Boxxcraft Provides a Way To 'Build Before You Build'

“It’s like having a crystal ball on a jobsite.”

That’s how Michael Cunningham and James Kotronis sum up what their company, Boxxcraft, can provide for builders and construction managers working on high-end, complex, custom luxury homes on the East End.

The partners founded their model-based construction data management company in 2021, and it has been gaining traction with some of the top luxury builders in the area.

Cunningham and Kotronis teamed up to create Boxxcraft, leveraging their collective years of experience in the construction, design, architecture and fabrication fields, to address a problem that they say has been plaguing the custom home building industry for years.

The average custom home construction project, particularly for high-end residential homes that push the envelope when it comes to architectural details and innovation, produces thousands of construction documents that require constant updating and retooling. It can be an enormous challenge to get every contractor and subcontractor on the same page when there are that many pages, in the literal sense, and making it all work together can be like trying to piece together a complicated jigsaw puzzle.

Model-based construction design management is the solution to that problem, and the way of the future, according to the founders of Boxxcraft. They define model-based construction design management as a way to “build before you build,” by developing a computer-based set of models that can respond quickly and accurately to changes throughout the construction process. The result is a single source of geometric data — instead of a collection of different construction plans and documents — that can incorporate every element of the overall build, from structural and mechanical systems to window treatments, electrical and plumbing, stonework and everything in between.

“It really is about simplifying and streamlining the process but maintaining craft,” Cunningham said.

Cunningham and Kotronis met in 2013, while working together on a unique multi-year project in East Hampton under the management of high-end luxury builder Ed Bulgin of Bulgin and Associates. Kotronis was hired to help work on the project, a highly specialized residential build, because of his combined experience in architecture and computer modeling. Bulgin had come to the conclusion that computer modeling would be an essential element to the project, and brought in Kotronis for that purpose. Cunningham was working as a senior site supervisor for Bulgin at the time.

Cunningham explained that the traditional process of building a high-end home involves many sets of two-dimensional blueprints that several people are working off to create a three-dimensional object.

“So it’s very open to interpretation,” he said. “If you were to give five people a plan, you’d end up with five different 3D versions of it.”

For the high-end homes that builders like Bulgin often work on, there is rarely a prototype that can help guide the process. Those residential projects are just as much bespoke pieces of architectural art as they are homes, and the owners tend to be exacting when it comes to precision and design.

In creating the Boxxcraft computer modeling system, Cunningham and Kotronis say they have given high-end builders a vital new tool that not only streamlines the process but saves time, as well as money.

“We’re able to take all the stakeholders, the architects, engineers and contractors, and put everything they need to do into a computer program of the house, where it’s flexible and can be changed and verified,” Cunningham said. “And we can have as many iterations of the project we need to get the end results.”

Kotronis said that while 3D modeling is no longer rare in the industry, what sets Boxxcraft apart is the unique ability its computer programs have to bring everyone together on the same page.

“We’re collaboratively working with each stakeholder on the project and we’re capturing the rules and the way things are intended to go together and building a computer program with those rules that becomes responsive,” he said. “So when we find things that don’t work, we’re not just starting from zero again; we just tweak and fine tune that logic and resolve the conflicts. It allows us to iterate many times, in a way that’s much faster and more accurate.”

The framework that Boxxcraft is built upon is a 3D experience platform made by French software company Daussault Systemès, which is used by big name international corporations like Boeing and Tesla.

“We’ve taken the bits and pieces necessary for what we do and leveraged it to create Boxxcraft,” Kotronis said. “Everybody that uses it has different projects or engineering and design intent, but we’ve configured it to achieve the results we need.”

Kotronis has been familiar and worked with the Daussault Systemès 3D models for more than a decade, and the experience he gained in programming and learning how to leverage the 3D technology meshed well with Cunningham’s years of on-site experience in the construction and homebuilding field, even going back to his time as a framer.

The ease of use and way it brings everyone together on a project is a big appeal of Boxxcraft, Cunningham said.

“You can walk around a jobsite with a $350 Chromebook and see the actual model that everybody else has seen and is working on. The communication factor is huge. Everyone, right down to the laborers can see it. Having that kind of visibility is worth a thousands words.”

The model reduces risk and increases production, Cunningham added, because it allows even custom-built parts like windows and doors to be ordered further in advance, and also allows for several different contractors — HVAC, electrician, plumber — to be on site and working at the same time, rather than one having to arrive after the other, because “they all have a road map,” Cunningham said.

The business partners admit that changing the thinking when it comes to the best way to approach high-end custom home building will take time, and that many builders — particularly those who have been at it for a long time and feel they’ve honed a successful style of operating — may be skeptical at first. But they see model-based construction management data management as the way of the future, particularly for homes that challenge assumptions and eschew prototypes from an architectural and design perspective.

“People who are used to doing things a certain way, and a lot of skilled people are really good at thinking on the fly in the field and coming up with resolutions, might be slower to come around,” Kotronis said. “But people that are more progressive and in a growth mode and want to achieve the next level and maybe have younger companies are interested in getting a competitive edge and operating more efficiently.”

Several high-end builders who have used Boxxcraft already like what they see. Bulgin has used Boxxcraft on two projects now, including one he said likely could not have been achieved without its involvement.

“Boxxcraft allows you to see the future,” he said. “I think especially in the Hamptons, where architects are always challenging space and they challenge us as builders and subcontractors, I think there’s a real place [for Boxxcraft] here. In areas of the country where you’re really creating architecture, there’s definitely a place for it.”

Bulgin said the ability of Boxxcraft to cut down on the time it takes to complete a project is a key feature as well. How long a project will take to be finished is, he said, typically the second question he gets after how much it will cost.

“In percentages, I’d say Boxxcraft saves 5 to 6 percent of the cost on a project and it could be up to 10 percent of the time it takes to build that it saves,” he added.

Greg D’Angelo, another high-end builder with a solid reputation in the area, used Boxxcraft on a home he recently completed in Amagansett. He said using Boxxcraft was key, especially when it came to giving him the ability to order custom floor-to-ceiling windows for the home, which has a steel frame and included a lot of glass. D’Angelo estimated it would have taken double the amount of time for the custom glass to arrive and be installed if they’d used traditional means of building the frame ahead of time and then ordering the glass windows.

“Typically, you have the architect who is focusing attention on the design and aesthetic and they typically outsource the engineering to a firm, and those people do their best to collaborate and eliminate conflicts,” D’Angelo said. “But this level of focus is something we’ve never seen before. [Boxxcraft] became the liaison between engineer and architect and really just put the whole thing together.”