PataBid’s origin story began in 2017. Our current CEO, Melvin Newman, was working at the time for a national subcontracting company as a Chief Estimator. One of the requirements of his demanding position was that he monitor dozens of public tender procurement sites each day across Western Canada for bid opportunities. It was soon apparent that this was a very time consuming task, taking several hours each day to monitor public tender sites for individual towns, cities and townships across the provinces. To save time and make his job easier, Melvin created his first AI to automate the process of finding public tenders. It saved him hours of time each week and ensured that he did not miss any tenders for his team to bid. Melvin showed his AI creation later in 2017 to a long-time college friend, Paul Burris. Together, they decided to take the idea and found PataBid. PataBid’s first product, PataBid Tenders, still exists today and continues to utilize AI technology to collect, read and categorize public tenders from over 250 websites each day. Doug, as we lovingly call our first AI, has a specialization in natural language processing to get the job done each day.
PataBid is a boot strapped company, therefore, Paul and Melvin continued to work full time while running PataBid on the side for several years in the beginning of our journey. In the fall of 2019, Melvin was working at his day job on bidding pipe fabrication projects. It is a very labour intensive task and he began exploring what it would take to create an AI to help him automate parts of the estimates. Out of necessity once more, PataBid Quantify came into existence with its inaugural lines of code written in October 2019. At the time, PataBid Quantify was the first AI electrical estimating software available on the market. At PataBid, we have been employing and innovating AI technology long before the release of Chat GPT accelerated the pace of AI adoption across all industries! Quantify has two AI’s: Diego and Lucia which are image segmentation/natural language processing and polymorphic AI’s. Diego and Lucia are powerful tools within Quantify MEP estimating software that work together to run our AI automated takeoff feature (Rapid Count) as well as extract tables from drawings so contractors can capture crucial information easily. Our cloud based electrical estimating software acts as a powerful tool to augment a contractor’s estimating knowledge by automating repetitive tasks (like takeoff) with ease and accuracy. We aren’t striving to replace the role of the estimator, but rather, to enhance the estimator through aggressive automation of repetitive tasks.
All of the development work on Tenders and Quantify was conducted internally by PataBid's dedicated development team, led by our CEO. This approach was deliberately chosen to retain control over the software and guarantee its flexibility to seamlessly integrate new features and API connections. Software development continued for PataBid Quantify on evenings and weekends until the workload of 100+ hour weeks became unsustainable. Melvin and Paul left their day jobs and transitioned to working for PataBid full time in 2022.
After years of hard work, PataBid finally launched Quantify in March 2022. However, the software still had several glitches and bugs that required fixing. To tackle these issues, we temporarily stopped selling Quantify licenses for six months while we addressed the concerns. Sales resumed in the fall of 2022, and we quickly gained momentum in the market throughout 2023. In the fall of 2023, PataBid finalized an integration with City Electric Supply’s e-commerce software that allows contractors to have access to instant material pricing and direct material buying options. As PataBid's sales grew, we expanded our team to include a sales executive, data analyst, and sales associate. Being a bootstrapped company without venture capitalist funding means facing a challenging and lengthy journey, but it's not impossible!
In the first quarter of 2024, our sales continued to sky rocket and we doubled our user base in the first few months of the year. Our team has grown again to include a total of 6 dedicated, hard working individuals. But our journey is far from over. We are pursuing integrations with other supply houses (both electrically and mechanically), developing our Quantify feature set, increasing our MEP items database and more. We are also exploring expanding into electrical estimating training as an added product for our valued customers.
PataBid Quantify represents more than a mechanical/electrical estimating software platform. PataBid represents a paradigm shift in construction. A new way of viewing/prioritizing construction projects, giving recognition to the importance of the pre-construction phase. We’re driven by the belief that accurate estimating is fundamental to the success of any contracting business. Estimators often go unnoticed, yet they are the backbone of any operation. Our goal is to provide contractors of any size with accessible MEP estimating software, ensuring bids become both predictable and profitable. PataBid is dedicated to revolutionizing the construction industry by leveraging cutting-edge AI technology to streamline pre-construction tasks. Through accurate digital bidding and streamlined preconstruction processes, PataBid is leading the way towards a more efficient construction lifecycle and a continued shift towards smart construction adoption.
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