Why the Bulk Materials Industry is Overdue for Transformation

By Paul Foley, CEO of Bulk Exchange

Construction firms, from large enterprise outfits to owner-operated shops, are considering technology to transform their business. And why not? Costs are escalating, staffing poses significant challenges, and the industry is trending toward a younger workforce. Technology is the key driver for containing costs, automating tasks, and delivering a better experience to employees.

Despite these opportunities, many aspects of construction don’t have efficient solutions, causing many processes to remain firmly old school. While there are a handful of standout technology companies that have digitized the industry, the average contractor or supplier still relies on manual, outdated methods that could be handled online.

And yet, the construction industry manages some of the largest, most important, and most expensive projects on Earth. Technology that could streamline, improve, and optimize construction is critical.

Enter Bulk Exchange. I founded this company to solve the issues I had personally experienced as an excavation contractor for the last 30 years, over three continents. We are proudly made by the industry, for the industry. Built in collaboration with suppliers and estimators nationwide, we are employing innovative technology to create efficient solutions for all sides of the bulk materials industry.

A bulk materials marketplace means suppliers and contractors can connect online, enhancing and simplifying every step of the search-to-fulfillment lifecycle.

For the first time, supply and demand can connect via a central marketplace, making it easier to buy, sell, and move materials. The Bulk Exchange market place provides an industry-specific search engine with comprehensive solutions for finding and listing materials, accessing list prices, and submitting or responding to RFPs.

Benefit of Tech #1 - Centralized Search Engine

A marketplace approach is particularly important for major building projects. These projects have an intense focus on the planning stages, including finding and tracking real-time pricing.

Major Building Projects are often built by a large entity that may not be local to an area. They have no go-to platform to source the information they need and may not have local relationships. Contractors, whether at national companies or local owneroperated shops, have to call around to local truckers/ brokers or competitors for information on suppliers in an area, and generally rely on word of mouth. It’s an incredibly anecdotal, manual process considering these are multi-million dollar projects.

A marketplace allows for centralized data, which simplifies the lives of supplier salespeople and project managers, and estimators who previously had to exchange weekly calls to ensure their pricing information was up-to-date.

Benefit of Tech #2 - Automate Bidding

For small and medium-sized contractors who don’t have the estimating staff or scouts to do the bird-dogging and reconnaissance in an area to find pricing for disposal sites and suppliers, AI can read through and decipher large swaths of bid docs, specs, submittals, and docs that are synonymous with major building projects. Large contracting firms can create more efficiencies when bidding jobs; instead of a team of estimators averaging six bids per week, they could push out 8-10.

Benefit of Tech #3 - Create a System of Record

Going deeper, without a centralized technology solution, there’s no system of record or single source of truth. Even though there can be vaults of files capturing quotes and RFPs to and from multiple vendors over multiple dates, they all live separately on texts, emails, phone calls, and notepads.

We built Bulk Exchange to capture all of this activity, time stamp, show a detailed audit of communications, and make all files/revisions easily discoverable.

A given project might not even happen for months or years, so a clear history of events and correspondence makes life easier and less risky for both vendors and customers.

And then there’s ESG. Guys like me don’t know what we don’t know, so we drive by facilities all the time which adds significant trucking costs to a project, and site crew productivity goes way down due to guys standing around waiting for trucks stuck in traffic. We designed our carbon calculator powered by our marketplace data to allow users to evaluate not only material costs but also environmental impact due to distance hauling. This ties in with the trend of “Distance Matters” which empowers small businesses to decrease expenses and increase the project volume.

The future of technology for bulk materials is promising, and Bulk Exchange stands at the forefront, ready to lead the transformation. Cc