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player ready...Business: Contruent
Address: 55 Shuman Blvd., Naperville
Phone/website: 630-318-0444, www.contruent.com
CEO: Ryan Kubacki, 50, of Naperville
Years in business: 20
What does your business do? “It’s called ‘capital project management software.’ We have software that helps people manage extremely large construction projects,” Kubacki said.
How large? “We have all the high-speed rail throughout England. The subways in Toronto. Mining in Australia. Redesigning Athens. … Oftentimes, they are civil engineering projects, public infrastructure. Or they’re just very large projects. … We do a lot of oil and gas (companies) as they’re building new clean energy facilities. We do a lot of energy companies as they’re looking at alternative energy like solar wind farms. … It tends to be anybody that is building a project north of $1 billion.”
Any local projects? “We’re just breaking into the U.S. We hired a new sales team. There are couple (clients, but) I can’t say yet. One of them is a really amazing oil and gas company building clean energy facilities and they’re using Contruent software to manage that. A large utility company just signed up with us.”
Why is your company important? “These are extremely complex projects. There are thousands of suppliers. We provide software that helps them automate it and keep track of it so they can be on time and on budget. … There’s a great consequence of getting it right. … I’m a software guy. Software has completely revolutionized every industry on the planet except for construction. … It’s an opportunity to completely automate how we do these large projects. It’s very difficult.”
Was it always called Contruent? “We used to be called Ares Prism until last January, Applied Research Engineering Sciences, a very large engineering design firm founded in 1992. … It was built by engineers for engineers. They started selling (software) about 20 years ago. We bought Ares Prism in October of 2021. … We rebranded it Contruent. It’s the true visibility of construction.”
What’s the back story? “I co-invested in this company with an investment firm, M33 Growth. We moved it from San Francisco to Naperville. At the time, we had a very small space on the 10th floor. In the 15 months since then, we’ve grown and have a good chunk of the second floor.”
Why Naperville? “I love Naperville. I think this is a great place to grow the technology business. It provides access to great talent. Almost all this team is from Naperville. … We hired people from North Central College. … It’s very accessible to O’Hare. This is a global business. We have clients in 26 countries. … And, we can entertain here. It’s such an awesome downtown.”
What happens when a potential client contacts you? “We have a team of expert cost engineers. Our team is made up of people who have managed projects in the past. They know how difficult it is. … The thing in construction is it’s one thing to have the design, but you have thousands of suppliers. … What a lot of people do kind of wrong is they look at their budget and what they’ve spent. We had a third element called ‘earned value management.’ Because we can automate what all the suppliers are doing, we know if you’ve spent money on the right things. … It’s a more sophisticated forecasting tool to better track the cost and the schedule.”
Why should a company hire Contruent? “You get more accuracy. The second reason is speed. We have our own world-class services team, experts at this. We can get your shovels in the ground in three months. … We work very well with our customers. … I tell my people, ‘You better bring clarity, you better bring energy.'”
What do you like best about your job? “One is the people. My business philosophy is ‘the best team wins.’ … The second thing is the challenge. These are things we count on, the basic infrastructure of the world.”
Any negatives? “No. I love what I do. I look forward to coming to work. It’s a joy.”
What about future plans? “We want to make (Interstate) 88 a technology corridor. This could be like Palo Alto. My vision is to bring more companies to Naperville.”
What’s your advice for someone starting a business? “First, focus on a customer problem that has a big market. … Bring extreme focus to how you can solve that problem. You can’t be everything to everyone. … The third is the best team always wins.”
If you know of a business you’d like to see to profiled in Down to Business, contact Steve Metsch at [email protected].
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Steve Metsch is a freelance reporter for the Naperville Sun.