Hand-built 3D engine
A custom C++ OpenGL renderer the pool on screen is a real model, not a game-engine picture.
A working Idea · July 2026
Building Blue Water Solutions
Starting up a software arm, with Groundwork as its first product.
Justin Birdsall · Lead Founder
For Michael, Chris & Jin
Little bit about me
Getting to know more about the person behind this project.
I've always felt like my life built me up to lead — and specifically to code.
Before I was granted the chance to intern here at Blue Water Pools of Grand Rapids, I came into the office and basically pleaded for this opportunity and never really handed in an application. In the past I have told people I was born to work being tasked with responsibility once I could reliably hold a mop. One of the first experiences I can remember work wise was when my parents bought a candy and pop machine for my brother and I. We had to slowly pay our parents back the money, teaching a vital lesson about revenue and purchasing product and served as the core building block for my work ethic today
Grew up working
Born to work — put on a task the moment I could hold a mop.
This would be start of my early work career spending summers and weekends at my dads office, cutting down trees, spraying weeds, picking up trash, cleaning trucks, you name it. For a few Summers I would supplement the work I did at the office by starting a lawn mowing company with my younger brother mowing lots in my dads complex and a residential home. My first "real" job was working for Tim Horton's at the age of 15. A year later I began working at Old Navy where I was always apart of the top 1-3 Old Navy Card sellers of our store every year that I worked there and was being trained to become a manager. Wanting to get into something more physically rewarding for work I decided to work at UPS to also help cover the cost of tuition while I went to community college. While at UPS I quickly became one a top performant loaders in the entire building responsible for loading the 2nd highest volume trailer our warehouse sees while also consistently having the lowest error rate in building per volume. I also took up the task of being a safety supervisor coming to my shifts early setting up the workspaces for zone and leading the group of 5-6 people in our daily stretches/safety meeting. I would go on to spend a summer with Summit Landscaping mowing Grand Valleys downtowns lots, using my experiences there advocating for better workplace policy and treatment of grounds crew. Which leads me to my most recent last job being a machine operator for Perrin Sportswear. While at Perrin I was the companies fastest promoted unloader to operator they've seen. I was the only operator there who could constantly hit all three of our 12 set ups, 30 screens, 10,000 shirts goal. I was in charge of leading a team of 2-3 other people and responsible for setting the pace for the team. Day over day I was the warehouses top producer beating operators of 10+ years and blowing out
Awards & milestones
Recognized early and often — nominated for the Clarence Newcomb Award (one of three boys in my 6th-grade class) for quiet dedication and treating everyone with respect; won both the Integrity and Respectfulness P.R.I.D.E. awards in 8th grade, teacher-nominated and selected; the highest science grade in my 6th-grade class, boys or girls; an 8th-grade weight-class wrestling gold; and part of the very first class to take AP Computer Science at my high school.
A black belt, lacrosse, tackle football, competitive diving, golf, all the same lesson a solo CAD engine teaches: show up daily, respect the fundamentals, don't skip the boring parts, and give everything you do your all.
On the field, on the mat
A black belt, lacrosse, tackle football, wrestling — same lesson the CAD engine teaches: show up daily, respect the fundamentals.
There's a reason those football and lacrosse photos are here. I played tackle football before anyone else in my grade — through SKARA, run by the husband of one of my childhood babysitters, who also coached the Grand Rapids Rampage. And I played lacrosse in indoor and outdoor clubs for years, back before it was popular, then petitioned the township to let us field a team — and we won the whole thing that first year. The engraved ball from it is still on my shelf, and it's what finally convinced the high school to make lacrosse an official sport. I've been starting things and getting people to believe in them for as long as I can remember — which is exactly what building Groundwork has been.
Move into grew up catholic and then into daoisim binary seeing things differently.
Family
Where all of it points.
The starting point
You already invest in other products that don't support the functionality that you wish for.
Every job Blue Water designs and builds already produces plans, dimensions, plumbing, and quantities. Today that lives in drawings, spreadsheets, and outsourced engineering. Groundwork is that same work, done in one model while also generating profit for the company.
Today - (Structure Studios)
- Having to hand drawn aspect plan sheets
- Dimensions & depths re-checked by eye
- Runs only on Windows
With Groundwork
- One 3D model — drawn once, reused everywhere
- Dimensions & depths calculated exactly
- Plumbing schedule generated for you
What Groundwork is
A CAD tool that focuses on pool and models buildable reality.
Real solid geometry
OCCT solids: true volumes, true quantities, shells and steps you can take off.
Structural analysis
A finite-element solver, so a shell design means something to whoever signs off.
Terrain from drone scans
The client's actual surveyed yard slope, grade and dig, not a flat imaginary lot.
Not a render. A model you can build from.
The wedge
Every other program besides Structure Sudios renders a pool on a flat, imaginary lot.
Groundwork builds it on your surveyed one — and proves the shell will stand.
The category leader's top tier ends where construction begins — VR walkthroughs and spec sheets. Groundwork starts there: solids, structure, quantities, terrain from the drone.
The competitive map
Nobody owns pool-native + engineering-grade.
Pool tools are sales tools. General CAD has the rigor but not the pool domain. The top-right — pool-native and engineering-grade — is empty.
Pool-native
Pool Studio / Vip3D
Realtime Landscaping
Groundwork
Vectorworks
Chief Architect
General CAD
Sales renderEngineering-grade
Structure Studios claims 96% of the top-50 designers — none of them can consume a drone scan or size the rebar.
