HeadLight Raises $25MM to Scale Photo-Based Inspection in the Trillion Dollar Infrastructure Construction Industry
Jun 11, 2020, 10:00 ET
SEATTLE, June 11, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- HeadLight, the nation's leading photo-based inspection technology, is announcing it has secured $25.6M in Series B funding from Viking Global Investors, an investment firm managing over $30 billion of capital. Customers such as the State of Louisiana, the Contra Costa Transportation Authority, and Jacobs Engineering rely on HeadLight to easily capture, interpret and act on data in the field, saving them time and money through more accurate photo-based inspections. With this investment, HeadLight, formerly named Pavia Systems, will continue to expand its product and scale its operations to meet the growing demand for highly accurate and modern inspection capabilities from infrastructure construction professionals.
"Each year literally billions of dollars are wasted during infrastructure construction due to unnecessary rework, delays, and claims disputes relying on an antiquated inspection process that largely is still based on pen and paper. HeadLight is modernizing the inspection process - by providing photo-based data and insights from the field in real-time," said co-founder and CEO George White. "We see this as something that should become industry-standard."
HeadLight replaces the time-old tradition of hand-written notes and manual data entry with a data-rich visual window into projects. A study by a consortium of the California, Washington, Texas, and Minnesota Departments of Transportation found that each field inspector could repurpose almost 38 hours of administrative work per month into time spent in the field. Engineers and managers acknowledged increased confidence in preventing issues before they impacted project delivery goals through greater visibility across multiple jobs at the same time.
"In an industry where you often need to 'see the issue' to truly understand the issue - pictures are worth 1,000 words. From the beginning, HeadLight was built with visual data at the center," said Si Katara, co-founder, and HeadLight President. "By focusing on how we can increase the accessibility and quality of data coming from the field, we're helping our partners realize the significant financial impact in both the short and long term."
HeadLight has captured over 2 million inspection observations on over $20B of infrastructure projects
Since its launch, HeadLight has become a trusted partner to state and municipal infrastructure owners, engineering firms, contractors, and suppliers across the United States. With over 2 million observations captured and shared across these projects in real-time, customers value how HeadLight's method of event-driven data capture allows users to see more about their project and catch issues as they arise. This fact-based recreation of the entire construction process helps mitigate risk and build trust amongst project stakeholders.
"HeadLight has made our data capture much stronger, allowing us to lead with photos that document our work. It's enabled us to use that data to see a bigger picture of what's happening across the state which allows us to document better, work smarter, and collectively work better," said Mike Vosburg, P.E. Director of Construction and Materials for the Louisiana Department of Transportation.
"HeadLight has had a significant positive impact on our transportation construction projects. The technology has helped us increase both the quantity and quality of data from the field, and often see potential issues before they arise in ways we couldn't before," said Randy Iwasaki, Executive Director of the Contra Costa Transportation Authority (CCTA). "HeadLight is part of our paperless construction initiative - enabling us to be more effective with taxpayer dollars committed to transportation."
While HeadLight has been deployed predominantly on infrastructure projects on our nation's roads, bridges, and railways, the company has recently expanded into water/wastewater, energy, resilience, and utility projects -- signaling the product's range of application. HeadLight expects to cement additional statewide transportation partnerships in the near future.
About HeadLight
Founded in 2005, HeadLight is a photo-based inspection technology that provides a visual source of truth about infrastructure projects. Originally designed through collaboration efforts with infrastructure owners and their field inspection teams, HeadLight increases the accountability and effectiveness of construction projects by allowing teams to capture, interpret, and act on data from the job site in real-time. Their current clients include departments of transportation, engineering firms, contractors, and industry-related materials companies. For more information, please visit www.headlight.com.
SOURCE HeadLight
