One of Australia’s most successful construction technology entrepreneurs has led the charge to pour millions of dollars into a Melbourne based company which hopes to use the money to help fund overseas expansion.

In its latest announcement, construction job estimating and job management software provider Buildxact says it has raised $8.5 million to accelerate growth in an ‘underserved’ market of residential home builders and renovators.

The raising was led by Aconex co-founder Leigh Jasper, who will join the company’s board and take up an advisory position as its director of innovation.

Started in 2011, Buildxact is aimed primarily at small builders and home renovators and provides cloud based software to perform building project functions such as quote preparation, job costing, purchasing, scheduling, project management and invoicing.

It currently serves several thousand builders across Australia and New Zealand and it has more recently expanded into Canada in a move announced in May.

Funds raised will support to the Canadian expansion whilst further expansion into the US and UK is planned for 2020.

The raising was led by Leigh Jasper, who gained prominence for his role in founding cloud based construction project management software company Aconnex which was sold to Oracle in December 2017 for $A1.6 billion.

Jasper expressed admiration for what Buildxact Chairman John Allison and CEO David Murray have achieved, saying Buildxact had identified a market opportunity, developed a project that solves real problems and had a proven track record of execution.

Murray says Buildxact is focused on solutions which are feature rich yet simple and affordable.

He says many residential builders lack tools which are fit for purpose and are often using paper or spreadsheets to manage their business.

He says what is needed is technology which is easy to use but which helps builders increase efficiency and add visibility into their business.

(image: Buildxact team in December 2018. Source: Twitter)