When Jason Ciavarro describes himself, he doesn’t lead with “founder” or “developer,” no, he prefers to start with asphalt.
“I’ve been in the business for almost forty years now. I sleep, eat, and drink asphalt and concrete. I’m just an asphalt nerd, born and raised on blacktop, and now [I'm] sitting in a damn office,” Ciavarro said with a laugh.
That hands-on start, and the decades of experiences that came with the traditional process pipeline of field work to documentation, are what ultimately led Ciavarro to create SiteVision Pro, a cloud-based inspection and communication tool designed specifically for pavement contractors, property managers, and maintenance professionals. However, two decades before SiteVision Pro existed as an app, it lived in a spreadsheet.
“I created this app, probably on an Excel workbook, about 25 years ago,” Ciavarro said. “Engineers didn’t allow me to bid on projects… so I built this thing called a component inventory.”
That early “component inventory” offered something the industry didn’t yet have: asset condition visibility and tracking of pavement asset data. However, its big key was that Ciavarro wasn't just cataloging data, he was sharing it with the potential clients. The concept ruffled feathers.
“I was democratizing the information and making it available to people,” he explained. “I was giving it away, and I’m all about full transparency. If an association owns the property, they should own their own data.”
This was a foundational and guiding concept behind the eventual platform Ciavarro would go on to build.
Who's Data Is It Anyways?
As a contractor first, one of the reasons Ciavarro developed the software was to keep contractors and property managers from losing their records every time personnel changed or relationships shifted. The platform centralized jobsite data, including: photos, videos, maps, and notes. This meant that everyone involved, from estimator to superintendent to client, was working from the same record.
“It aligns your salespeople to your estimating and then to your ops team like the guys performing the work or to your project managers,” Ciavarro said. “It can even be shared with subcontractors. [But] I want to put this app in a property manager’s hand.”
When a property manager uploads a video or photo from the field, it instantly appears on the contractor’s dashboard. From there, the pavement maintenance company contracted to maintain said property can be made instantly aware of any changes or repairs that are required on the site, as well as the severity and/or priority of said project. This brings everyone involved, all parties, as well as the data, under the same roof.
A Tool Built Around Real Work
Unlike software designed for municipalities or engineers, SiteVision Pro was built to make sense to working contractors. Within the interface, users can drop pins, draw lines and areas directly on maps, and document site conditions with precise measurements.
“It’s all exact measurement tools,” Ciavarro demonstrated to me over a video call how it easy the interface was. Each annotation included space for photos, videos, and notes, while keeping two separate settings for what’s visible on the client-side from what stays internal to your team.
But all this isn’t just about data capture, it’s also about protecting the company. Ciavarro explained a situation where it was an active life-saver.
“I had a $300,000 job,” Ciavarro recalled. “The owner said, ‘You broke my fence. I want it replaced.’ I went back to my pre-con video and photos. The fence was broken before we touched it. Saved us ten grand.”
For contractors who’ve ever been blamed for damage they didn’t cause, or who’ve had to defend project quality months after completion, the documentation alone could justify having something like this.
“Having more documentation can save you hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees and insurance,” Ciavarro said.
Adoption And Education
Despite obvious advantages, getting buy-in hasn’t been easy, but that's not exclusive to just his experiences it's something OEMs, manufacturers, and other software companies have all experienced, as well. The blacktop industry is notoriously slow to change, and, perhaps most notably, the industry is deeply fragmented. Asphalt contractors are not a monolithic bunch, meaning no two companies look, act, or function fully the same way.
This industry fragmentation is what can make it look like change is slow to come, but it's sometimes just a reflection of how products can be incredibly user-specific. No single platform could meet everyone's needs universally, but Ciavarro wants to try and make something that, at the very least, works for most people out there doing the work he's known so well.
“The hurdle is you’ve got a bunch of guys like me at fifty-five years old that are successful with their business,” Ciavarro admitted. “At the end of the year, I’ve got money in my account, so why do I need to change?”
SiteVision Pro is now two years into field testing, with about 2,000 completed audits and roughly 30 active users providing real-world feedback. For Ciavarro, it is as much an educational platform as a piece of software. Inside the app, users can access an educational library.
“[We've] made ninety-four videos—little things to help people become better site assessors,” he said. “I want to educate people. I don’t want to just sell an app.”
Those short clips cover everything from proper slope checks on sports courts to managing drainage or reading asphalt joints. Many are bilingual.
“You need to be able to communicate to your Spanish project managers how to use this,” Ciavarro said.
Built for the People Who Pave
What separates SiteVision Pro from other asset-management platforms is its origin story. It didn’t come from a venture-funded startup or a top-down engineering firm. It came from a contractor with a shovel, a spreadsheet, and a desire to solve his own daily headaches.
“I was two men in a truck with a five hundred dollar loan from my father,” Ciavarro said. “I constantly look at, how do I make a contractor’s life easier? How do I buy them back time? How do I make them differentiate?”
In an era where technology often feels imposed on the trades rather than built for them, SiteVision Pro stands out as something rare: a tool forged in the field, by someone who still thinks like a contractor.
