MyBuildAssist is a digital residence dossier for the construction industry that ensures an optimal client journey and a manageable construction process. The organization does this for both clients and tenants, as well as for all involved parties such as construction companies, housing associations, project developers, and other third parties. The web application runs on the infrastructure of True, which enables MyBuildAssist to flexibly respond to the dynamics of the housing market. In this True Story, we show, together with Wytze van der Schaaf, co-founder and technical director of MyBuildAssist.com, how this works and what results it yields.
An article by True x MyBuildAssist: “MyBuildAssist Effectively Moves with the Market through True’s Infrastructure”
Role of MyBuildAssist for Developers, Construction Companies, Clients, and Tenants
“MyBuildAssist is the platform for developers and construction companies. It offers a personalized residence dossier, where clients or tenants can find all relevant information. This online dossier is always accessible and includes offers, quotes, and order confirmations. Through the platform, users can schedule appointments, choose options, sign documents digitally, and communicate with their contacts. Moreover, users are automatically kept informed of upcoming deadlines or events,” says Wytze.
“In this way, MyBuildAssist puts an end to endless email contact and managing different folders on a hard drive. The platform makes the client journey manageable and streamlines the process. This enables us to make a more efficient collaboration between all stakeholders possible,”, says Wytze. “With our application, we create clarity and understanding during the development, construction, and aftercare of a project.”
Technical Development: CakePHP, Percona XtraDB Cluster (PXC), S3 Object Storage, and Hosting at True
“We built the application with CakePHP. In addition, we work with a Percona database cluster and S3 Object Storage. Everything is hosted at True. We have separated our front-end from the API server so that we can better handle security,”, says Wytze. “MyBuildAssist was founded on January 1, 2012. From 2015, the construction industry quickly recovered from the financial crisis of 8 years before, and we have grown rapidly. This brought challenges and growing pains that have been essential for our development and progress. The decision to split the front-end and API was a crucial step to effectively support our growth. This separation allows us to more accurately locate and address bottlenecks, such as in database performance. This has led to better scalability and optimization of our system.”
Wytze emphasizes the significant help that True has provided MyBuildAssist during periods of rapid growth. “Engineers have played a crucial role in improving our database performance and optimizing our storage capabilities. Over just a few years, we’ve gone from 2 to 4 servers, doubling our capacity. It’s clear that True’s added value goes far beyond just keeping servers running. Without True’s support, we would not have been able to improve our performance so effectively,” says Wytze.
Thanks to True’s infrastructure, MyBuildAssist can remain resilient
“In our growth, we are partly dependent on the housing market, and we have noticed that construction has somewhat decreased over the past year. To effectively absorb these peaks and troughs, we are taking measures to be a future-proof organization,” says Wytze. “What we appreciate about True is that they think along with you, whether you are growing or dealing with a challenging market. Even in such situations, engineers think proactively, and resources can be scaled up or down according to demand. This enables our organization to remain resilient under changing market conditions.”
The next adventure of True and MyBuildAssist: Kubernetes
“Our next step is to implement microservices, followed by the transition to Kubernetes. The advantage of microservices is that we can monitor performance per service and quickly scale up and down as needed. This ensures that we never use more resources than strictly necessary,” Wytze explains. “To determine which parts we will split into microservices, we look at bottlenecks. What really needs to be split for scalability, and what continues to run well? Each split aims to improve performance and scalability. The transition to Kubernetes is prominently on our roadmap. That will be our next exciting adventure with True!”
