental sustainability.
SDG Goal 16: Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions
The consultative process incorporated into our “Built Environment” methodology provides clients with the means to ensure socio-economic, cultural and environmental norms, concerns and regulations are directly accounted for through the Architectural, Engineering and Construction (AEC) cycle. As an example, our “model checker” technology directly incorporates all codes and regulations across the full array of participating public ministries and agencies to ensure full accountability in design and construction. The visual BIM model enables all actors to see and impact designs in a three-dimensional model prior to the initiation of any construction to ensure all stakeholders can impact and improve on critical builds.
This unprecedented level of transparency is a critical practical step in ensuring that societies are inclusive and built on sustainable development principles characterized by justice, accountability and inclusivity.
SDG Goal 17: Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development, particularly in the role of Multi-stakeholder partnership and voluntary commitments
The capacity to effectively measure SDG performance is critical for achieving the SDGs. Our AI-driven platforms can measure performance across an unlimited number of criteria. By better tracking performance on key indicators, our systems support efforts to increase implementation of and compliance with SDG-related norms and standards.
If your organization is looking to embrace digital transformation in AEC, our team of technologists, architects, builders, and engineers can help. Contact us today to discuss your next project.
