Let’s be honest, when you think about software, builders are not the first people that spring to mind as consumers. And its that thinking that have allowed HBXL to corner the market, creating estimating software for construction firms, making their day to day easier and allowing them to take back hours for themselves that would otherwise be spent labouring over quotes and plans. Jo Mulgrew (Operations Manager) sat down with us to talk how and why HBXL came to fruition.
Time for a history lesson Jo, how did HBXL Start?
HBXL was born nearly 20 years ago, when Adrian Wild (Managing Director) was a builder and developer himself. He realised, as you can imagine back then, that there wasn’t software readily available to help building firms. So, he decided to utilise the computing skills he had learnt through his Civil Engineering degree, to make the quoting software for himself. Why wait when you’ve got the skills to do it yourself?! Very quickly, other contractor’s interest was piqued by what Adrian was using and he decided to capitalise on the interest, realising that he had found a gap in his own market. For a while he was building extensions and houses whilst building a company, so you can imagine the graft he was putting in. Overtime, the company grew and a team of developers are now involved to keep the software moving forward. But Adrian remains involved, still innovating, still thinking out of the box. And with his background he understands the wants of the building community and what will actually work.
While I have a platform to, I think its important to talk about why we think our product is so important to the building community. It’s not just an online App that makes life a bit easier but all rather thin on detail, it’s a proper hard-working software tool which you run on your desktop that improves the day-to-day operations of people in construction. Builders get a bad rep, many are seen as cowboys that are tools down at 5pm and in the pub. Couldn’t be more wrong, once the tools are down, they’re at client’s houses talking through plans, they’re at their desk estimating costs and calculating quotes, and yes sometimes a trip to the pub is necessary but that is true of all of us. It’s extremely long hours, someone said to me the other day that the divorce statistics within building firms is around 50-55%, because they are never home. So yes, we’ll make estimating easier for you, yes we’ll minimise mistakes and yes, we’ll save your marriage – I mean don’t quote me on that but that’s the aim, giving people a life back.
So alongside preserving the sanctity of marriage, what else are HBXL working on at the moment?
