Viewpoint Construction Software seeks to digitize the job site

Viewpoint's headquarters at the east end of Portland's Hawthorne Bridge. (Viewpoint photo)

Viewpoint Construction Software wants to bring a stubbornly old-school industry into the digital age.

Portland-based Viewpoint says the construction job site remains awash in paper - from old-fashioned punch lists to manual timecards. The result, the company says, is that the people managing the projects don't have a timely view of what's happening on site - and that leads to mistakes, slowdowns and expense.

Viewpoint hopes to correct that by marrying its existing back-office software with new tools for the field.

"We are connecting it with what is actually happening on the job site," said Viewpoint chief executive Manolis Kotzabasakis. "The use of technology in construction is going to change dramatically."

Viewpoint was already among Portland's largest tech companies when Boston private equity firm Bain Capital acquired a majority stake in 2014 for $230 million. (Viewpoint says Bain acquired the rest of the company later.) The company had forecast $140 million in revenue that year, the last year Viewpoint disclosed specific financials.

The construction industry has only grown in the intervening years, booming with the broader economy and a surge in residential and commercial construction. Viewpoint says its sales were up 30 percent in the fourth quarter compared with the same period in 2016.

Still, Kotzabasakis said Viewpoint has more work to do. Its technology has been focused on the office, rather than the field. The company had made a series of acquisitions for on-site tools, but he said they weren't integrated with the rest of Viewpoint's technology.

That's what Viewpoint's working on now, boosting research spending by nearly a third to meld its technologies together. It envisions workers in the field photographing defects or reporting equipment breakdowns so managers in the office can deploy fixes in real time, improving efficiency and reducing costs.

Viewpoint bought a major rival last year, a Seattle competitor called Dexter + Chaney. It won't say how much it paid in the deal, how many employees came with it, or give any indication of D+C's revenues. However, Viewpoint says revenue from the Seattle company's flagship Spectrum software is running roughly double where it was a year ago.

Viewpoint says its employment is up about 10 percent in the past year to a little more than 700 - roughly the same level it was at when Bain bought in back in 2014. Nearly half of Viewpoint's employees work at its headquarters, at the east end of the Hawthorne Bridge.

Viewpoint chose to finance the purchase of Dexter + Chaney with debt, according to Kotzabasakis, but he said Bain has indicated it is willing to invest more of its own capital in future deals. He said Bain feels no urgency to get a quick return on its money, given the growth in Viewpoint's business and the broader construction industry.

"They are very excited about the opportunity here," Kotzabasakis said. "They see it as a very long-term opportunity for their investment."

-- Mike Rogoway; twitter: @rogoway; 503-294-7699

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