Just as we now photograph receipts to spend that ‘important lunch’, construction tech startup Qflow allows teams running construction sites to do the same for building materials. Seems like a no-brainer, doesn’t it? However, it is more innovative and less trivial than it sounds. To date, there is no company that has done this – as far as TechCrunch is aware – making Qflow very unique. It also has a de-carbonization angle: If you can track building materials more efficiently then you can track carbon inputs and outputs. This is especially important, given that the construction industry is one of the largest carbon emitters, accounting for 11 percent of global carbon emissions.
The company has now closed a $9.1 million (£7.2M) Series A funding round led by climate tech VC Systematic Capital to fuel growth in the US and Australia. Ascension Ventures, Bridge Investment Group, Gravel RD, Greensoil PropTech Ventures, Grosvenor, John Emre (CEO of Elder Properties), MMC and Suffolk Tech are also participating.
Qflow says its platform allows construction teams to collect real-time material and waste data, allowing those teams to make more informed decisions on cost, carbon and quality, leading to greater transparency and efficiency Is.
Qflow previously raised £2.4 million in two seed rounds with investment from PiLabs, MMC, Goldacre, Entrepreneur First (EF London 10) and angel investors.
Founded in 2018 by Brittany Harris and Jed Cohen, both of whom have experience in the construction industry. The pair volunteered for World Merit, an SGGs community.
In an interview, Qflow co-founder and CEO Brittany Harris told me: “Construction is one of the most carbon intensive industries in the world. And it’s kind of a nightmare to decarbonize because there are so many moving parts. Qflow is the simplest way to capture all the information you need to ultimately understand the carbon impact of manufacturing and then use it to decarbonize. It’s about reducing the right way, but in the long run, it It’s about unlocking the economy in urban mining.”
An urban mine is a deposit of rare metals in a society’s waste electrical and electronic equipment.
Qflow says customers using the platform now include Berkeley Group, Canary Wharf Group, Grosvenor, Landsec, Morgan Sindall, Multiplex, Workplace Futures and others.
Matthew Goldstein, general partner at Systemic Capital, said in a statement: “Qflow uniquely aligns the goals of construction CFOs and sustainability executives to their decarbonization ambitions while saving clients time, money and mitigating regulatory risk.” accelerates.”
