How Bridgit is Solving Construction’s Workforce Problem 

Podcast Transcript 

Steven Rossi-Zalmons: 

Hello there and welcome to the Construction Revolution Podcast. My name is Steven Rossi Zalmons, and here on the show we explore the latest trends, technologies, people, and organizations that are revolutionizing or disrupting the construction industry and are changing what the industry will look like tomorrow. Today on the show, I’m speaking with Mallorie Brodie the CEO and co-founder at Bridgit Mallorie co-founded Bridgit in 2012 and has built it into the GoToWorkforce Planning Platform for contractors across North America and beyond. 

And today she’s here to talk about what it’ll actually take to solve the construction industry’s workforce crisis. 

Steven Rossi-Zalmons: 

Hi Mallorie. Welcome to the Construction Revolution podcast. How’s it going today? 

Mallorie Brodie: 

Good, how are you? Happy to be here. 

Steven Rossi-Zalmons: 

Yeah, it’s going good. Finally got some hot weather, so it’s great. 

Mallorie Brodie: 

No, we deserve it after that long winter. 

Steven Rossi-Zalmons: 

Absolutely. why don’t we jump right in? I’m excited to get to know more about you and especially about Bridgit. So can you tell me the story about how Bridgit was founded and where you got the idea for the company? 

Mallorie Brodie: 

Yeah, so Bridgit has been around for a while. We actually started about 14 years ago now, and both my business partner, Lauren, I, we’re Studying at Western University. And so she was in civil engineering. I was at the Ivy School of Business in the entrepreneurship program. And we both independently had these small ventures on campus. I had this online student art gallery that was on a Shopify e-commerce site. She had a baking business, baking whoopee pies, and so we had this entrepreneurial interest. it wasn’t specifically in tech at that point in time, and independently applied to this program called the Next Canada, which was like an accelerator program. 

And they actually matched us on a team together. So most people, you know, grew up with their business partners, but we got randomly put together and really gravitated towards the construction industry because both of our grandfathers had had businesses in the space. And so had always grown up, you know, hearing hearing about the construction business around the dinner room, the dining room table. And the first instinct was that, you know, there weren’t really smartphones on the job site. And so we should go to a job site and start asking questions. 

And learning about some of the pain points. luckily at the Western campus, the new business school is under construction. And so that was the first job site we walked on to start learning about the different challenges. Long story short, that led to our first product, which was a punch list app. And with that, we were really focused on the Canadian market, residential developments in particular. And after seven years of running that product, 

And really learning a lot. We ultimately heard from a number of individuals within the construction industry that there was potentially a more compelling opportunity around workforce planning. It was much more differentiated. There was no competition. And so we did research, but this time in the US, really large contractors and learned about the challenges around workforce planning in the industry with you know huge labor shortages and pivoted the company in 2019. And we’ve been completely focused on that ever since. 

So it was difficult to go through that pivot, but we’re definitely happy and really excited about the offering that we have now today and the customers we serve. But Bridgit. 

Steven Rossi-Zalmons: 

awesome. Yeah, that’s a very unique story. I mean, they say to not go into business with friends or family, so I guess getting paired up with someone random i is the is a good way to go. 

Mallorie Brodie: 

Yeah. 

Yeah. Hard not to be friends after fourteen years working together, being in the trenches though. So but that was developed. That wasn’t their you know, we didn’t know each other beforehand. 

Steven Rossi-Zalmons: 

Yeah. 

Yeah, that’s the way to do it. so can you tell me a bit more about w what Bridgit is now and who are your customers and and your users? 

Mallorie Brodie: 

Yes, so we are workforce planning and so essentially what that means is our product. Helps schedule the right person to the right job and helps contractors really formulate teams that are best suited to the particular project that they’re taking on. So maybe they’ve worked with that client before, they’ve worked on a specific type of construction, like a hospital project or a data center. And so we help them build those teams and really make sure that their workforce is utilized and optimized to the best potential. And we serve general contractors and specialty contractors, and typically large. 

scale builders. So this the sort of smallest customers we have have around 50 to 75 employees, but we have other customers that may have five or 10,000 employees. So we’re spending most of our time with the very large builders in the industry. 

Steven Rossi-Zalmons: 

Nice. Yeah, it’s you have a pretty impressive list of E and R companies on your website that you work with for contractors before they start using Bridgit, I’m curious what is like the traditional way that people are managing their workforce? 

