Procon Consulting announced the launch of the Procon Innovation Center in Virginia Tech by Procon founders Mark Ilich and Kyu Jung. The center is inside the newly renovated Hitt Hall at the Blacksburg campus. It is a state-of-the-art facility to foster collaboration and hands-on learning for students in the Myers-Lawson School of Construction and College of Engineering.
“Virginia Tech does a great job connecting students with industry, and we shared so many impactful experiences as students there with influential professors like Yvan Beliveau and Thomas Mills, who gave us valuable hands-on real-world projects that launched our careers and inspired us to start Procon,” said Jung on the launch. “Repurposing a business plan we created in a graduate class as our foundation, we saw an opportunity to solve industry challenges with emerging technology. We want students to have those same opportunities for innovation and disruption in the industry and champion construction tech for the future.”
The center is designed to support large-scale student-initiated projects and hands-on learning. Students will have access to cutting-edge resources, such as concrete 3D printers, and will partner directly with the industry to produce new tech-driven solutions for forwarding building construction.
Procon was recognized as an early adopter of construction technologies through their project with the General Services Administration (GSA) to get web-based project management tools in production, giving Illich and Jung a platform to gain recognition. This opened the doors for contracts with government clients like New York City’s MTA.
Illich and Jung are childhood friends from Richmond, Virginia. They graduated from Virginia Tech and founded Procon to innovate and disrupt the AEC industry. Their entrepreneurial spirit and combined experience in technology and engineering allowed Procon to provide consumers with top-notch construction management and custom solutions services for the nation’s most intricate infrastructure projects.
“While technology has advanced quickly over the last 25 years, construction is right on the cusp of the biggest transformation the industry will see over the next 15 years, improving cumbersome processes with the adoption of innovations like artificial intelligence, robotics, building information modeling, 3D printing, and more,” said Ilich. “The Procon Innovation Center will enable students to have hands-on experience in creating that transformation that shapes the future of the construction industry. The timing of the center’s opening is auspicious, as October is Careers in Construction Month, and this facility will inspire students to explore what an amazing career you can have in construction.”
