Bluebeam Inc., creator of a widely-used, PDF-based construction document synchronization and collaboration system founded in 2003, has made its first technology acquisition, buying Project Atlas, a bootstrapping startup that stitches project data into a map-like, location-based data navigation system.
Project Atlas was taken public by developers Todd Wynne and Joe Williams in October, three years after they unveiled the development project at an ENR FutureTech event in New York City. At the time, Williams and Wynne were, respectively, director of technology and construction technology manager at Rogers-O’Brien Construction. With RO’s encouragement, they were creating software to geo-reference objects and data to let users navigate 2D plans on mobile devices and zoom in for details pulled from project databases.