Bulk Exchange Links Waste Management Pros With Construction Project Contractors

The construction industry is booming, but contractors and suppliers can grapple to find each other to be able to strike up business deals. Having experienced the frustrations of supply chain gaps firsthand, industry veterans Paul Foley and Dustin Liebman launched an online marketplace that joins the demand and supply side in the bulk construction materials space.

The platform, branded as Bulk Exchange, enables waste management pros, materials suppliers, building contractors, and estimators to work together from one central location.

At the most basic level, it’s an industry-specific search engine for estimators and contractors looking for materials and landfills and recycling facilities that take broken concrete, asphalt grindings, and other construction and demolition (C&D) debris.

Landfill operators, recyclers, and materials suppliers leverage the digital tool as a sales and marketing arm. They list materials they accept or sell, gate prices, and their recycling rates, among details potential customers look for.

A chat function, with humans on the other end, provides a forum to ask follow-up questions, share spec details, soil analytical reports, and other data.

Foley, the son of an excavation contractor in Ireland, grew up in the industry. Going back in time, he says, “I’ve worked 30 years across three continents as a contractor and estimator and the pains I dealt with is what inspired Bulk Exchange.” Liebman’s experience on the supplier side brought more perspective and impetus.

Foley, like the rest of the industry, had to rely on word of mouth to find what he needed, at least when forging into new geographies.

“I was sourcing information like my dad did 50 years ago, spending half my time calling around trying to find disposal sites or materials. And I was working from lists stuck to a cork board.”

He often found himself at the mercy of brokers, who he says tend to steer folks in his position only toward companies they have close ties to.

His frustrations came to a head in 2019 when he was working on a project in California’s South Bay area.

“It was a large basement excavation, and halfway through the project the broker raised prices on me almost 50 percent. I was locked into the contract and had no way of knowing alternative options in real time.

“That’s when I said there has to be a better way.  This industry needs a go-to platform for suppliers to get better visibility so the demand side – contractors like me—can find them and communicate with them in real time.”

Estimators need to move fast and sometimes be prepared to pivot, like happened to Foley when he took that steep price hit.

“Say you are excavating a basement and discover contaminated soil or some other hazardous material. The project comes to a halt as you figure out how to properly dispose of it.  But through our platform, contractors can be on a project and learn [right away] who can take the material. They can see every pin on the map to be able to make the smartest choice.”

Only a couple years old, Bulk Exchange has signed on several big and midsized players – Recology, GreenWaste, and a couple of the largest national waste companies they cannot name yet.

The company has a presence in California and Texas and is about to move into the Southeast and Northeast, with ambitions to have a national reach in 12 to 18 months and offer a subscription-based service. For now, it’s free as the team continues to grow its base.

The startup has raised $5M in seed funding with most of it coming from the bulk materials sector it serves.

It’s an industry that’s behind in adopting data-driven technology in a fast-changing world. As they merge into larger groups, and as an aging workforce passes the baton to a younger generation, companies are beginning to see the promise for consolidated, digital information to get teams up to speed, supporting them in making smarter decisions faster.

Bulk Exchange has developed artificial intelligence (AI) applications such as a translator correlating different terms used across the industry and standardizing them to optimize searches while streamlining the overall sourcing process.

Now the team is building an AI document reader that Foley says will enable generation of requests for proposals “in minutes.”

Bulk Exchange customer GreenWaste offers C&D recycling services, recycled-content, landscape and construction materials. In the eyes of Jerame Renteria, GreenWaste director of marketing, the true value add is the ability to directly engage with customers, especially to draw new out-of-area contractors.

Renteria is counting on the platform to help promote the company as a one-stop shop. And as GreenWaste expands its capabilities, it expects to get even more out of the tech-driven marketing outlet.

“We just completed building profiles for our resource recovery facilities and are looking forward to receiving leads and requests for proposals as more contractors join the platform,” he says.

Data-driven digital platforms connecting players along the sustainable product and service supply chains are nascent. In fact, Waste360’s robust search uncovered only one resource quite similar to Bulk Exchange—Circular.co, though it’s built for the circular plastics value chain.

The supply chains themselves are often nascent and fragmented. Shannon Gordon, chief operating officer of Circular.co, surmises weak chains are at least partly due to that they tend to be opaque. Fixing the transparency problem through more data could go a long way, she believes.

“With transparency comes greater access to supply, stabilized pricing, and higher quality product,” she says.

Like Bulk Exchange, the tech developer Gordon works for continues building its AI capabilities to acquire more data. For now, the focus remains on plastics, but the plan is to branch out into other sustainable materials markets. She expects demand to grow and, with that, greater investment in production capacity that will further drive the need for more  data.

Says Gordon: “In our view, technology and data are two key enablers of the transition to sustainable materials.”