Workforce Intelligence Contech Startup Brigit Raises CA$ 24 Million Series B

Contech has emerged as one of the main stories in the post-pandemic resurgence. This is not that surprising, when the great value add that product and process innovation can bring to the enormous and laggard construction sector is considered. Significant raises and M&A deals are now a frequent occurrence in the space.

Today is no different, as Toronto-based construction-focused workforce intelligence company Brigit announced it has raised CA$ 24 million in a Series B funding round co-led by Camber Creek and Storm Ventures.

Co-founders Mallorie Brodie and Lauren Lake launched Brigit (a play on words which they came up with during an accelerator program) in March 2014 with a product focused on punch list management. Brigit had consistently been very focused on researching their market to seek out opportunities that would improve their offering. This led them to eventually realise there was an unserved market need around workforce planning for mid to large-sized general contractors (GCs), resulting in the company pivoting and launching Brigit Bench, currently its flagship product, in May 2019.

In the summer of 2020, the company raised a CA$ 7 million strategic funding round with Autodesk. According to Brodie, they have increased revenue by 140% since their last raise, and currently work with over 16% of the ENR400 market (the top 40 GCs in the US). 

Bench is a cloud-based platform, targeted at contractors’ operations teams, with the goal of optimizing workforce management and workflow, aiding with hiring and providing input on workforce availability for tendering decisions. Brodie shared that “this process was generally managed on whiteboards and spreadsheets by operations leads and was very manual. We automated it, integrating with contractors’ tech stacks and generating insights.”

Bench integrates with human resources, project management (e.g. Procore and Autodesk and CRM (e.g. Salesforce) software, and can analyse historical data from employees’ past companies as well. It has a forecasting dashboard which can map demand for staff on existing and awarded projects, and the staff that is “on supply” down to very granular levels such as individuals’ certifications. This can help HR predict hiring needs based on the company’s pipeline, and it can also help with selective bidding when pursuing new business – only tendering for projects where the company matches the workforce requirements.

Currently, the company caters to clients starting at 75-plus headcount, though the average “office” size is at least 200 individuals, be it a specific region or the entire business. It is only present in North America for the time being but, since many of its customers have an international presence, this may open up future expansion opportunities.

With its Series B raise, Brigit aims to expand its focus beyond operations teams, as its research has shown that there are other users in client organizations who would benefit from additional workflows. Another aim is to expand to other types of contractors, such as speciality subcontractors. Brodie added that “in terms of product, we are tapping into insights that help change the ways GCs manage their workforce, so we want to invest in ever more strategic insights. For example, we launched recommendations on who the best fit is for a project (based on elements such as past experience) while scheduling is underway. As our clients add more data to the system, it will become ever stronger. During our research, we found that a VP of operations could keep 3-4 data points in mind, but our system tracks 50 data points. Over time, this will become a very strong engine to build better teams and reduce risk on projects, enhancing profitability and increasing the probability of a timely completion.”

Mitchell Schear, executive partner at investor Camber Creek, shared why they chose to bet on Brigit. He told me that “we are looking at an industry that is a laggard (even contech when looked at within proptech) with antiquated workflows. Talent is managed with pen and paper or on excel spreadsheets. Brodie and Lake really understand the industry, they are excellent technologists that are able to deliver a product that is very user friendly to contractors. It sounds really basic when it isn’t. As they sell into the industry, the experience with users is consistently very strong and of particular note we find that people are signing up for six figure annual recurring service fees and getting seven figure returns on their investment.” This makes sense when considering the importance that getting the execution team right has for a project’s successful outcome.

He went on to share that Camber Creek sees a lot of expansion for Brigit through their existing user groups as these add more users. Reliability is a key element, as he noted that when Bridgit say they will develop a feature, they deliver on their promise. Camber Creek has a bullish outlook for Brigit, as “we see a good product market fit and strong growth prospects and believe we can help them expand to more users and markets, helping them accelerate growth.”

Brodie reckons – and I agree – that data will be the next big thing in construction. The key is to produce data that can be analysed on an aggregate level, which is impossible to do with siloed spreadsheets. As more processes, including workforce management in Brigit’s case, become digitized, it is important to be able to draw insights from the data they produce.