Three-year-old, Boston-based construction software startup ManufactOn recently announced a $2.5M Series A round of funding, led by Brick & Mortar Ventures.
ManufactOn is a SaaS platform that helps construction firms plan, track, and manage both prefabrication and regular material handling. It makes information visible to all general and trade contractors involved in a project, including detailers, procurement, shop foremen, field superintendents, and project teams and executives. The company joins another prefab construction startup, Seattle-based Blokable, in raising significant venture capital in recent months. (We’ve yet to discuss Blokable here at AEC Labs, but we plan to do so, and soon!)
Along with Brick & Mortar Ventures, other construction industry investors participated in the funding, including Autodesk. “The world of construction is moving away from its traditional stick-build, in-place processes, and is slowly but surely adopting a new status quo in which construction replicates modern day precision manufacturing, with real estate-scale building components and subassemblies fabricated in offsite, controlled environments and shipped for just-in-time arrival and installation,” Darren Bechtel said. “ManufactOn is positioned to be the one-stop-shop solution for managing the manufacturing, and tracking, of prefabricated building components throughout their entire lifecycle, from raw materials to final installation.”
“ManufactOn continues to expand its footprint. We are pleased to have secured Series A funding from leading investors in the construction industry,” said Raghi Iyengar, founder and CEO, in a press release. “We are excited to see the industry embracing industrialized construction. We are looking forward to continued growth, so that we can provide innovative solutions that accelerate the transformation.”
The focus on construction and technology is acute because of the well-documented failure of the industry to capture any meaningful gains in productivity and efficiency over the last few decades. The reasons are myriad too: the industry is highly fractured, localized, and entrenched, plus its supply chains make it very difficult for firms to scale. But, thanks to technological innovations, solutions like ManufactOn and Blokable are beginning to break those barriers down.
We’re keeping our eye on these types of products here at AEC Labs, and will continue discussing them as part of our broader conversation about innovation and technology across the construction industry.
