Construction labor is not increasing fast enough to meet demand, creating a tight labor market and putting contractors at increased risk of workforce turnover and project readiness.
In 2024, the construction industry will need to bring in over 300k new workers on top of normal hiring to meet industry demands.
At the same time, there are processes in construction that are 50 years old, but they no longer work in the digital era. In labor operations, the contractor back offices still largely assign crews by moving magnets on a board, or rows on a spreadsheet. Attendance, job status, and work performance are manually recorded at job sites.
Labor challenges often snowball into bigger problems that impact budget, timeline, and contractor reputation.
That’s where RIVET Work comes in. The RIVET Labor Ops Platform connects historically siloed data and processes for operations, safety, and project management teams, creating efficiencies and improving operations for everyone. Customers can forecast long-term labor needs, manage workforce data, coordinate weekly schedules, and manage daily rosters. As a result, they are able to greatly reduce administrative time, improve communication, and maximize labor utilization.
“When a new customer sees RIVET for the first time, it looks familiar, and they can immediately envision how it could work for them,” said Ryan Meitl, RIVET Co-founder and CEO. “This is because RIVET is built on the tools and processes the industry has converged on over the last 50 years, so it maps to existing workflows and is easy to use and configure. We don’t invent any of this, we just make what contractors are already doing simple, connected, and fun to use.”
Keeping the Customer in Mind
User experience is the number one priority at RIVET Work. They truly embody a company that wants to get into the mind of their customers and build a solution that directly solves their problems.
After the conclusion of hundreds of interviews with contractors and the direct influence from many of them, RIVET has created a platform that is solving real challenges within its growing customer base. In early 2023, they closed $5.6M in seed funding.
This new funding will help with the accelerated demand for RIVET’s software, which led to the company’s decision to further grow its 18-employee staff, as well as its marketing and sales platform.
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Showing the Community Some Love
Founded in 2020 in Detroit, Michigan, RIVET Work is dedicated to giving back the love to the community they’ve so openly received.
“Detroit and Michigan are great places to build businesses,” Meitl said “Detroit, particularly, has some unique characteristics that lend it to the kind of business we’re building here at RIVET. It has a long and storied history as a blue-collar town known for hard work and grit. That really embodies the construction industry.”
One intrinsic aspect of Detroit is that software engineers and electricians live side by side in the city. There’s a unique ability to build closer connections and greater trust between tech and the trades. That creates a unique opportunity for RIVET Work to build an exceptional business here that we think is harder to do in other regions of the country.
RIVET Work also actively sponsors and hosts the Detroit React Dev community meetups and is a very proud affiliate member of the National Electrical Contractors Association (NECA) SE Michigan chapter, where the local electrical contractors have been incredibly supportive.
Joining the RIVET Work Team
RIVET Work is currently working out of the Downtown Detroit Bamboo co-working space, occupying five offices, and has been adding to the space as they grow the team.
They’ve found the Bamboo team to be an incredible support for emerging businesses, including their great programming for networking and learning.
Leadership provides the opportunity for team members to work from home as part of a hybrid model, prioritizing work-life balance and autonomy for their employees.
Working for RIVET also means subscribing to the company’s core values: listening, openness and trust, fairness, and empathy.
“One of the things we work hard to maintain at RIVET is a culture of caring,” Meitl said. “We care about each other, and we care about our customers. This is key to our success, creating an environment of hard work and accountability grounded in empathy.”
