Nigerian startup Pathscape has developed a cutting-edge productivity tool designed specifically to help construction firms automate and simplify their project management processes.
Founded in 2021, Pathscape enables firms to effectively track and manage project outcomes, as well as associated costs such as billable expenses, materials, and equipment.
“It’s like a powerful combination of Asana and QuickBooks, providing a user-friendly and customisable platform to optimise project management,” founder and CEO Abiola Abraham told Disrupt Africa.
Essentially, Pathscape’s cloud-based platform replaces the need for juggling multiple spreadsheets and tools, and instead consolidates all project data such as rate cards, tasks, attachments, construction drawings, site images, budgets, reports, project accounting, team management and collaborators on one platform for all stakeholders involved.
“Our technical roadmap features using AI to predict project outcomes and deliver fast, nuanced insights from organisation data,” Abraham said. “For example, using a firm’s historical data and forecasting equations, our app could create a project for a two-lane Adex bridge, forecast its budget, identify blockers proactively, and alert the team when close to exceeding budget.
The goal of Pathscape is to make project failures obsolete.”
Benefits of using Pathscape include streamlined project management, real-time project tracking, improved cost management, customisable workflows, and mobile accessibility.
“Pathscape automates many manual tasks, such as generating reports and tracking expenses, freeing up teams to focus on higher-level tasks and increasing productivity,” said Abraham.
“Pathscape enables seamless collaboration between contractors, owners, architects, and other stakeholders, improving communication and reducing the risk of misunderstandings or errors. And by providing a comprehensive platform for project management, Pathscape can help improve project outcomes, reducing delays, improving quality, and ensuring projects are completed on time and within budget.”
As a project manager, Abraham has worked in various industries such as software, automotive and construction.
“I have noticed that most PM solutions do not have cost tracking, inventory and vendor management features, which causes an oversight that could lead to project failures,” he said. “My experience managing AI/ML projects to automate processes highlights numerous opportunities to predict project outcomes to facilitate a project lifecycle. This would save hundreds of hours for project managers from shuffling between multiple spreadsheets or apps and calculating forecast metrics.”
The bootstrapped Pathscape is working to fill that gap, and has so far managed NGN84 million (US$180,000) worth of projects and 50 team members across its private users.
“We currently have a few companies testing our product internally and we have 132 small to medium-sized companies who have signed up on our waitlist for our private beta,” said Abraham.
“Our product is currently free to allow users to test out features and provide feedback to allow us to improve the product. Our existing features are dashboards, projects, tasks, accounting, reports, and team. We are currently working on integrating ChatGPT into Pathscape to deliver fast, nuanced insights from organisation data.”
Currently operating in Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa and Latin American countries, Pathscape – which monetises via a multi-tiered subscription model, believes it is addressing a global problem.
“We plan to target small to medium sized businesses across the EMEA, NA and Latam regions,” Abraham said.