Mallorie Brodie: 

So for so long before, really before mobile technology existed, the construction industry had really been neglected in terms of technology solutions because so much of the work was happening in the field. And so I think construction sort of got this reputation of not being willing to adopt technology, which we have found not to be the case, so long as the tools are, you know, purpose-built and actually, possible for them to use. And for many years, a lot of companies had a focus on smart. 

Smartphone technology, but that also meant that the back office workflows were getting neglected because tech companies weren’t really spending time in the industry. And what was essentially happening before what contractors were doing is I’d say the most the most interesting version of workforce planning I’ve seen is a contractor had printed out faces of all of their team members, taped it to magnets, and then would move the magnets around to decide, you know, what team and what people were gonna be on what particular project, which 

You know, if you’re managing, even 50 people, let’s say on a handful of projects, that that can work. But when you’re in the hundreds or thousands, it can get pretty messy. And one of the main pain points we saw is that contractors were managing their workforce in these regional silos and couldn’t look at the breadth of all of the people that that they employed, all of the projects they had across the country, and really try to, move people around to different regions when necessary, when the skill set sort of matched the project needs, and if they were willing. 

to move and it was very this like very regional city by city lens that was being taken. So no one enjoyed this process. You know, I think the visualization component is great, but there simply hadn’t been a solution that was built for the specific construction pain point and industry overall. 

Steven Rossi-Zalmons: 

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. you would need a pretty big whiteboard to manage a a giant company with all those magnets. 

Mallorie Brodie: 

Yeah. I guess 

we could have just come up with a giant whiteboard. That could have been another business idea, but I think we picked the right direction. 

Steven Rossi-Zalmons: 

Yeah. So how how did you actually go about developing a solution for this since there was there wasn’t really anything out there before? 

Mallorie Brodie: 

so we always have prided ourselves in, you know, really listening to customers and what they need and what their problems are. and so it’s a lot more listening, a lot less talking in the early product research. And so we met with dozens of executives that were overseeing this process at large-scale contractors to learn about, you know, why why did this even matter to their bottom line? Why was this important to them? Was it a problem worth solving? What happens if they do nothing? And then specifically. 

who was involved in the process. So there’s a bunch of questions that we would ask throughout this research process. Then we would move to the prototyping phase. And so you know our product and design team builds a prototype that we could actually have these prospective customers click through, give us feedback. 

and then at some point you just have to you just have to start building. And so we launched a very basic version of the tool and we knew that there was so much more that we could add to it over time, but you have to start somewhere to get the feedback and also figure out if this is something that customers are truly willing to pay for. 

and so we shipped a prototype within or an MVP rather within six months and did have paying customers on it pretty early. And it was so clear within a first, you know, within the first few months that we were adding value. This was something that we should continue to develop. and I think something that we’ve always learned and stuck by is you can’t fall in love with your own idea. And so if you get feedback from customers that you know they’re not seeing value from something, you have to let go. And so I think we’ve always been very committed. 

Bridgit, but willing to really learn and iterate on our product to make sure that it continues to drive value for our customers. And that speaks to the pivot we went through in 2019. You know, we had dedicated a lot of time and years to the first product, but it ultimately wasn’t adding enough value to our customers. And so we wanted to make sure we adjusted and built something that did. 

Steven Rossi-Zalmons: 

Yeah. No, it’s great that you were able to come to that realization and step back especially when you’re the one that created it and it’s it’s your baby, it’s hard to step away and essentially throw it out and start again. Yeah. Yeah. yeah, it’s a really interesting story. so 

Mallorie Brodie: 

Yep, yep, that’s what we did. 

Steven Rossi-Zalmons: 

you mentioned that right now you’re focused a lot more on sort of larger companies, but I’m curious, like when you go about building a tool like this, how do you make sure that it is equally valuable to those companies of thousands, but also to those companies of a hundred people? 

