A simple outage can paralyze a hospital, a power grid or a transportation system. And disrupt the lives of many people. Hexacode has designed a powerful tool to ensure the maintenance and extend the life of critical infrastructures on which we are increasingly dependent.
The idea
Jean-Pierre Girard, an electrical engineer, had spent 22 years at Siemens when he made the jump. He became self-employed, at age 54, an asset management consultant for public and private clients. In 2015, with Mathieu Giguère, a computer engineer who had worked with Eriksson, he refined his great work: a tool that makes it possible to evaluate in real time the health of assets, to monitor their evolution, the probabilities of failure and the necessary interventions to prevent breakage or breakdown.
All this at your fingertips, on a computer, phone or tablet, down to the millisecond.
“Hexacode was born in a hospital,” says the co-founder with a laugh. It was in fact during the construction of the McGill University Health Center that its tool was used and tested for the first time. The new hospital, a fairly sophisticated infrastructure thank you, was the springboard Hexacode needed to prove itself.
The product
Hexacode Solutions has designed a software platform that makes it possible to digitally reproduce a complex network or infrastructure down to the smallest detail. This is called a digital twin. This digital twin displays in real time all the components of the network or infrastructure, and their state of health. It also records all interventions made on the network and can prevent those that will become necessary, with a color code that determines their urgency.
There is virtually no limit to the number of assets and components that can be listed and tracked by the tool developed by Hexacode. At the McGill University Health Centre, where the technology was first used, the digital twin takes into account the location of electrical outlets and the composition and color of walls as much as the critical systems necessary for the proper functioning of a modern hospital.
It is a powerful and very effective decision-making tool for managers, but also a way to extend the life of infrastructures that are increasingly costly to build and maintain, assures Jean-Pierre Girard.
Transportation networks, power grids and telecommunications networks can benefit from the new tool, such as hospitals, data centers or industrial complexes.
The future
Hexacode Solutions was officially launched in 2013 and, after 10 years of work, it is now ready to take the commercialization step. Its founders believe they have arrived at the right time. Infrastructure is aging, its capacity must be increased and qualified labor is becoming scarce. “It’s the perfect storm,” summarizes Jean-Pierre Girard.
The five shareholders have been supported until now by the Inno-Centre incubator, the BDC and the Center of Excellence in Energy Efficiency. They are now ready to open the company’s doors to new capital, but also to new partners who could enrich their model, such as engineering consulting firms and research centers.