The Spotify of construction? Why this tech tool is shaking up the building world

Globe and Mail

20-05-2025

Chloe Smith founded Mercator.ai in 2020 to address a critical blind spot in the construction industry. For years, the sector relied heavily on personal relationships to drive billion-dollar projects, often leaving firms vulnerable to disruption and prolonged downtime when key players retire or leave the organization.
Calgary-based Mercator's business development platform uses artificial intelligence (AI) to track every step of a construction project's life cycle – from land acquisition to building permits – giving industry players more insight into upcoming opportunities. It uses vast amounts of data to track who's working with whom, where and on what projects. The information allows construction companies to reduce their dependence on the informal networks of industry veterans and instead focus on data-driven decision-making.
Traditionally, the process involved piecing together bits of information gathered from several sources, ranging from municipal offices to Google.
'Mercator is literally the red string and corkboard pulling disparate data sources together from across the construction life cycle to uncover who's getting ready to work with who on what, where, and for how much,' Ms. Smith says.
'We're levelling the playing field so everybody can see what's going on and make smart decisions about what projects and contracts we take on,' Ms. Smith continues, adding the platform enables construction firms to 'future-proof' in a rapidly evolving market.
Experts say it's a prime example of how AI is reshaping workplace productivity by helping employees focus on more meaningful, high-value tasks and enhancing human interactions rather than replacing them.
Mercator is now being used in all major cities across Texas, which has transitioned into a key testing ground due to its dense population–comparable in size to Canada's, but far more concentrated–making it an ideal environment for the next phase of Mercator's go-to-market strategy.
Mercator began when Ms. Smith realized that the impending retirement of her father –a construction veteran with 45 years of experience–could leave his soon-to-be former company without critical market insight.
'His department shouldered a substantial amount of the revenue for the organization,' she recalls. 'Had he left or retired, that would have presented a massive threat. . . because they can't see everything. They're relying on the people in the organization to see the market.'
Skepticism about the system's viability was strong, rooted in the industry's deeply ingrained habit of keeping project and relationship information tightly guarded.
'The very first thing I was told was that no general contractor, or construction company in general for that matter, would ever tell me who they work with,' Ms. Smith says.
But she persevered because there was also demand for this kind of intel.
With a background in marketing, where she built tools to map markets in real time using consumer data, Ms. Smith applied similar technology to help the construction industry move beyond its reliance on the traditional 'who you know' strategy.
'It's about moving away from relying on individuals to see opportunities and instead creating transparency across the organization,' says Ms. Smith, describing Mercator's capabilities as the 'Spotify for construction' because the platform aggregates real-time data across markets and projects.
'[With Spotify], you come to them, all the music's on their platform, right? In our case, all the construction projects are on our platform,' Ms. Smith says.
Zach Moe, national sales director at Edmonton-based Chandos Construction, helped beta-test Mercator and says it quickly became a valued tool in his day-to-day operations. He says the construction industry has long struggled with the lack of reliable data, relying instead on informal channels like company grapevines.
The tool is 'very intuitive' according to Mr. Moe, recalling that his team picked up using Mercator within a week of being onboarded and the results were noticeable right away.
'What happens in our industry is it's a lot of word of mouth,' he says. 'There isn't great data out there that can provide a construction company with information about all the projects that may or may not exist or what people are planning to do.'
He says Mercator is transforming the construction business development process by centralizing scattered municipal data and using AI to surface opportunities in real-time, likening it to Meltwater's daily trend-tracking service in the marketing world.
'What Mercator does is it brings it all to one place in real-time using their back end AI technology,' he says. 'You could just pick that city and then look on the map. . . and say, 'Okay, these are all the projects that have recently submitted for rezoning approval.''
Before Mercator, Mr. Moe's team spent much of its time simply identifying upcoming projects.
'The grind of identifying upcoming projects across fragmented municipalities used to consume a significant chunk of my week,' he explains.
He says the time spent just gathering the required information made it difficult to focus on more meaningful tasks like building relationships and closing deals.
'That front-end part is probably anywhere between 25 and 40 per cent of your time, so if you can cut that time down, that makes your networking and meeting schedule that much more meaningful,' he says.
According to Nihar Dalmia, a partner at Deloitte, AI plays a crucial role in improving workplace productivity by automating low-value tasks.
'Productivity is all about doing more with less,' he says. 'AI delivers by automating low, mundane, repetitive, manual tasks that, while necessary, don't contribute much to innovation or job satisfaction.'
By removing these barriers, AI tools such as Mercator help employees focus on higher-level tasks, such as strategic decision-making and creative thinking.
'AI gives people the brain space to do other things,' Mr. Dalmia adds. 'It opens up time for creative thinking, which is essential for growth and innovation.'
Mercator is currently testing its go-to-market strategy in Texas, which presents an ideal test market due to its large population and concentrated geography. The expansion reflects the platform's scalability, which has the potential to disrupt the construction industry across the U.S. and beyond.
But despite the cutting-edge technology behind Mercator, Ms. Smith says she views AI not as a job-stealer, but as a tool to amplify human creativity and productivity.
'A computer can't do that,' Ms. Smith says, 'but it can give you all the inputs that you, as the creative human being, can then take and apply your own skill set.'