Of the more than 2.3 million miles of paved roads in the US, 94% are made of asphalt, with airports and parking lots adding more to contractors’ annual workload. Although highly dependent on the weather, quality of work performed, and other factors, pavement projects have remained remarkably unintelligent, despite the explosion of big data and business analytics in other areas of construction.
“Working outside [on an] On an average day there are so many variables that affect us, from weather to making decisions about operations to do it or not,” explains Bryce Wuori, CEO and co-founder of Pavewise, a software-as-a-service provider that recently closed a $2.5 million seed round. “Can we get our quality and our requirements on that particular day because it’s so cold and windy?” Pavewise provides data to paving contractors through its SaaS platform because they can better supervise the projects.
Wuori worked with contractors as a paving consultant for 10 years before launching Pavewise in 2023. He bases much of the platform’s functionality on his experience helping paving companies document the quality of their work for transit agencies, plan ahead for challenging site conditions, and generally get paving done despite many external factors that can derail a project.
“This Is How Asphalt Paving Contractors Get Paid: It Depends on Quality.” Wuori says. “They’re bound to a quality threshold requirement, and if they don’t meet it, they’re not going to get their full pay or they’re doing something like cut and replace, [which is] even more expensive. The process just broke.”
He adds that “I personally was directing several crews, and I wouldn’t make it [quality put-in-place] data for [as long as 48 hours]” he explains. “We would flatten five miles down the road, and I don’t have the results or the data yet to see what the last five miles were,” says Wuori.
Pavewise provides contractors with quick updates on the quality of work performed.
Image courtesy of Pavewise
Pavewise technology has been tuned with decision metrics that Wuori developed over 16 years in consulting. The software has a decision engine that integrates production monitoring and analysis, compliance automation and site-specific weather data.
Wuori says the perfect day to lay asphalt is one with a temperature of about 70°F and winds of 10 mph. But the decision engine gives project managers specific recommendations about what to do on 40°F days or 30 mph winds. “You can really only take a quick look [at your device] and say: ‘this is what I’m going through, and this is what we’re going to have to do,'” he says.
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The SaaS platform is optimized for mobile applications, as most teams use their phones to enter project data and receive on-the-spot recommendations. Each user must enter data such as days of project work completed, tons of asphalt placed, tons remaining, daily tonnage needed to finish the job on time, and where the work crews are located. This data is then measured against the project’s bid and incentive goals. Pavewise’s tracking feature takes the data and sends notifications when targets are not being met or are at risk of falling. It also sends compliance reports to departments of transportation and other paving customers. The Elite subscription level of the service includes more direct attention and recommendations from Pavewise staff. The company plans to use its seed funding round to add more artificial intelligence to the platform.
“Each state has specific blend designs, requirements, oil types,” says Wuori. “We’ve started building an AI mix library, where you can practically put your mix designs and you can see how you’re performing against the specs to really understand where you can improve.”
