Estimating is one of the most important aspects of the first phase of any construction project. Takeoffs is the process of quantifying all the materials needed for a project by analyzing the set of drawings. This key function has traditionally largely been done manually. Workorder is a construction estimation platform that uses image recognition, deep learning, and OCR to automate this process. The company’s proprietary technology allows construction cost estimators to estimate jobs up to 10x faster than before. Workorder is helping companies like Performance Contracting Inc, TIS Construction Services, DPR Construction, and others streamline the takeoff process. The company has been in private beta and just launched publicly this week.
LA TechWatch caught up with Workorder CEO Marty Cornish to learn more about the inspiration for the business, the company’s strategic plans, recent round of funding, and much, much more…
Who were your investors and how much did you raise?
Workorder raised a $1.1 million pre-seed round from UBMB and Mucker Capital to assist in the launch of its innovative software for the construction industry.
Tell us about your product or service.
Workorder’s software is a first-of-its-kind for construction estimating, as it uses image recognition, deep learning, and optical character recognition, among other technologies, to automatically detect, measure, and count objects in construction blueprints.
What inspired the start of Workorder?
In construction – even across the enterprise – the last wave of innovation was the digitization of paper-based processes. The current wave of innovation brought on by AI focuses on the automation of digital workflows and data. So where digitization allowed for entering and storing data in software, automation extracts, analyzes, and in some cases creates data. So we’re going to see exponential productivity gains with automation. We started Workorder to automate what we saw as an obvious pain point in construction estimating. Clicking and tracing blueprints is incredibly tedious but doesn’t need to be. With Workorder, it can be automated, which saves estimators dozens of hours per week.
How is it different?
Our competitors are desktop-based software applications that require manual clicking and tracing of blueprints. They’re very tedious to use. Workorder is an automated solution where others are heavily manual.
What market you are targeting and how big is it?
Contractors spend 2.3% of revenue ($300B/yr) estimating costs, equivalent to their average net profit margin.
What’s your business model?
Workorder is offered as a software-as-a-service (SAAS) monthly or annual license, starting at $500/month per user.
What are your post-COVID office plans??
We started as a remote company and will continue to work remotely for the foreseeable future. Some of our team is based in Los Angeles.
What was the funding process like?
I’ve been through five different fundraising efforts, and where most of them have been incredibly frustrating, this one was different. Spencer Gaffney and I connected well right away, and he did the work to understand the problem. Many investors are too busy to dig in and learn about the real customer pain point being solved, but from the first meeting, Spencer and the UBMB team made the effort. We couldn’t be happier about having them as partners.
What are the milestones you plan to achieve in the next six months?
We are launching the product and focused on customer acquisition.
What advice can you offer companies in Los Angeles that do not have a fresh injection of capital in the bank?
Just keep building, it’s a long journey.
Where do you see the company going now over the near term?
Our customers are pulling us. We have had paying customers before we even launched a stable product. So we will continue to listen to our customer’s needs and keep building the best software solutions for them as fast as we can. The way we look at it: our customers fuel our engine, we just steer the ship.
What’s your favorite outdoor activity in LA?
I enjoy taking our daughter to the playground at Oakwood or to the beach, usually nearby in Venice. Our family also likes hiking Los Leones.
