In the mid-1990s while working in the construction industry, my son Justin (then only 15) and I put together an estimating software program that we called Buildware Pro. Originally targeting the commercial roofing industry, Buildware Pro allowed you to measure paper plans using a digitizer, or even on your computer screen if you had a digital PDF or TIF file. We enjoyed success from the very begin
ning and by the time Justin was 17 we had sold 1/2 a million dollars' worth of our software! Everyone seemed to love the idea of measuring plans on screen, but back in the late 1990s there were very few sources of digital plan files as everything was still done on printed paper. I recall how my life in construction prior to that involved either paying for plans to have them delivered, or driving from one GC to the next in order to access the paper plans I needed to bid from. It was with this in mind that I got the idea for a solution where GCs could distribute plans in digital form to their subs and suppliers, via the Internet. During the same time frame my friends Al and Tracy Battle had started the first ever "Internet Plan Room" and partnered with the AGC in Atlanta to distribute plans for public projects to subs and suppliers in that market. It struck me that with this new online GC product, we could partner with my friends at the Internet Plan Room, and build an online solution that could potentially revolutionize the way plans were distributed. With the help of some friends and a local real estate developer who provided the initial infusion of cash, iSqFt.com was born. Today iSqFt.com is the nation's number one source for access to both public and private currently bidding construction projects. Justin and I left iSqFt.com a few years back with the idea of making plans easier than ever to work with on screen, and our newest creation Cloud Takeoff was born. Cloud Takeoff brings together the very latest in web technologies to deliver a powerful yet surprisingly easy to use, web based software as a service solution. We believe that Cloud Takeoff will transform the way the construction industry works, estimates and collaborates using digital plans. It is our mission to continue to improve, integrate with more and more plan rooms and to infuse Cloud Takeoff with additional sources of real time data for the benefit of all industry participants. Phillip Ogilby
CEO / Co-Founder
