Interview with Mr. Varghese Daniel, Co-Founder & CEO of Wrench Solutions

In a rapidly evolving engineering and construction landscape, Wrench Solutions is redefining project management through innovation, integration, and intelligence. In this exclusive interview, Mr. Varghese Daniel, Co-Founder and CEO, shares how their flagship platform SmartProject is transforming global project execution—from slashing delays to embedding AI-powered foresight into daily operations. With a presence in 37 countries, Wrench continues to set benchmarks in digital transformation for infrastructure and industrial sectors worldwide.

Interview with Mr. Varghese Daniel, Co-Founder & CEO of Wrench Solutions

In an industry long hindered by fragmented processes, how has your integrated SmartProject suite addressed these inefficiencies, and what measurable impact has it delivered in terms of project efficiency and execution?

Here’s an example: one customer is managing 58 projects with just 13 project managers where earlier he would’ve needed at least 50. Imagine the savings from that alone, as well other benefits that ripple out from there like 80% less time-spend per task on average. We knew from the start that SmartProject had to be an ‘integrated’ kind of solution to have impact in the real world because projects are interconnected and interdependent and everything dovetails with everything else – like in a living organism – and having departments work in silos with individual applications (ERP, DMS, spreadsheets etc) wouldn’t cut it. So we designed SmartProject to unify (not just superficially link) data, tasks, processes, and technologies in the cloud, so people could work intentionally and with control and transparency and accountability, rather than only reactively or correctively. That’s how we get the results we do.

Your commitment to ‘Zero Tolerance to Delays’ is a compelling promise. Could you explain how your platform embeds best practices into everyday operations to preempt delays and facilitate proactive project management?

It’s the integration effect again. Embedded workflows means you’re not working blind, you don’t get caught off guard, you see the future unfolding, so to speak, because SmartProject shows you the long-term and short-term effects an action or event will have on other actions and events down the line. If there’s a small deviation which doesn’t seem worrisome today but could snowball into a delayed milestone tomorrow, SmartProject shows you that and also how it will affect other deliverables and even the budget. If you could anticipate something like that you would take preventive action. Or let’s say you planned to order equipment on a certain date but SmartProject tells you a local holiday somewhere might stall it for weeks so you prepone the order. And so on. Imagine how valuable this kind of foresight is in day to day operations, like a superpower almost.

With emerging technologies like AI, IoT, and digital twins reshaping project management, how is your firm incorporating these innovations to enhance project visibility, predict challenges, and optimize decision-making?

All these new technologies are helping us do what we were already doing – but better. Like, AI is helping us fine-tune our system’s automated reports and analyses into a self-running and self-managing guidance system (we call it the Wrench Advisor) which hunts down potential problems, digs up tried-and-tested solutions, and presents both to you for your decision. IoT doesn’t come into play during the project’s execution phase but we use it in the operational phase to monitor parameters like power, pressure, temperature etc, that could signal a breakdown and nudge you to take action. Digital twinning lets us show you what’s happening on your site in a way that’s very visual and intuitive, much easier than reading a report or deciphering a dashboard. So we’re constantly looking for ways to leverage new technologies to make our technology even more effective and intuitive for its users.

Operating in 37 countries provides a wealth of diverse operational insights. How do these experiences influence your platform’s development, and in what ways do you tailor your solutions to meet the unique challenges of different markets?

Having a breadth of experience does help tailor solutions to each market but we were doing that anyway, it’s in our DNA. We chose the name Wrench (after the pipe wrench) because it’s the only tool that can handle different pipe sizes ie it’s adjustable. Our solutions are “adjustable” also. For example, we collated, distilled, and embedded best practices into our software but are open to adapting them to each customer – his needs, his culture, his history – and this ‘adjustability’ evolved into our trademark and our strength as each new best practice or method becomes part of our knowledge base and we leverage it for future customers. I see our uniquely diverse customer base as the epitome of what makes Wrench, Wrench, a kind of positive cycle where each implementation is slightly better than the one before by virtue of all those cumulative experiences.

Looking ahead, what trends do you foresee in the digital transformation of the engineering and construction industry, and what strategic advice would you offer to industry leaders aiming to adopt an integrated, technology-driven approach to project management? 

I would say – embrace AI-driven project management! Then we’ll see less delay in engineering & construction projects. Now 98% projects are delayed, but with AI I expect the reverse ie only 2% will get delayed because instead of guesswork you have fact-based insights which dramatically improve project outcomes. It’s a natural match – AI is data-driven, so are projects, there’s continuous learning in both and now we can tap this knowledge (at a reasonable cost) to make sure old mistakes are not repeated and new ones get corrected before lasting damage. AI is also changing the way we consume information; as we speak we’re going from dashboards and reports to intuitive ask-and-answer (think google vs chatgpt), and that means managers will make better decisions quicker and with confidence. So project management is going to be preventive and proactive rather than corrective and reactive, and that’s a win in my book.