“There is a moment of reckoning in every project when the schedule starts to be at risk, SmartPM objectively and eerily accurately sounds the alarm and then helps us understand what our team can do to get back on track. It is better than our best project managers.” — Diligence feedback from a SmartPM customer
Construction projects today are facing shorter timelines, increased prices of materials, and more competition for labor. In order to manage these challenges without sacrificing outcomings, teams from small firms and large enterprise GCs alike have turned to something that is within their control: project data and analytics. That’s why we’re excited to share our latest investment in SmartPM, which offers automated project controls and best-in-class scheduling tools including analytics in order to ensure projects are completed on time, within budget, and according to the highest quality standards.
All too often, the process of building deviates quickly from the plan conceived at the beginning of a construction project. Even with the best preparation, some changes are unavoidable, particularly with labor shortages, supply chain issues, and timeline disruptions. These changes can introduce an element of unpredictability to almost any project execution. This unpredictability prevents even the best intentioned stakeholders from accurately forecasting project completion dates. Shifting this date can increase budgets and impact resource allocation. Even worse, though, this unpredictability can harm client relationships, which can have lasting effects on a business.
To navigate these hurdles and mitigate the potential fallout, construction firms today place a strong emphasis on project controls, with a keen focus on monitoring schedules and managing costs. However, amid the day-to-day hustle of project management, many teams find themselves entangled in the minutiae of tasks or conducting isolated assessments that fail to provide a comprehensive view of the project’s status.
SmartPM’s platform provides this comprehensive view of projects for users, including contractors, project managers, and other stakeholders. SmartPM captures real-time data as well as predictive analytics, so that users can get updates as well as actions. Users ingest schedule files, which every project already has, from legacy tools including MPP, P6, and Phoenix. Then, the SmartPM platform analyzes the data to gauge schedule feasibility, track project progress, identify costly patterns, and more. The dashboards allows users to monitor all of their projects in one place, with these high-level insights available at a glance.
SmartPM aims to ensure all project stakeholders trust the schedule data and understand its implications. By offering a solution that streamlines various project control workflows and proactively highlights areas of concern, the platform allows project teams to monitor progress efficiently. Even better, the information allows project team members to initiate corrective measures and manage client expectations at an earlier stage. This early intervention, in turn, holds the promise of unlocking both time and budget resources within the project. These critical resources can then be directed towards addressing emerging priorities, such as carbon footprint control and reduction, enhanced waste management, and improvements to identify safety risks.
SmartPM’s platform also allows for designated users the ability to view projects in aggregate with its Executive Dashboards. While project tracking flags any missed deadlines or failed quality controls, the Executive Dashboard offers a macro-view of all projects. This includes repeat challenges, like supply chain or weather delays, as well as strong areas of performance that can be made even better.
The access to this project information that SmartPM offers has the potential to make how we build as an industry better. While the biggest GCs are able to afford their own data lakes and analytics for project performance, this is not the case for SMBs. SmartPM democratizes the access to project performance analytics by enabling smaller general contractors, who don’t have the resources, to level up. With small and medium-sized firms as well as our leading GCs equipped with the data and analytics that lead to more efficient projects and better outcomes, our industry as a whole moves closer to safer construction sites, dependable budgets, and net-zero buildings.
SmartPM has already been positively received by a number of leading ENR 400 general contractors, including some of our own Building Ventures LPs. The solution has also seen traction with mid market GCs, commercial real estate owner/developers, industrial owners, insurance companies, and large multi-disciplinary engineering consultants. In fact, we have never received more positive feedback from existing customers on any company or product in diligence!
We have conviction in SmartPM’s technology, and we are also confident that founder and CEO Mike Pink is the right person to bring this solution to market. Allen Preger first met Mike Pink four years ago, when Allen was a judge for a startup demo day. Since then, we have followed Mike as an entrepreneur, and we’ve also learned more about his experience that led him here. Mike has an earned secret thanks to his previous experience with KPMG advising clients involved in construction litigation. He has spent years on construction project consulting specializing in the meticulous review of schedules and associated data to identify potential risks. This background equips him not only with a deep understanding of project controls within the construction workflow, but also with an insight into the industry’s prevailing mindset and its resistance to change. SmartPM embodies the culmination of Mike’s expertise acquired during this period. Moreover, it is his innate curiosity and analytical traits that hold the potential to take the tool to new heights once the data is digitized.
Of course, Mike can’t do it alone. He has also built along with his key team members, like Rohit Sinha, who leads product vision and delivery as CTO. Mike and Rohit have assembled a team that has shown the will and resilience it takes to advance an idea into a meaningful product, as well as the talent and dedication to help customers successfully deploy the solution.
For all of these reasons, we are thrilled to lead SmartPM’s Series A $5.5 million funding round, along with new investor GS Futures and existing investor The Nemeschtek Group. I am excited to join the board of directors and help guide the company’s growth going forward along with the support of the full BV Team, especially Mayra and Allen who helped shepherd the investment across the finish line and launch the next stage of our SmartPM journey!
