August 2025: Christchurch to Manila to Marlborough: Efficiency Is Going Global
August 20, 2025
Kia ora,
What better way to start a newsletter than with an apology. Our CRM unsubscribe button was apparently moonlighting as a placebo. It looked like it worked, but really it was just sitting there sipping coffee and doing nothing. Until that’s fully fixed, we’re putting email outreach on pause. In the meantime, all the hot gossip is still on LinkedIn and our website.
It has been a packed month. We’ve been deep in talks with partners in the Philippines, preparing new feature releases, speaking with early adopters in Australia, catching up with Autodesk (Revit), working with suppliers like Hempcrete, welcoming new users, new trialists, and running webinars. Basically, caffeine levels are at record highs.
🚀 Feature Updates
The big news….. our Pro licence now comes with an automated NZGBC Green Star carbon report. That means you can complete your design as normal, sync with ηezo, and within seconds export a full Green Star carbon report, saving hundreds of hours a year depending on your project size.
We’re also just a week away from releasing our H1 Thermal Performance tool, which will let designers run automated H1 analysis and compliance reports inside ηezo at no extra cost. It’s like having an energy modeller tucked into your toolbar, without the invoice and without the hours needed to complete excel tools.
And if that wasn’t enough, we also sat down with Carroll Battle, Autodesk’s head of global solutions and sustainability, to show off ηezo’s integration with Revit. Carroll’s verdict? “Unlike anything else in the market.” Future collabs are brewing, and we’ll keep you posted.
🏗️ Supplier Updates
We’ve been working on case studies with RedStag TimberLab, The Building Agency, Symonite, and saveBOARD , testing their products in live projects and showing architects real-world data on cost, carbon, thermal performance, and weight. The goal is simple: data beats brochures.
We also welcomed Kohu Hemp, started by Antoine Tane Fitzgerald. Hempcrete, hemp flooring, wallboard, and insulation, a natural product that sequesters carbon, has serious thermal and acoustic chops, and produces zero waste. Over the next few months we’ll be helping Antoine’s team demonstrate just how powerful their products are in practice.
ηezo is steadily becoming a hub where suppliers host their data, architects compare options, and better materials get chosen. It’s starting to look less like a data base and a lot more like a marketplace………………….…
Speaking of saveBOARD, we ran an analysis of their internal Paper faced wall linings against a well-known 10mm braceline product. saveBoard is stronger, more cost effective, has 372% less carbon, it was also 18% lighter. That means it’s not just lower in carbon, it’s gone far beyond the baseline, into net-negative territory. Go saveBOARD.
👩💻 New Users
This month we welcomed Studio Norde and COP Studio, who picked up a licence of ηezo and trialled it on their Cohaus project in Auckland, a residential community full of edible gardens, climbing facades, and communal spaces. Within 24 hours they had run carbon measurements, cost comparisons, and design optimisations. What normally takes weeks, they did in a day. The ROI was crystal clear, time saved, insights gained. We've not seen another practice move quicker…… very impressive COP Studio & Studio Norde. Another practice ahead of the curve, reducing carbon emissions, saving time and getting better outcomes for developers and owners.
Turner Studio Australia and WSP NZ have also both begun trials, recognising that ηezo doesn’t just measure carbon but provides commercial insights that keep projects on track. Argosy Properties, one of New Zealand’s largest investors, also jumped in for a demo. Their response? “You had us in the first 5 minutes" They’re now lining up sessions for their design teams.
And in the Philippines, we had the pleasure of presenting to Enderun Colleges. After the demo they told us they’d never seen anyone so succinctly capture the pain that architects face with design inefficiency, cost, and carbon. They asked if we’d spent thousands of hours with architects to understand this problem
The truth is………we did.
With over 40 years of combined experience across construction design, cost management, digital twins, and sustainability, we built ηezo as the only solution on the market created by those who lived this pain first-hand. That’s why it resonates. Enderun are keen to be the first to use ηezo in Asia. They want to teach this, and be ahead of the curve.
🌐 Sometimes We Talk
Webinars and presentations have been in full swing. William Roberts, our CTO, joined the Timber Dialog session, bringing his perspective on mass timber pricing, 3D modelling, and carbon analytics. The conversation covered everything from how to price time savings in CLT versus concrete to the health benefits of timber design. It was a mix of technical insight and industry war stories, and the feedback was excellent. Its always a pleasure to be speaking alongside industry thought leaders like Linda Lodetti & Nick Hewson.
And it doesn’t stop there
Next month, Barry is presenting for New Zealand Green Building Council (NZGBC) on decarbonisation in the built environment and the new Green Star carbon reporting. His talk will zero in on construction inefficiency and the time problem, with a healthy dose of humour thrown in. Expect to see his now-famous “snake eating its tail” diagram, his proudest piece of amateur art to date. He insists it captures the entire design inefficiency cycle in one picture. We’re letting him run with it.
We’ve found that these online sessions aren’t just useful for knowledge sharing, they’re proving to be powerful trust builders with architects and engineers who are tired of being sold half-baked tools. When they hear how ηezo is saving time and producing commercial insights, the penny drops.
