A U.K.-based construction tech company that offers an artificial intelligence-powered platform to help project managers track work and capture data has raised $16 million in funding.
A digital version of a construction site, including visual snapshots that track the progress of work, was created by Disperse out of London. A person employed on the site walks around with a standard camera at regular intervals and the images are fed into a platform which processes the visuals and applies computer vision techniques to figure out what is happening.
It can help to show the state of a project at a given moment in time, and it can also help to resolve disputes if they arise. Potential problems are automatically highlighted while they can still be solved.
The dispersion is in action.
Disperse combines drawings, plans, construction schedules, and all the elements that go into a construction project to help those at the helm keep on top of everything digitally, reduce risk, and ensure everyone is on the same page
Felix Neufeld, founder and CEO of Disperse, said that there is a case of insufficient access to digital technology that can really change the needle in the construction industry.
According to Neufeld, he considers the perception oflaggards to be a misconception. There is no attitude problem but there is a technology problem. A lot of construction companies and teams are willing to give new solutions a chance despite false promises from technology companies and have ended up with more of a burden from using technology than a value add.
Neufeld pointed to a number of technologies that were examples of companies investing in the next hot thing, but not actually using it.
Neufeld said that most technology on sites quickly becomes either fully abandoned or zombie software, which is to say that the initiatives are technically still active but are only kept alive for perception or contractual obligations.
OpenSpace, which recently raised $102 million in funding, is one of the notable players in the space It is clear that investors want to back the next big construction industry figure.
The productivity problem is still an elephant in the room in one of the largest industries in the world. Construction accounts for 12% of total GDP, and it impacts almost every other industry that depends on it, but construction productivity has completely stagnant over the past 40 or so years. It is a difficult problem to solve.
There has been a lot of change since its previous fundraise. The company had just launched into New York City and was focused on London with big-name customers like Mace and Multiplex. In the intervening years, Disperse has been expanding across both markets, with projects currently ongoing in the UK and Ireland. Gilbane is one of the customers that Disperse has worked with in Washington DC and Florida.
The majority of our business is still in the U.K. where we work with a large share of the key contractors and developers.
Disperse has expanded its scope beyond residential and commercial projects and now covers all manner of building types.
The system can handle it if it is a building. A number of projects in healthcare, education, retail, and manufacturing have been serviced by us.
Neufeld has another $16 million in the bank and he teased a new product that is in the works.
He said that the initial soft launch has gone well and that they have focused on enabling proactive decision making on construction sites for the past year or two.
The funding was led by 2150 and included participation from Northzone.
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