US private equity has swooped into Australia to back construction site safety platform HammerTech in a $105 million (US$70 m) raise.
Californian investment firm Riverwood Capital has backed the Melbourne startup as it eyes off a larger slice of the US building market.
HammerTech is a cloud-based performance and productivity platform for the building industry that speeds up administrative tasks by at least 57% by digitising a heavy paper-based sector.
More than 3.6 million worker inductions have been completed through the platform, which has been used on 20,000 construction projects globally, Â including by 85% of the top 100 contractors in Australia. HammerTech was founded in 2013 and in 2019, took on investment from Arrowroot Capital. Riverwood will score a seat on the board as part of the deal.
The fresh cash will fund offshore growth and R&D to integrate AI and other technologies into the platform for contractors to consolidate safety and site management solutions and processes into a digital system.
It’s 12 months since HammerTech announced plans to expand its global footprint, opening offices in the UK and Ireland. Earlier this year the company appointed building industry veteran and  Aconex cofounder Rob Phillpot as a strategic adviser.
HammerTech CEO and cofounder Ben Leach said it was a pivotal moment in the company’s evolution.
“We remain focused on delivering further efficiency gains through smarter workflows, keeping us at the forefront of construction technology to ultimately make construction sites safer,” he said.
“Working on a construction site is still one of the most dangerous jobs in the world, with the highest number of workplace fatalities of any industry. Sadly, many of these life-changing events are preventable. As projects become more complex, technologies must go beyond digitising forms. We need to make day-to-day processes and activities easier for site teams.”
HammerTech was among the first Victorian startups selected in 2022 to be part of LaunchVic’s 30×30 program, mentoring companies with the potential to reach unicorn status – a $1 billion valuation – by the end of the decade. It plays in a similar space to the 20-year-old Sydney unicorn SafetyCulture, last valued at $2.7 billion.
The platform tackles a range of building issues from onboarding and orientation to safety inspections, incident reporting, and job site compliance.
“We couldn’t be more excited to partner with such a visionary team in the next phase of their growth as they bring a much-needed enterprise-wide safety intelligence software to new markets and customers,” he said.
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