Are you a contractor struggling to find skilled personnel? Are you a skilled worker looking for the next project to work on? Perhaps Fixed Construction may have the answer for you both.
Fixed Construction’s platform matches workers with contractors. Fresh off exhibiting at Digital Construction Week, one of the startup’s co-founders, Lucy Clarke, gives BIMplus the lowdown.
BIMplus: Let’s have your elevator pitch: how does your technology help those in the built environment?
Lucy Clarke:Fixed is a platform connecting construction companies and skilled workers. We make it easier and more cost-effective for companies to source the vetted, skilled workers they need for their projects. For workers, we connect them to relevant jobs in a timely manner, making sure they don't waste time applying for jobs that are no longer available, or too far away for them to reliably commute to.
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“We make it easier and more cost-effective for companies to source the vetted, skilled workers they need for their projects.”
Lucy Clarke
The genesis of Fixed came from our co-founder Henryk’s experience working in construction. Over the eight years he spent in the industry, he saw friends of his being let go on a Friday with no job to go to on Monday. He realised their only recourse was to call their contacts in the industry to try to land their next role, or else call round the many recruitment agencies to find a position.
He then found out how much a typical subcontractor spends on recruitment agency fees each year on sourcing skilled workers and together we realised we could use technology to make the process far more efficient and cost-effective, resulting in a win-win for workers and companies.
Companies can save money and time, while workers can find jobs that actually work for them. We've seen the model work really well in other industries, so as an ex-investor, I got really excited about the size of the opportunity and the genuinely positive impact we could have on the people in the industry.
Who is your senior management team and what’s their background?
We are three co-founders: my previous experience is in investment banking at Goldman Sachs and investing in and scaling B2B software and marketplaces at Octopus Ventures. Henryk Jakubiak previously worked in construction with more than eight years across the industry, working on some of the largest commercial projects in London – including Tottenham Stadium and Elephant Park. And Des Conlon has experience in software engineering and technical sales from his time at IBM, Looker, Google and Firebolt.
Fixed’s co-founders (left to right): Henryk Jakubiak, Lucy Clarke and Des Conlon
Which businesses have tested it or are currently using it?
Despite limited sales and marketing activities, we are working with a number of early customers, including J Coffey Infrastructure. We have an exciting pipeline of new customers as well, who will be starting with us in the coming months.
At the moment we are staying relatively focused on the RC frame, groundworks and piling sectors, but will be looking to expand beyond that in the coming years. We’ve also had repeat business from all of our existing customers, which is a data point we are particularly proud of.
Are you looking for more funding?
We raised a small angel round to help us get started last year, and we still have plenty of cash runway. However, yes we will be looking for more funding now that we have shown we can attract workers to our network and successfully place workers with companies.
We have recently hit a huge milestone of 10,000 workers signed up to our network, making it easier for us to help companies quickly source the people they need.
We will use the funding to scale our team, allowing us to work with lots of new customers over the next 12 months and grow the business meaningfully.
What are your plans for the next two years?
We are planning to scale our platform to more than 100,000 workers and hundreds of companies working with us. Before we start looking to expand overseas, we want to be the go-to platform for construction recruitment in the UK.
We don’t just manage the sourcing of workers, but are an end-to-end workforce management platform that allows companies to manage and pay their workers as well.
We are also aware of the critical need to build our supply of skilled workers as well, so are also planning to focus a large part of our attention on upskilling to ensure we have the workforce we need to meet demand in the coming years.
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