Wenti Labs automates workflow for construction teams

The Singapore startup allows workers to focus on project execution.

Startup Wenti Labs is streamlining the workflow between construction sites and offices with a mobile-friendly, customisable artificial intelligence (AI) app that lets the team communicate in real time and track site progress.

The app automates progress and safety reporting, generates customer quotations, tracks inventory, and reduces paperwork, allowing workers to focus on project execution.

“It’s a very manual workflow that involves people emailing each other, with someone having to enter data into a system,” Ethan Ow, co-founder at Wenti Labs, told Singapore Business Review.

“We take that off their hands by using AI to transform real-world, unstructured data — whether from chats, emails, or photos — into a report or tabular format that can be used in subsequent systems,” he added.

With Wenti Labs, customers can consolidate all project data uploaded to the cloud into messaging apps like WhatsApp and Telegram. The AI agent then processes the information and gives users updates.

Ow said every interaction and document that the client sends gets stored in Dropbox. These documents are then stored as a knowledge base for the AI. “When our customers need to retrieve certain information, they can do it over WhatsApp or through a web app that we provide.”

"Our customer receives a document, which is typically a very large file with a lot of information,” he said. “We help them streamline their quotation preparation process by using the AI agent to analyze the document and extract the relevant information for that particular project,” he added.

The AI agent also provides a timeline showing how the information has evolved over time, along with its source, ensuring all users stay updated.

A lot of errors on-site are caused by people working with different sets of information, Ow said. “Things evolve so fast that sometimes when work is being done, they might be referring to a version from two updates ago, while real-time decisions are being made elsewhere.”

“With us, we can guarantee that as long as you provide us with the email, the information, or the WhatsApp chat, we can help ensure you're always on top of things,” he said. The AI constantly reads and processes all incoming information, keeping everyone updated in real-time.”

The construction industry lags in technology adoption and faces hiring problems despite having long relied on manual labor, but Ow aims to change that.

“I was a construction project manager, and right now, we are essentially trying to build an AI version of myself,” he said. “Whatever I used to do as a junior project manager, we are working to create an AI version of it — one that helps businesses and teams by relieving the mental load of searching for information and giving them back time to focus on what truly matters, which is progress on-site.”

Wenti Labs also aims to tackle the aging workforce in the construction industry, a demographic that would benefit most from the tool.

This trend is prevalent in Singapore, making it an ideal market for the startup. However, Ow also aims to expand to countries like Australia, Japan, South Korea, the US, and China, where there is also a strong push for technology adoption.

He said the company stays ahead of the competition by updating its products and quickly getting these into the hands of clients.

"Our vision for the company is to become the de facto AI agent for the construction and built-environment industry,” Ow said. “It's an incredibly complex sector with many different stakeholders — from consultants, architects, and designers to construction companies. It's a vast network of different players.”

Wenti Labs seeks to expand globally in the next few years and establish itself as the equivalent of Devin, an AI software engineer who helps with coding. “We want to be the Devin for construction companies.”