💸 Lets Talk Investors
Every day our traction grows, every day we get closer to the target we set ourselves as the metric we want to show investors. If you’ve been following ηezo for a while and want in, we are getting close. Get ready to chat about why now is the time to pounce on this red hot market.
Preparing for it, this month we pitched at the Angel Investment Marlborough event. Picture Dragons’ Den with better wine, kinder dragons, and a standing ovation for the takeaway dinner arriving.
Barry presented the “biggest, baddest” version of ηezo to date, not just as a design tool, but as a full platform with supplier marketplace and IaaS Market intelligence baked in. The feedback? Strong. Investors said it had “Ted Talk energy”, not bad for a guy who once argued for Comic Sans in our pitch deck (he denies this, but history will judge).
The night itself was buzzing. Questions rolled in, conversations flowed, and AIM rolled out the red carpet with dinner, dessert, and networking that could’ve gone late into the night. Unfortunately, an early meeting and a 4.5-hour drive back to Christchurch meant the ηezo team had to hit the road before the last glass of wine was poured. Still, the doors opened, and follow-up conversations are already underway.
For those keeping score at home, this raise will give us the runway to scale into Australia, deepen product features, and build out the supplier marketplace. If you’re an investor looking for a SaaS platform with perfect timing in a market about to be transformed by mandatory carbon reporting and pressurised market demands, let’s chat.
🎨 Rebrand Update
The rebrand is more than a logo swap. V-Quest had a good run, but the name often left people scratching their heads, we’ve been asked if we were a bank, a consulting firm, or worse, a software company stuck in the late 90s. So we retired it with honour, and ηezo was born.
ηezo (pronounced neh-zo) is a mashup of “net-zero” and “η” — the Greek symbol for efficiency. It reflects exactly what we stand for: faster design, lower cost, smaller carbon footprint. Shorter, sharper, memorable. A brand that doesn’t need an Enigma machine to decode.
This month we’ve started rolling out ηezo across everything: our platform, website, emails, webinars, merch — the whole lot. The website is getting a facelift with sharper colours, a cleaner layout, and content that actually reflects who we are today. Expect a lot less corporate waffle, a lot more clarity.
And yes, the swag has landed. Tees in white, black, and navy, sporting the new ηezo logo. It’s the same comfy fit people loved before, but without the clunky V-Quest logo. We’ve had good feedback already, but if you see us in one, tell us whether we look sharper or just more efficient. We’ll take either. Please excuse the wrinkly t-shirts photos, ηezo hasn't bought an iron yet. Next big purchase alongside a foosball table and blow up arm chairs (startup life).
Also as we are on rebrand, we've been thinking about the application colours. Currently we use Navy panels on a green background. We'd love to hear your feedback and any suggested changes. We'll test a few variants with closed users but keen to hear your ideas.
🌍 World News
New Zealand might be stumbling backwards with a proposed car registration overhaul that would make it cheaper to run gas-guzzling vehicles and more expensive to run lower-cc engines. Policy clarity: still missing in action (or inaction).
But there’s good news too. Nelson Hospital just had its first winter since the 1800s without coal heating - using bioenergy from waste instead, and across the Tasman, the Australian government is pushing forward with a carbon border tariff on cement and steel. For anyone still shipping dirty materials into the market, the countdown clock just started. Australia continues to show New Zealand how to move forward.
Heidelberg pre-sells its 2025 output of “net-zero” cement from Norway — CCS-enabled evoZero cement sells out; signal of real demand and willingness to pay green premia in building materials
UK: Robots + timber to speed housing and cut emissions — Reuters profile of AI/robotics + timber frames going mainstream; large builders investing in timber plants.
Australia: Bio-based materials race (algae bricks, oyster-shell walls, fungi, straw) — Research & early pilots across multiple universities; outlines certification and scaling hurdles.
Cement’s decarb crunch — Sector overview on the hard-to-abate 7–8% emitter; tech and policy levers framing near-term pathways for construction’s highest-impact material.
Big Tech opens AI for lower-carbon concrete mix design — Meta releases an open-source tool to optimise mixes for strength, cure speed, and carbon; potential procurement/pouring impact for data-centre-scale builds and beyond.
India: IIT-Indore pilots geopolymer concrete (-80% CO₂, -20% cost) — Industrial-waste-based mixes aimed at rapid construction; another signal of global alternatives maturing.
Australia: National “Trajectory for Low-Energy Buildings” updated (Aug 15) — Federal/state strategy refresh covering all buildings; policy scaffolding that flows into codes, ratings, and procurement.
Steelmaking transition and construction — Round-up of “green steel” tech (H₂-DRI, electrification) and what it means for the materials supply chain feeding buildings/infrastructure
That’s your August, poured with extra caffeine and sprinkled with ROI. From Manila to Marlborough, architects, investors and even Autodesk are nodding along — ηezo isn’t just measuring carbon, it’s solving the time trap of design inefficiency. Same mission, same impact, but now with sharper edges and faster punches.
Onward, dodge inefficiencies, hug architects, genuflect to swan.
The full ηezo team.