Bridgit's New Module Tracks Individual Construction Labor Costs

Canadian construction workforce intelligence vendor Bridgit recently added a new module it claims lets general contractors make better labor allocation and gain economic efficiency.

The new offering, called Bench Cost Tracking, can “help general contractors tie a dollar value to people who are sitting on the bench or are underutilized, and make data-driven decisions about how to properly allocate staff.”

Labor cost and scheduling software is in common use in other industries like retail. A business can better understand what it needs in staffing and when by providing data to software and getting suggestions on how to appropriate staff shifts. The trick is getting enough people to keep customers satisfied without scheduling so many that workers are standing around.

The problem is more complex in construction. While work might run specific shifts, projects typically need extended periods of time for completion. Crews of different specialties—like framing in wood or steel, electrical, plumbing, insulation, HVAC, drywall, finish carpentry, and so on—overlap. In addition, workers will differ in efficiency and quality of work, and the amount of time it takes to do a specific job.

Bridgit has multiple competitors in the space, including Softworks, Workyard, LaborChart, and AccuBuild.

Bridgit says that many contractors use spreadsheets or older systems that may lack the tools to fully understand and then project where, when, and how people spend their time at work. The new module gives contractors a five-year view of “how productive their people are, how many projects their people can handle, and how much it’s costing them to have people left on the bench,” the company’s press release said. 

Of course, the value of that assumes workers stay with a company that long and that all the prior years’ data needed for the analysis is available.

If such data is available, a contractor can not only see the relative economic efficiency of workers but can better schedule and determine the financial implications of benched staff.

Some of Bridgit’s bigger investors are Autodesk and Camber Creek, the latter having recently closed an oversubscribed fourth real estate tech investment fund and which led Bridgit’s Series B funding round.

According to information provided by Bridgit, four general contractor customers already actively use the module.