RenKap site survey marketplace joins Connected Places Catapult scale-up cohort

RenKap, a digital marketplace for procuring technical site surveys for construction projects, is one of five SMEs chosen by Connected Places Catapult for an Innovate UK-funded scale-up pilot that will put the firms in front of investors over the next six months.

The Catapult named Composite Braiding, Luthmore, RAD, RenKap and Zenion as the cohort for its Scale Up Support Programme: Transport and Construction on 27 October. It said the businesses are working on challenges ranging from advanced manufacturing and low-carbon heating to marine propulsion, construction site surveys and electric mobility.

Support will be shaped around each company and will cover investment readiness, leadership coaching, team structuring, growth planning and sales, according to the announcement. The cohort will meet venture capital, strategic and international investors, with early sessions offering feedback and a dedicated investor access event towards the end of the programme.

Alex Weedon, Enterprise Innovation Director at Connected Places Catapult, said: "Through the scale-up programme, we'll help founders with direct introductions to finance providers and investors for access to scale capital."

The construction entrants

RenKap's platform lets a construction client upload a site and receive comparable quotes from vetted SME surveyors, the Catapult said, across areas including ecology, asbestos, topography, utilities and contamination. Survey findings are then pulled into a digital Risk Register setting out identified risks, recommended actions and associated costs.

RenKap's own website describes the product as a site survey marketplace. The company says clients can approve surveyors' risk assessments and method statements through the platform and access all their reports in one dashboard.

Composite Braiding, based in Allenton, Derby, has a patented automated process for making hollow structural composite products such as beams, poles and tubes. The Catapult said company data shows production time cut from hours to minutes and energy use reduced by more than 95%, with scrap rates the firm believes can fall below 1% at high volumes.

On its own site, Composite Braiding says its thermoplastic braiding process cuts labour costs by up to 90% and waste by 97%, and that it can make up to 100,000 parts a year at a cost similar to traditional manufacturing. It lists civils among its target markets alongside automotive, rail, sports equipment and maritime, and says it won two global innovation awards for the design of a very light rail carriage.

The rest of the cohort

Luthmore is developing a compact zero-emission alternative to the domestic gas combi boiler built around lithium iron phosphate batteries, designed to fit the same space and infrastructure as a conventional unit and backed by an app, cloud connectivity and data intelligence. The Chartered Institute of Plumbing and Heating Engineering has described the product as a tankless, battery-enabled heating solution powered by six non-rare-earth lithium iron phosphate batteries.

RAD develops electric propulsion, vessel integration and autonomy technology for marine applications, including its Axon platform linking propulsion, energy, navigation and third-party systems. Zenion supplies electric motorcycles to last-mile delivery riders on a zero-deposit subscription, with a platform covering onboarding, billing, telematics, compliance, workshop operations and battery swapping.

Richard Jordan, Founder and Managing Director of Zenion, said: "This programme has come along at exactly the right time for Zenion as we prepare to raise our Series A, to scale from a bootstrapped start-up into a company making a real difference in cities across Europe."

Programme terms

The programme page states that all support is fully funded for participants. Applicants had to be SMEs with fewer than 250 employees, turnover under £44m and a balance sheet under £38m, with a solution at technology readiness level 7 to 9, and had to commit to executive-level participation between October 2026 and March 2027.

Connected Places Catapult describes itself as the UK's innovation accelerator for transport, construction and infrastructure and is part of the Innovate UK Catapult Network. Its construction sector page puts private investment raised by SMEs it has supported since 2019 at £698m, and says it delivered 56 trials and demonstrators in the 2025-26 financial year and links £100m of HS2 cost savings to its programmes.

Weedon said some of the five had developed their solutions with the Catapult's support and that the next step was turning that potential into commercial growth.

The Catapult said it will publish updates on the five companies' progress over the coming months, with the programme running to March 2027.