Mallorie Brodie and Lauren Hasegawa certainly had perfect timing when they decided to launch an app that improves efficiency in the construction industry.

The co-founders of Kitchener-based Bridgit decided to launch the product they call Closeout in Toronto in March 2014 amid one of the most explosive construction booms in the city’s history. And it didn’t hurt that their thorough research had identified a key point of pain for the industry.

The result: the company, which is going through Communitech’s Rev accelerator, is now operating in seven cities, and revenues are growing 30 percent per month.

“Lauren has a background in civil engineering and we both come from construction families -- we both grew up in the industry,” said Brodie in an interview on Friday. “When we started, we took a very research-based approach and we went out and interviewed more than 500 stakeholders in the industry. … We found out what really annoyed them.”

What really annoys site managers – and what Closeout addresses – is something called deficiency management.

A deficiency is a problem in a construction project --- say, a door that won’t close, or wiring that was installed improperly. When site managers learn of these deficiencies, they have to assign a subcontractor to fix them. In a highrise condo project, there are probably about 50 subcontractors. So assigning and checking up on all these odd jobs is a pain for someone overseeing a multi-million-dollar project. It’s usually managed on a wall chart in the site manager’s office with post-its stuck all over it.

Closeout is a cloud-based mobile app that lets the site manager take a smart-phone picture of the deficiency and assign the task of fixing it to a subcontractor. They can write a description, the location and deadline. Once the job is done, the subcontractor can report back to the site manager, even send a photo of the completed job.

A graduate of the Next 36 program, Bridgit ran a beta-test at 10 projects in the spring of 2014, after which it raised an undisclosed round of financing from angels. The company has since added functionality to the product, such as task assignment to subcontractors and an installation checklist.

The app is now being used in 10 high-rise projects in seven cities in the U.S. and Canada, including two in Seattle.

The GTA is still its main market, and Bridgit – which now employs seven full-time staff and two coop students—plans to target one U.S. city for growth in 2016. In terms of features, Brodie and Hasegawa are considering enhancing the app so developers will be able to stay in touch with condo-owners after the project is completed.

Though they’re aware that the Toronto condo boom could end, overall they’re optimistic about their prospects because of the broad global market for the product. If Toronto slows, another market will pick up. And if there’s a broader economic downturn, governments will likely address it by infrastructure and public works spending.

“We’re just getting started,” said Brodie. “We focus first of all on a very specific geographic area and a specific type of project, say residential highrise, but there’s still a massive opportunity to expand.” 

Eye on KW is a regular feature that showcases startups in Kitchener-Waterloo.