Construction project management software vendor InEight signed a deal on March 18 to purchase assets of QA Software, Melbourne, Australia, along with its flagship, cloud-based document management and collaboration system for engineering and construction, TeamBinder.

The sale is expected to close within 30 days and will add 100 employees and two international offices to Scottsdale, Ariz.-based InEight Inc.’s assets; a business office in Melbourne and a development office in Colombo, Sri Lanka. InEight already has international offices in Sydney, Australia, and Bangalore, India.

InEight COO Dan Hicks, in an interview from Melbourne, said on March 19 that the company realized as it went to market a year ago with InEight Suite—a portfolio style, cloud-based software-as-a-service delivery system—that, to be competitive, it needed a robust document management system as well. “It became clear early in 2017 specifically that, as we were entering potential deals and getting customer requirements and requests, that we had an unforeseen need for a really strong document management system, and we set about looking for that right partner.”

Their research led them to TeamBinder.

“QA Software and TeamBinder is extremely well respected in Australia and surrounding countries. It is involved in almost every big project here [in Australia], but not well known in U.S.

“The owners, who are engineers, have grown it to a nice size. They spent all their time and effort building this fantastic product, but then have not invested the effort to sell it globally.

“We partnered with them on a couple of opportunities and won some away. That triggered our realization that we required [QA and TeamBinder] not as a partner, but as a key component of the InEight offering,” Hicks says. “Adding that to our portfolio with InEight allows us to go into North America in an aggressive fashion, and we believe TeamBinder brings a better overall solution—not just for the general contractor, but to but round out our owner offering as well.”

Hicks adds, “The really nice part of the TeamBinder acquisition is that it has been purpose-built for the engineering and construction world specifically.”

InEight is a technology subsidiary of Kiewit Corp., and includes core technology from the former Hard Dollar project estimating and cost management system originally developed for heavy civil work. Kiewit Technology Inc. acquired Hard Dollar in 2013, following Kiewit’s standardization on the system in 2011. After the acquisition, Kiewit rebranded its technology arm as InEight and built on the capabilities of Hard Dollar to give it more features, and eventually, last year, to offer a cloud-based project management portfolio system.

The acquisition of TeamBinder is expected to continue that rounding out of features with the integration of TeamBinder’s cloud-based document management system for engineering and construction, as well as to broaden InEight’s reach into the Asia Pacific region, and QA’s reach into the U.S.

InEight claims to have more than 25,000 active users in more than 500 companies. QA Software and TeamBinder has more than 200 customer companies, each with many users, Hicks says.

“During the last three decades, InEight has transformed the industry, and it is the perfect fit to take TeamBinder to the next level,” said Russell Mortimer, CEO at QA Software, in a statement issued with the announcement of the deal. “Both of our teams and products are rooted in decades of engineering and construction project experience, creating a deep understanding of customer needs. I know that by delivering our products as a complete project life cycle solution, InEight is paving the way for new possibilities for software solutions in construction and will accelerate the innovation of document management solutions.”

Mortimer was one of the founding directors of QA Software in 1995. The seller will retain ownership of several legacy products in QA’s portfolio under the name of QDMS Solutions. Hicks says, “We didn’t choose to acquire those pieces because they didn’t’ really hit a market space we need and they have no bearing on the functionality and depth and breadth of TeamBinder.”

QA Software says its collaborative SaaS solutions have been used on thousands of significant construction and engineering projects world-wide, encompassing gas and oil, health and science, infrastructure, resources, power and energy, and, commercial and residential projects throughout Australia, South East Asia, Europe, The U.S.A. and the Middle East.