Sources: Structure Studios; Chief Architect; Vectorworks; IBISWorld 2026.
Structure Studios vs. Groundwork
Where the category leader stops, we start.
The 96% of top designers on Structure Studios get a beautiful render. Groundwork picks up exactly where that render ends — on the real site, with real structure and real quantities.
Renders the pool on a flat, imaginary lot
The client's surveyed yard from a drone scan — real slope, grade and dig
A render, not a model — VR walkthroughs and spec sheets
Real OCCT solids: true volumes, quantities and takeoff
No structural proof behind the shell
A finite-element solver sizes the shell and rebar — something to sign off on
A static plan — redraw to change a size
Click a dimension, type, and the pool resizes to match
Seven to nine taps to place a roof
One-click auto-roof straight from the footprint
Plumbing schedules drawn by hand
Place the equipment and the Pentair schedule writes itself
Why now
The project is getting towards a good showcase state
A single client's cash check just landed at the office to start their pool.
22% > 14%
Renovation is now a bigger share of the trade than new construction — where flat-lot renders break.
50%+
of construction firms already fly drones — the one input only Groundwork can consume.
A custom build is exactly the job where “surveyed reality, and we prove the shell stands” earns its keep. Nobody spends that much and hopes. Groundwork makes the next one tighter, faster, and repeatable.
Renovation mix: PoolCorp / Pool Magazine, 2025–26. Drone adoption: Aerial Decisions.
The upside
A paying market — with no engineering option.
TAM~$0.3–0.5B
Outdoor-living design + engineering software
SAM~$40–90M
US pool-design seats + per-project engineering
SOM~$1–3M ARR
Early gunite builders, FL/CA/TX/AZ (24–36 mo)
TAM / SAM / SOM — company estimate, built from the cited figures.
$24.8B
US pool-construction industry across 22,731 builders.
$1–2K
per seat / year — already proven pricing for design software.
~60K
in-ground starts/yr at $50–120K each — builders now win on accuracy, not renders.
Sources: IBISWorld 2026; Structure Studios; Pool Magazine 2025–26; HomeGuide.
What it would cost to build
Built solo. Priced like a rounding error.
$720K – $1.5M
to rebuild PoolCad with a hired team — a small crew of graphics, CAD-kernel and FEM engineers (scarce, expensive) over 1.5–2 years.
Formal cost models (COCOMO, ~66,000 lines) land at $3–8M.
The ask
$?K
one-time setup
Built. Working. Yours to grow. The asset already exists — the ask is just to give it a desk.
The structure
One new arm, under Blue Water.
Blue Water
the company you already run
Blue Water Solutions
a DBA — same company, new name
Groundwork
the software product (PoolCad)
A DBA is a registered nickname for a company that already exists — no new entity, fast and cheap to file. Groundwork becomes Blue Water's software line; I run it as Lead Founder and sit in the Friday meetings.
Note: a DBA gives a title and a brand — not ownership. If we want a real stake, that's a separate entity or an equity/profit-share, to figure out together.
The long game
DraftTurn one-and-done jobs into a loop that funds itself.
The problem: revenue is a straight line
Blue Water → builds a pool → customer → (done)
West Michigan CDL → trains a driver → customer → (done)
Fast food works because people get hungry every day. A pool — or a CDL — is a once-in-a-lifetime buy, so even a thrilled customer is hard to bring back.
The idea: build in recursion
One branch under the company becomes an investment arm — a small, local, BlackRock-style fund. Groundwork's excess revenue goes to work instead of sitting still:
- Groundwork throws off excess revenue
- Invest it in local land — a land bank
- Design and build homes with the pool already in the yard
- Resell the homes
- That creates our own demand — steady work and cash for the crews
profit feeds the next cycle
Where the demand comes from
Homes with the pool already in
Most people don't want to buy a pool — they want to move into a house that already has one. Build higher-end homes with the pool dropped in the back yard.
Plug-and-play indoor pools
Design the homes so an indoor pool is easy to drop in later — more plug-and-play than a custom rebuild.
New school districts
A district building new is a chance to be sponsored to build the pool.
Community pools
Public and neighborhood pools as another steady source of builds.
Draft — thinking out loud. Wording and structure still in progress.
The ask
Small, low-risk, and I'll pay my dues.
Hourly now
Keep me hourly until Groundwork earns — move to salary when it does. No bet on an unknown.
$Budget to set up
A real workstation, desk, chair, and tech to build on. I have been using my own personal equipment.
The Zeeland office
The empty office as a focused build space, and it puts me next to the builds — site visits off the iPad.
A Friday seat
In the room each week — building the software arm with you, not off on my own.
Shipping next
The features that widen the gap.
1
Construction Markup Refinement
Much of the 2D editing side is done .
2
One click roofs
Auto-roof from a footprint — hip by default, sensible pitch. Three taps where Structure Studios takes seven to nine.
3
Pentair plumbing
Place the equipment and Groundwork writes the plumbing & equipment schedule — the hand-drawn sheet, generated.
Each one is a reason a builder picks Groundwork over a render.
The deal, in one line
A seven-figure software asset — already built — plus the builder who made it, for hourly and a budget .
Let's stand up the software arm nobody else in the trade has.
Next
File the Blue Water Solutions DBASet a budgetI take the Zeeland officeA standing Friday seat
It starts with the ground.