Mallorie Brodie: 

So I think focus is really important. I’m tempted to say you don’t. You actually don’t try to make something for everyone in the in the early days in particular. And so I think one thing we’ve done a good job at is acknowledging that we can’t serve everyone. There may not be value to every single contractor within the industry. but pick a segment where you really are set on winning, where you know the problem exists. And for us in the early days, that was the ENR 400, as you noted. And so we literally 

put up the logos of the 400 companies on the list in our office and it was our goal to make a product that is absolutely perfect and loved by those contractors which is why we’ve been so successful in getting traction because we were so focused. Of course through that we built a product that 

was valuable, I think, to many other contractors. They didn’t need to have, they didn’t have to be as large as ENR 400. But we did continue to be very deliberate about understanding, at what point, at what employee count does this really become a problem? 

And we did learn that, you know, it’s around 50 people, essentially, where it does become too cumbersome to manage in a spreadsheet. There’s just too many different data points you’re trying to remember about each person, and it kind of ends up being in one person’s head instead of being a scalable solution, especially for companies that are looking to scale. and we are okay with the fact that, we probably aren’t a fit for companies. We know we’re not a fit for companies that are, you know, 10 or 15 people. and we’re okay with that. 

we really started with a very specific focus. We kind of got pulled into smaller and like more mid-sized contractors from there, but then we also have drawn a line in the sand knowing, hey, this actually isn’t a fit for the smallest contractors out there, and that’s okay. They don’t have a massive workforce, and therefore it’s not actually that hard to manage a smaller workforce. 

Steven Rossi-Zalmons: 

Right. Yeah, that makes a lot that makes a lot of sense. And the starting with the biggest ENR companies is never a a bad approach if you can make something work for them. so when we were looking into Bridgit, not going through your website, we saw you just released the twenty twenty six construction workforce benchmark report. So curious if you can share me some of the top findings and also how you went about collecting all the data for that. 

Mallorie Brodie: 

Yeah, totally. 

Yeah, so this the benchmark report is something that we actually had been wanting to do basically since 2019 when you know we landed on this idea and started building the product. We realized that in the tech industry, there’s so many different benchmark reports that come out. SaaS companies, all different types of companies, you can get all these benchmark reports. And in construction, that information really wasn’t available. And given the labor shortage, given these different planning challenges that exist around people in the construction industry. 

We thought it would be so interesting to be able to release a benchmark report. But of course, in order to do that, we had to have the scale to have enough volume of data for it to truly be valuable to our customers. And so we had to wait, sit out sit on that idea for a little while. And then once we got to a certain size, we did have enough data where we felt that this would be valuable to the industry. And so we were able to aggregate and anonymize a lot of the data within our product for customers that have, you know, opted into. 

that and then put this report together. we’ve been getting really positive feedback on it so far. It’s something that I think we’d love to continue to evolve. And we’re hearing you know about more ideas of data we could potentially extract in the future. So again, it’s something that exists in other industries, Carta Insights, you know, it’s a captable product that targets tech companies. They have a really, really awesome benchmark report. So it exists in other places, but nothing existed for the construction industry. And so we wanted to take it on. 

Steven Rossi-Zalmons: 

Nice. Yeah. So can you share like w what was the biggest or most surprising finding for you? 

Mallorie Brodie: 

One thing, I mean, this wasn’t surprising, but I think it’s valuable data for the industry, which is around commute distance. And so we’re able to share the average commute distances that are that are tracked within within our product. And so this is interesting data because we often hear from contractors that one of the main reasons team members leave is because of commute distance and they find a project that’s a lot closer to their home. And then they leave that company, they go to the other company that has. 

the closer project. And so we actually wanted to quantify data around this and ensure that they had a good understanding of you know compared to our competition, compared to other players in the industry, what actually is a longer than average commute time, just so they can keep that in mind when they’re assigning team members to different projects. So that’s one that I think is really interesting. Another data point that I think is really interesting is just how how 

Attrition rates are within the industry. So it’s about 20%. Again, this is very common across the industry. It’s not, you know, that it’s one contractor that has this. This is very common, but I think it does highlight the fact that so much recruitment needs to be happening constantly for contractors that want to grow to make up for this 20% attrition rate. And so it’s something really, I think, worth keeping top of mind for both the operations and HR teams and also thinking about what specific 

Specific programs can be put in place around retention. And does you know the younger talent pool expect the same things that maybe folks that have been at the company for a long time expect? Or are there different programs that need to be put in place to retain some of the newer talent in the industry? it’s a lot to keep up with, 20% attrition. And I think that was something that we hope is valuable to the industry to really quantify across many of the largest contractors in the US market. 

