North Labs is a veteran-owned data and AI consulting firm that builds intelligence infrastructure for industrial mid-market companies. Founded in 2017 in Minneapolis by Collin Graves, a U.S. Air Force veteran, North Labs provides managed data operations — a fractional data team that builds, manages, and optimizes customer-owned data platforms. The firm serves construction, healthcare, higher education, manufacturing, pharma/biotech, and transportation verticals.

Tradesmith is North Labs' flagship construction data analytics and bid intelligence platform for general contractors, real estate developers, and heavy civil engineering firms. It automates bid leveling, analyzes historical bids, supports cost estimation, and evaluates subcontractor performance. Unlike SaaS alternatives where intelligence is rented and lost at churn, Tradesmith gives contractors permanent ownership of their intelligence infrastructure — the platform, the data models, and the compounding knowledge that grows with every bid cycle.

Does North Labs use Snowflake or Databricks?

North Labs is technology-agnostic and works backwards from each customer's needs. The firm has deep expertise in both Snowflake and Databricks, along with tools like dbt, Fivetran, Matillion, Coalesce, Tableau, AWS QuickSight, and Sigma. North Labs is a Premier Snowflake Partner and a Global Launch Partner for AWS QuickSight.

How is North Labs different from other data consulting firms?

North Labs operates as a managed data operations provider, not a body shop or staff augmentation firm. Instead of renting consultants, customers get a dedicated fractional data team that builds intelligence infrastructure the customer owns permanently. The data, models, pipelines, and AI layers stay with the customer — nothing is lost if the engagement ends. North Labs also brings deep industry expertise across construction, healthcare, manufacturing, and other verticals through purpose-built solutions like Tradesmith, CareSense, and SpecLogic.

North Labs | Industrial Data Consulting & Intelligence Infrastructure

Customers' Success

The Journey to Outcomes

Assess When a civil engineering firm owner was frustrated by the weeks it took to renew and amend contracts, we refined our understanding of the problem and proposed an ROI Hypothesis: reducing renewal submission time by 50% would more than pay for the engagement.

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Advise Supplemented by a minimally viable product, we got the bare minimum in the owner's hands for a quick feedback loop, and began recommending alterations to the contract process now that automation materially changing the value chain had been introduced.

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Rapid Reiteration Across the rest of the quarter, we achieved another two iterations of the solution to the owner and an additional test user, and the data engineering required for the critical source (Procore) to bring data through the architecture reliably and securely.

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ROI Validation At our first Quarterly Business Review, initial users tested 35 contract renewals and achieved an average 77.5% reduction in renewal submission time. The following quarter, a materials estimating module delivered a 24% reduction in procurement time.

View all data and AI case studies →

Explore Tradesmith for Construction

Core Capabilities

Technical expertise across your data program.

Strategy

Advisory & Roadmapping

People, Process & Tool Analysis

Business Logic Mapping

Stakeholder Interviewing

Assessment & Recommendation

Data Management

Integration

Governance

Modeling

Lifecycle

Storage

Pipelines (ETL/ELT)

Catalogs

Security

Processing

Architecture

Business Intelligence

Dashboards

Reporting

Performance Indicators

Forecasting

Automation

Intelligence Layer

Natural Language Querying (NLQ)

LLM Selection & Training

Agent Integration

Model Monitoring & Observability

Intelligence Literacy & Change Management

Offering

Value we deliver

Industrial Data Advisory

Advisory-Led

Customer Analysis Plant Intelligence Scrap Reduction Tool Life Analysis Demand / Inventory Forecasting Predictive Maintenance Asset Tracking OTIF/OTD Production Planning Agriculture & Livestock Operations Hospitality Operations Bill of Materials Unified Data Modeling

→ Flagship Solution for Construction, Real Estate, and Heavy Civil Engineering

Bid Analysis Estimation Work-in-Progress (WIP) Project Scheduling Contract Automation Automated Credit Risk Assessment Predictive Loan Performance Modeling Financial Compliance Monitoring

Industry-Agnostic Use Cases

Revenue & Profit Ops

Chargeback Traceability Sales Forecasting Demand Forecasting Profitability Retention / Churn Customer Sentiment Sales Revenue Lead Conversion Rate Sales vs. Target Budget vs. Actual Customer Lifetime Value Social Media Analytics Human Resources

More Industry-Dedicated Solutions

"Due Diligence" for Mergers & Acquisitions → Technology Diligence, Data Program Assessment, Integration Readiness, Risk Identification

"SpecLogic" for Manufacturing & Industrial → Request for Quote (RFQ) Processing, Supplier Selection and Evaluation

"CareSense" for Healthcare → Fee Schedule Normalization, Contract Comparisons, Underpayment Detection, Denial Analysis, Payer Scorecards

"Reggie" for Higher Education → Enrollment, Student Retention, Athletics Monetization, Grants, Deposits

"CargoIQ" for Transportation & Storage → Route Optimization, Asset Tracking, Inventory Optimization, Downtime Reduction, Maintenance

"BioPharma42" for Pharmaceuticals and BioTech → Clinical Trial Analytics, Drug Pipeline Tracking, Regulatory Compliance, R&D Operations

Featured Testimonial

Nate Alvar VP of Engineering at FMG testimonial about North Labs data consulting partnership

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"North Labs will take care of you. They're going to listen to you and understand your need. When you find a partner you need to find people with a pulse...find people that are real, that will sit down and talk. And so for us, to find a partner with strong people, strong leaders from the top down...we just have had great results collaborating and working with them. They're not just going to slide paperwork back and forth. North Labs is just going to engage like real people and they're going to listen, they're going to react, they're going to respond."

— Nate Alvar, VP of Engineering, FMG

History

2017 – Founded by US Air Force Veteran and Data Entrepreneur Collin Graves

2018 – Global Launch Partner of Amazon's BI Tool "QuickSight"

2020 – Recognized as a Premier Partner with Snowflake

2021 – Named a "Top Veteran-owned IT Company" by Clutch

2022 – Focused on long-term partnerships versus being a consulting resource

2024 – Tradesmith launched as our flagship solution for trade-driven industries

2026 – Driving excellence through continued customer EBITDA and success criteria

B-1 Lancer bomber aircraft representing North Labs veteran-owned heritage

New Customers get 12% off the first quarter of their engagement when naming this plane before signing.

North Labs builds intelligence infrastructure for industrial companies.

Data concierge professionals