BuildingConnected

BuildingConnected (recently acquired by the massive CAD giant Autodesk) specifically attacked a massive flaw in the legacy bidding industry. Historically, General Contractors maintained their own private, terrifyingly outdated Excel spreadsheets of local subcontractors. If a GC needed a plumber in Dallas, they looked at an Excel list from 2012, emailed 10 plumbers, and 9 of those emails bounced because the companies went out of business. BuildingConnected operates entirely as a "Crowdsourced Network" (essentially LinkedIn for the construction industry). It maintains a massive, live, constantly updated database of over 1 million subcontractors across North America. When a GC needs a plumber in Dallas, they simply search the network. They can instantly see which plumbers actually do commercial work, which ones have capacity this month, and which ones have a good safety rating. It is universally beloved by the subcontractors themselves because it is completely free for them to use. Subcontractors don't have to manage 50 different passwords for 50 different GCs. They log into their single, central BuildingConnected profile, where they can see and manage every single bid invitation they have received from every General Contractor in the city on a single, beautiful dashboard.