Steven Rossi-Zalmons: 

Yeah. Yeah, I think that’s it’s an interesting idea of having different programs for different groups of employees to try and keep everyone as happy as possible. Yeah. 

Mallorie Brodie: 

Yeah, it’s not easy. It’s I’m not saying it’s easy, but hopefully the data’s 

a s a starting point to to kind of quantify where where you’re at relative to the average in the industry. 

Steven Rossi-Zalmons: 

Yeah, absolutely. so yeah, one of the things you touched on is like the labor shortage obviously is not a secret to especially construction. but in the report you frame it more as a skill shortage. And could you kind of explain why why you think it’s more skills than just straight labor? 

Mallorie Brodie: 

Yeah, so I think one thing we were trying to point out is that just not a person is not a person in the construction industry. Everyone is coming with a very different skill set, whether it’s a particular Project that they’ve worked with, a particular client. And so just because someone has been a project manager at another contractor, it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re going to be a fit for an open role that exists. And so we’re really encouraging, you know, the industry to get a lot more specific about what specific roles with what specific experience and certifications are required to fill over the next number of years, as opposed to this more generic labor shortage statement. And so that is something that I think. 

We hope to publish more data around in the future. And we did touch on it with the project type analysis that we did. We’re seeing a lot of growth in industrials and data centers, which is probably not surprising with the AI boom that we’re, of course, seeing lots of data centers required. And so it’s something that I think we’re just yeah encouraging everyone to take a more detailed look at. and instead of sort of generically saying, like, there’s a labor shortage, if we actually want to make progress on this, I think we have to. 

be a lot more specific than that headline. And so this report’s a starting point, more work that I think we can do, the industry can do. But I think it’s important for us to really make progress on on that key trend that we’re seeing in the market right now. 

Steven Rossi-Zalmons: 

Yeah, that’s great. so staying on the the labor note, as a lot of the construction workforce is aging and those people are retiring with those skills and with all the experience, what do you think has to change to make sure that the construction industry continues to succeed and how did how does your tool like Bridgit help you help contractors to do that? 

Mallorie Brodie: 

so I mean I think the reality is that it Is likely impossible to, and I don’t say that often, but I think it’s likely impossible that we’re going to have a complete one-for-one replacement of you know younger individuals coming into the industry within the next five years as we have a lot of folks retiring. Like I think it’s going to be very, very, very difficult to get that volume of talent with the appropriate skill set in the market in that time frame. so what I do think needs to happen is one, I think contractors need to do 

The absolute most with the people they have. And I think you know, effort’s certainly there, but we see all the time that there’s opportunity to better utilize team members across a company just because they don’t have a tool like Bridgit or another tool in place to really effectively manage their workforce. So do the most with the people you have, be as efficient as possible with the people you have. I also think it’s another area where technology in general can help. So not just you our workforce planning product, but just 

really improving the overall tech stack use of AI so everyone is that much more efficient within the business and also getting creative with you know do we actually still need to work the way we did in the past or are there new ways of working new process changes that can happen to just again fully revolutionize the way contractors are happening are are working and I think prefab is an example of that but I think we’ll just ultimately have to contractors are going to have to get comfortable changing the way they work because I 

Don’t think it’s reasonable to expect that we’ll be able to recruit as many people into the industry as are leaving. although that seems maybe intimidating, I’ve talked to a few contractors over the last number of weeks, and they actually see this as a huge opportunity. It’s an exciting time to reinvent the way that they’re working. and a lot of the younger talent coming in is really excited about that tech technology and change and the pace. 

and so I don’t think this needs to be seen as you know a negative thing. I think it’s actually going to potentially be great to have a lot of new talent that’s very interested in applying technology to the industry and really modernizing things. 

Steven Rossi-Zalmons: 

Yeah, no, for sure. I think that’s a great take and being able to have firsthand conversations and getting that insight from the industry, it it’s good to hear that there’s hope. 

Mallorie Brodie: 

Yeah, a lot of innovation comes from constraints. And I think startups are a good example of that. Like, startups are always, undercapitalized in the early days. They have to move way faster than is comfortable, but then great ideas come from that and great innovations come from that. so I think sometimes it’s okay for industries or companies to be constrained in a particular way. And it really breeds a lot of creativity. 

