Grosvenor will also commission company to help reduce carbon and waste from construction projects.

Grosvenor’s UK property business has invested in Qualis Flow (Qflow), a construction waste and materials tracking platform, through a £7.2 million Series A funding round alongside Climate Tech VC Systemiq Capital, Bridge Investment Group and others. 

Construction accounts for a significant proportion of global carbon emissions. This is largely to do with the linear way it extracts, refines, transports, builds with, demolishes, and disposes of materials. To de-carbonise construction, there is a need to turn this linear approach into a circular one.

Qflow is a digital platform enabling construction teams to collect real-time materials and waste data at the source, supporting better informed decisions on cost, carbon, and quality. This drives transparency and efficiency that enables cost and quality control and sustainability management. Its features and benefits include reducing waste by providing real-time data and analytics; increasing efficiency by automating and digitising a currently manual process; providing transparency over carbon savings; enabling the circular economy; and enhancing performance.

Grosvenor is not only an investor in, but also a user of the platform – following a successful trial across a range of projects of all sizes on its London Estate, the business has plans to deploy the technology widely across its pipeline. Other clients already leveraging Qflow include Berkeley Group, Canary Wharf Group, Multiplex, Morgan Sindall, Workplace Futures and more.

GPUK announced the creation of its Alternative Investment Portfolio last year, and allocated £65 million to be deployed into European early-stage companies capable of accelerating the attainment of its ambitious environmental, social and commercial goals alongside wider opportunities including areas such as renewable energy generation. 

Our investment in Qflow will be the third investment in an early stage company, having already taken stakes in Demand Logic and Pupil. 

Andy Doyle, Innovation Director at Grosvenor Property UK, said: “We’re delighted to collaborate with the Qflow team both as an investor and as a customer. We see real potential in what this technology can do for the construction sector – it makes the management of deliveries and waste much easier for our onsite teams and provides greater accuracy, and accountability, in our environmental reporting. To create circular supply chains in construction, we must be able to reliably account for what happens with construction waste – Qflow provides this clarity.”

Brittany Harris, Co-Founder & CEO of Qflow, said: “Jade and I love the construction industry, it literally builds the world around us. But for it to build the sustainable future we need, it must change and reduce its negative impacts on our planet. To us, it was clear we had to tackle our own industry to have a chance of leaving this world in a better place, and this is why we founded Qflow. We are thrilled with the investors that have joined us in this round. The support we’ve received from big players in the sector shows they also see the importance of changing processes and accelerating this transformation towards a more sustainable future.”

About Qflow

Qflow is a digital platform enabling construction teams to collect real-time materials and waste data at the source, enabling project teams to make informed decisions on cost, carbon, and quality. The company was founded in 2018 by Brittany Harris and Jade Cohen with the sole purpose of leaving the world in a better place than they found it. Qflow is on a mission to become the market-leading system for UK construction projects to capture and harness material and waste data on live sites. It does this by working with construction teams to enable them to track and manage their social and environmental impact and take a data-driven approach to improving that.

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About Grosvenor

Grosvenor is an international organisation whose activities span urban property, food and agtech, rural estate management and support for philanthropic initiatives.

We are a values-led business which represents the Grosvenor family and share a common purpose - to deliver lasting commercial, social and environmental benefit - addressing today’s needs while taking responsibility for those of future generations.  

With a track record of over 340 years, we work to improve urban property and places in many of the world’s leading cities, promoting sustainability within the built environment and enhancing the wellbeing of customers and communities. 

Our UK property business supports c1,000 businesses and tens of thousands of residents and workers across London’s West End each day. We also invest in, create and manage sustainable neighbourhoods in Liverpool and across England. As a 1.5oC aligned company, pioneering change and new ways of thinking about property we aim to ensure our places benefit both people and the planet over the long term.

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