Pillar co-founders Alex Schwarzkopf and Matt Joyal, Forbes 30 Under 30 alumni, developed rugged, wireless devices for construction sites to flag environmental risks like fires or leaks early. Jamel Toppin for Forbes
In February 2017, AvalonBay’s 235-unit development in Maplewood, N.J., burned down six weeks before its planned opening. The homebuilder rebuilt the $55 million project from scratch — then searched for new ways to prevent fires, a constant threat when building with woodframe construction. The solution: Pillar Technologies, whose devices monitor temperature, smoke and other signs of pending disaster, and which will soon use artificial intelligence to flag environmental risks even earlier.
“It’s like medical monitoring for buildings,” says Michael Feigin, chief construction officer and executive vice president at AvalonBay.
Construction is a giant industry, and, until recently, had struggled to adopt technology. That is changing. New York City-based startup Pillar is one of a number of companies trying to apply artificial intelligence to construction and engineering, using predictive analytics to do everything from preventive maintenance to work schedule optimization.
These types of tools aren’t likely to remain on job sites. Sensors and real-time video that collect data and AI that analyzes this information could lead to safer, more comfortable homes and workplaces.
“AI is being added to everything,” says Matt Joyal, Pillar’s chief technology officer. “This is where technology is going. We have so much data. Why don’t we use it to make job sites efficient and safe?”
Pillar’s Matthew Joyal (l) and Alex Schwarzkopf (r) hold the wireless devices that collect data about conditions at construction sites. “One of the challenges with AI and machine learning is you need good data to build models,” Schwarzkopf says. Jamel Toppin
Alex Schwarzkopf, Pillar’s chief executive, founded the company with Joyal and a third friend while still in college in 2015 to address a giant gap in construction-site safety. Manual ways of keeping sites safe – with human fire watches, for example – weren’t as efficient or foolproof as they needed to be. Pillar’s rugged yellow, wireless devices can flag all sorts of troubles on construction sites before they become multimillion-dollar messes or cause injuries to people. They can identify leaks, which can result in mold, and determine the level of particulates like silica, which can be harmful to construction workers.
The founders raised $3.6 million in funding and signed dozens of clients nationwide, including the World Trade Center in New York. Revenue is expected to reach at least $4 million this year, still small, but Pillar’s plans for predictive analytics should help growth accelerate. “Alex’s business is taking risk out of the system,” says Martha Notaras, a partner at XL Innovate, the venture division of insurance giant AXA and an investor in Pillar.
Schwarzkopf, 27, and his cofounders originally intended to build a sports helmet that could measure impacts and determine concussion risk. But athletes didn’t want to wear it, they couldn’t get funding and the project died. That failed startup eventually led to Pillar after a friend in construction management suggested they transfer the technology to hard hats.
In meetings with construction managers about that new idea, one building exec asked them if they could monitor temperature or humidity to help prevent mold growth and construction defects. Their existing device couldn’t do any of those things, but Schwarzkopf and his cofounders seized the opportunity. “We were like, ‘Give us four months, and we’ll build that,’” he recalls.
They scrambled and built an early version of the Pillar device that they could demonstrate to Gilbane, a large construction firm. The first prototype looked rough, a bunch of wires shoved into two blue electrical boxes. Yet durability, rather than looks, proved the steeper hurdle. In an early meeting with a potential customer, a construction manager threw the device across the room and watched as it smashed into pieces to illustrate just how tough the product would need to be.
Schwarzkopf and Joyal figured out how to build a more rugged, wireless product with a battery that could last for months. Builders can now put dozens of its industrial-grade sensors on their construction sites and leave them there through rain and wind to monitor potentially destructive conditions and send emergency alerts as need be.
All that information provides the data for a planned A.I. system. The devices include seven different sensors to monitor temperature, humidity, dust, particulates, air pressure, ambient light and carbon monoxide. “What we’ve been doing is some basic anomaly detection. We are looking for outliers,” Joyal says. “This year, we’re going to see how far we can push machine learning to get our customers better insights into their buildings.”
Over time, as Pillar gathers more data from its own sensors, it will be able to model the data more dynamically to predict, for example, at what point a pipe is likely to freeze on the first floor with the door open in 30-degree temperatures versus on the third floor where temperatures are higher to allow drywall installation. “If it is raining outside, the threshold for when a fire might start is different,” Joyal says. Predictive modeling will allow Pillar to take such differences into account – and as Pillar sucks up more data in its devices, the models will get smarter over time. Pillar eventually could consider both building-to-building differences – perhaps allowing it to rate a developer’s 25 construction sites based on their riskiness — and regional differences.
Eventually, Pillar’s devices might even stay in the buildings once they’re constructed, sending off details about their environments to a central system, which could keep monitoring for potential problems. Asked about that, Schwarzkopf smiles. “It’s funny you’re asking that,” he says, “because I have a lot of people asking me to do that.”