When a construction project begins, it’s often taken as a foregone conclusion that it is going to run overtime — and therefore, over budget.

Vernox Labs is a company launching out of our current batch that wants to change that, by collecting all the unstructured data around a construction project and running predictive analysis on it to help contractors and project managers accurately budget their time and costs. At launch, it’s particularly focused on large-scale construction projects, and projects in urban areas.

TechCrunch’s Kim-Mai Cutler wrote about Vernox Labs in a story this week:

“A new Y Combinator-backed company called Vernox Labs
is hoping to eliminate some of this unpredictability by using reams
of unstructured data from previous projects to help general contractors,
designers and project managers figure out how to sidestep common
building errors. 

They’re applying artificial intelligence techniques to the pile of
e-mails, Word documents and Excel files that are traded back and forth
between contractors and designers as a residential project or hospital
is built.

From that data, Vernox Labs produces a predictive checklist or automated design review that project managers can run through with a
new proposal. They’re also creating a Google-like search engine so that
if sub-contractors or construction workers have questions about
specific components or materials, they can get that information
instantaneously.”

Read more in-depth about Vernox in TechCrunch here, and participate in the Hacker News discussion here.