Steven Rossi-Zalmons: 

for sure. so on the note of innovation and evolution, you’ve now been in the construction industry for a while, like fifteen, almost fifteen years now. how have you seen the industry evolve and especially like even since twenty nineteen when y Bridgit evolved? how how are you seeing the industry evolve, especially in relation to like technology? 

Mallorie Brodie: 

I mean, there’s just so much more willingness to adopt technology in the construction industry because the vertical specific tools exist now. I remember when we were first launching our punchlist product, and this was back in 2012. in many cases, smartphones weren’t even allowed on the job site. And so the industry’s come so far in making sure that their team members have the tools that they need to really be as effective as possible. so I think the any 

Anyone who started a construction tech company in 2011, 2012 knows that they probably were giving out iPads and Android devices with the product in order to get people using it because the devices, the hardware wasn’t even allowed on job sites. And that’s kind of hilarious to think about now. I think so much has changed since then. And you know, contractors are like what we’re seeing across our customer base, many are leaning into different AI tools. They’re like really, really getting creative with the way they’re working. And I think it’s 

just an an incredibly exciting time for the industry. and they’re no longer, behind because so much investment has happened in the in the tech world to support tools that really help their businesses in the last decade or so. 

Steven Rossi-Zalmons: 

Yeah. Yeah. So I think I I hear that a lot from different people we talk to is having tools that are built for the industry is very different than whereas before the technology was there and people were trying to kind of force fit it into construction and construction has a pretty bad reputation for adopting technology, I think, as a result of that. But the more people I speak to say that that’s really not the case if you build a tool that works for them. 

Mallorie Brodie: 

Yeah. 

Yeah. there’s different graphs online about the amount of venture capital that’s gone into contact companies over the last decade. And like it starts at nothing and then, you know, does its hockey stick up? And so so much more funding has gone into the space. the other thing I think is sometimes easy to forget is with a project-based business, you are serving, you know, different clients, you want to perform for those clients, you don’t have a very large margin to deal with, and the risk is so high, and so much of the construction industry is about mitigating risk. 

risk. And so although people from you know the tech industry may say like, just try it, just try it, just try it. There’s so much risk involved and they want to deliver for the client that they’re working with at that time that it’s sometimes hard to take a step back and change the way things are happening. So yeah, we’ve learned a lot over the years. I think there’s like very clear, reasonable reasons for why, you know, construction was behind in the early days, but we’re seeing yeah, so much change over the last decade, which is is really exciting. 

Steven Rossi-Zalmons: 

Absolutely. so on that note, I know you mentioned you’ve been traveling a lot recently and I’m sure you’re at conferences and trade shows here, there and everywhere. And so I’m curious, apart from workforce management, what are some of the other technologies and innovations that you you’ve seen that really excite you? 

Mallorie Brodie: 

Yeah, a couple companies that I’ve met with or been chatting with a lot recently. So Document Crunch is one, they’re a contract review AI, AI native contract review software. They were just acquired by Trimble. They’ve been doing really well. amazing founder Josh leading that company. Another one is Apex. They’re a scheduling software based out of Australia. and scheduling is another pain point in the industry that I think a lot of contractors complain about. And Apex has a really interesting program for very large scale projects. 

Steven Rossi-Zalmons: 

Nice. Yeah, that’s great. We had Josh on the podcast actually. So yeah, great. I d I didn’t realize I didn’t know that they got acquired, but he was great. Yeah, very exciting news. 

Steven Rossi-Zalmons: 

so to wrap us up, if people are someone is looking to learn more about Bridgit and think about how they can implement it at their own firm, where should they go and what does that initial process look like to get started? 

Mallorie Brodie: 

Yeah, so I mean you can add me on LinkedIn if you want. I’m Mallorie Brodie but our website is goBridgit.com. And on the website there’s a ton of different content information, video demos, and you can sign up to see a demo and chat with one of our team members through the website. or if you’re heading to any of the conferences in the fall, we’ll be at AU, Autodesk University, Trimble Dimensions, and Pro Core Groundbreaks. So would love to connect with you in person there. 

Steven Rossi-Zalmons: 

All right, great. Well, thank you so much for your time and it’s been great getting to know you and learning more about Bridgit and excited to see how you continue to evolve. 

Mallorie Brodie: 

Thank you so much.