General contractors
What can AI do for a general contractor?
A contractor prices the next job on what the last one earned. Most cannot say what that was.
A general contractor doing about $10M a year usually cannot say what a finished job actually earned, because the estimate sits in one place, the field hours sit in another, and the billing sits in a third. Nothing reconciles them until long after the crew has moved on, so the next bid is priced on memory.
Two points of margin between the best and worst crews on a $10M book is roughly $200,000 a year. The money is not hidden. It is just spread across three systems that were never connected, so nobody can point at the jobs it came from.
One useful place to start: How do we make money?
The questions a contractor cannot answer today
- What did that job actually earn once field hours and change orders are counted?
- Which changes were made in the field and never billed to anyone?
- Which crews produce margin, and which are simply busy?
- What did overtime cost once you add up the whole year?
- What does a truck cost per job once drive time counts as cost?
- Where do the office hours actually go?
Can’t tell which one is yours? You are not supposed to be able to. That is the point.
What AI needs to connect before it can help
These are the systems a business like yours already runs on. Nothing here needs to be replaced. AI becomes useful when the relevant facts from each one form a connected picture it can reliably act on.
- Your estimating tool
- Project and scheduling software
- Field hours, including paper timesheets
- QuickBooks
- Supplier invoices arriving by email
- The job folder on someone's desktop
Named by what they do rather than by brand, because the brand matters less than whether the thing is connected to anything else.
What a general contractor asks before they start
Can QuickBooks do job costing for a construction company?
- Up to a point. QuickBooks will hold costs against a job, but it only knows what someone types into it, and it does not see the estimate, the field hours, or the change order until they are keyed in by hand. That is why the report is usually weeks late and roughly right. The fix is not to replace QuickBooks, it is to connect what feeds it so the numbers arrive on their own.
Do we have to replace our estimating or scheduling software?
- No. The point is to connect what you already run on, not to sell you a replacement. Most contractors keep every system they have and simply stop re-keying between them.
Our timesheets are on paper. Does that rule us out?
- No, and it is the most common starting point. Paper timesheets are information, they just are not connected to anything yet. Getting them into the picture is usually the single change that makes job profit real.
How long before we can see profit by job?
- It depends on how many systems are involved and how clean the history is. The honest answer is that the first useful view usually comes from a narrow slice, one cost type or one division, rather than from everything at once.
Who owns what gets built?
- You do. The connected picture and the data in it belong to your business. There is no licence to buy and no long contract, so nothing stops working if you stop working with us.
Everything we have written for general contractors
17 articles, newest first.
What a Truck Costs Per Job at a Plumbing Contractor
Why an $8M plumbing contractor cannot say what a truck costs per job, and what counting drive time alongside fuel and maintenance would change.
How Do We Make Money? Getting Profit by Job and by Customer You Can Trust
Why a $9M specialty contractor cannot tell which jobs and customers carry the margin, and what it takes to get profit by job you can trust.
What Overtime Actually Costs a Construction Contractor Once You Add Up the Year
Why a $12M contractor never sees the annual cost of overtime, and what the premium, the lost output in long weeks, and the rework that follows add up to.
Train Apprentices or Hire Journeymen: How an Electrical Contractor Should Run the Numbers
Why an $8M electrical contractor decides between training and hiring on the wage rate alone, and what productivity and rework by experience level would change.
Crew Productivity for a General Contractor: Which Crews Actually Produce Margin
Why a $12M general contractor cannot say which of its six crews produce margin, and what comparing margin per crew hour across similar jobs would reveal.
Buy or Rent: How an Excavation Contractor Can Tell Which Machines Are Worth Owning
Why an $11M excavation contractor cannot say how many hours a machine actually works, and what utilization by machine would settle about buying or renting.
Unbilled Change Orders: Who Catches the Change When It Happens in the Field
Why an $11M general contractor performs extra work it never invoices, and what it takes to capture a change at the moment a customer asks for it.
Review Request Automation for a Remodeler
Why a $6M remodeler's online reputation looks nothing like the work it does, what the thin review profile costs in lost bids, and what it takes to fix.
Job Profitability for a Construction Company Still Running on Spreadsheets
Why an $11M contractor does not see what a job made until months after it closes, and what tracking costs against the budget while the job runs would show.
Time Tracking and Job Costing for an Electrical Contractor
Why a $9M electrical contractor cannot tell which jobs made money, and what capturing field hours by job would reveal about the bids.
Payroll Data Entry Automation for a Construction Company
Why a $13M contractor's job-cost labor never matches payroll, and what it would take to capture crew hours once and feed both from it.
Job Profitability for a General Contractor: When the Estimate, the Field Hours, and the Billing Never Meet
Why a $10 million contractor cannot tell what a finished job actually earned when the estimate, the field hours, and the billing sit in three different tools.
Maintenance Logs for an Excavation Fleet
Why an $11M excavation contractor cannot tell which machines are overdue for service, and what automated maintenance logs would change about downtime.
Reporting Dashboards for a General Contractor
Why a $15M general contractor cannot tell on Monday which jobs are over budget, and what it takes to see job health, cash, and margin live.
Overhead at a Plumbing Contractor: Where the Office Hours Actually Go
Why a $9M plumbing contractor cannot say what its office hours cost, and what counting the time behind a single job would show about overhead.
AI Invoice Automation for Mechanical Contractors
Why an $8M mechanical contractor waits two weeks to bill a closed job, what that delay costs in working capital, and what it takes to close the gap.
Delivery Tickets: The Paperwork a Concrete Contractor Pays For Twice
Why a $7M concrete contractor cannot see the payroll going into matching delivery tickets to jobs, and what that reconciliation really costs a year.
What AI can do in other trades
The language and systems change. The useful job is the same: connect what happened, find what matters, and act before the value disappears.
What can AI do for a general contractor?
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