Eli Boron, a former Marine combat engineer, built OnTarget, a cloud platform that links construction schedules to 3D models and updates them in real time from the field. One $100 million project saw a 752% ROI and cut four months off the schedule. The U.S. construction industry loses $250 billion annually to delays, mostly from siloed data and paper processes.
Questions this video answers
Pricing is per project, typically a tenth of a percent of the hard construction cost, similar to other software platforms in the market.
General contractors, specifically superintendents, BIM managers, and schedulers who manage on‑site projects.
OnTarget focuses on the execution side with real‑time, cloud‑based, mobile feedback, allowing rapid schedule updates, while the others are primarily planning tools.
Customers consider time saved on manual schedule updates (e.g., 2 hours per day), ability to manage more jobs per scheduler (e.g., 6 jobs vs. 3), and overall schedule acceleration leading to cost savings.
Chapters
Hi, I'm Eli Boron, former combat engineer in the Marines and now co-founder at OnTarget. So what is OnTarget? We're the first data-driven scheduling software that links tasks to 3D models, helping teams avoid delays. So why should you care about delays in construction? Well, according to sources, $250 billion is lost every year in the US due to delays. Just think about how many more schools, hospitals, or roads could be built with your tax dollars if we didn't waste so much. So why does this happen? Siloed data, paper-based processes, broken collaboration, and one-way communication. So how do we solve this problem? By taking methodologies from lean manufacturing such as digitization, standardization, and optimization, we can finally bring all the data together to take action. Solution: putting the most critical information in the user's, user's hands. We can finally solve this. So how do we digitize? By putting schedules into our platform and collecting field data in real time, we can now tell the worker where they need to work, what they need to do, and when they need to be done. And how do we standardize? By integrating with several ERP systems, we provide transparency to all team members Construction managers now have a schedule that's up to date and reflecting what's actually happening on site. This brings us to optimization. Unlike existing scheduling softwares, we factor in several data points like weather, workers' ratings, RFIs, site conditions to provide a dynamic project plan. Updating and reporting a project's progress used to take 30 to 60 days, but using OnTarget, it's real time, so now you can make proactive decisions. In fact, one of our clients had a 752% ROI on a $100 million project and saved over 4 months. And we've been fortunate to have great success with some of the largest contractors like OHL and Hollister, and we have pilots with several other large contractors. We have over 51 projects on our SaaS platform worth more than $2 billion, and we're growing at 40% month over month. And using a land and expand strategy along with pricing per project, we're confident that we'll hit $2 million ARR in 2018. So what's the opportunity? The global construction market is $9 trillion, and the construction software accounts for 1% of the market, meaning the TAM is approximately $10 billion and growing. So why will OnTarget lead the way? We have an amazing team. Columbia University with backgrounds in computer science, civil engineering, data science, construction management, and artificial intelligence. And that's all right. Thank you, Eli. Uh, Christine, let's start with you.
Okay, um, so a couple questions that both have to do with sort of how you guys are inserting into the market. You know, there have been other companies, you know, several over the last, you know, let's call it, certainly the past 5 years, maybe past 10, that have said, hey, construction is, you know, still an industry that's not really, you know, we brought the digital domain effectively, whether it's, you know, assigning workforce effectively, you know, whether it's being able to manage, you know, building inspections or you sort of doing the project management. So I want to understand a little bit more about how you fit into that market, you know, who's your competition, you know, why are you the right guys and/or why is now the right time? If some of the other guys were great, but just the timing was wrong. So I'd like to understand that as well as sort of work towards, you know, how do you get out of that, you know, same, uh, situation made those other companies die, where they got lots of folks to do those pilot engagements, but you had some issues getting that to go from, you know, one project a year with construction firm to, you know, 10 or 20.
Um, so obviously us being a scheduling, uh, software, um, a lot of times we get compared to, um, Primavera P6, which is an Oracle product, and Microsoft Project. And there's another competitor as far as Syncro, but those are primarily being used for planning the projects. We're more focused on the execution side of things, updating the progress. And essentially, we work with those other platforms. We allow those to be imported into our system. And since we're a cloud-based platform, like, unlike the other ones, and we're also mobile-based, we can get the feedbacks directly from the field. And so that's how we're being able to rapidly update the schedule versus printing it out, sitting down with the project managers or superintendents and going line by line writing the progress and then handing it over to the scheduler. So we're primarily focused on the execution side of the construction site. Okay, Larson, let's go to you. Questions?
Sure. What's your guys' revenue model?
Revenue model? It's primarily been basically pricing per project. We do a tenth of a percent usually of the hard construction cost. It's very similar to other soft platforms within our market.
Got it. And so can you walk me through sort of your sales process when you go in? You know, first of all, who is the buyer within the construction company organizationally? And secondly, like, what is sort of the business case that you're pitching when you sell this product to them? And finally, what do they say in response?
So we primarily sell to general contractors. We typically go after the superintendents. The BIM managers or the schedulers, the guys actually that are on site, you know, managing the projects. We primarily go there and, you know, tell them the idea that, you know, we can keep your schedule up to date so you make proactive decisions instead of reactive ones. And that's kind of our go-to-market strategy as far as what we pitch. Right.
But what, like, what further than that, like, what is sort of the metric they're looking for? You mentioned in your deck that you save construction time? So like, what, what sort of like is their ROI hurdle, for a lack of a better term, that they require in order to buy or not buy?
Um, well, a lot of times, um, they're spending probably an extra 2 hours a day to keep the progress, the progress updated. Um, or if they want to essentially expand their company to other, to more projects, they essentially have to either hire more project managers or schedulers But with our platform, we can essentially schedule— can manage 6 jobs instead of 3.
