Engagements

How an engagement works.

Four ways to work together. One starting point.
Everything I capture about how your business operates belongs to your business.
Book a call See how an engagement starts ↓
The starting point
Most businesses don’t need to start with AI. They need to make the operation legible.
How the company actually works lives across people, files, systems, and habit.
Every engagement starts by making that visible before deciding what—if anything—should be built.
Four ways to work with me

Different starting points. The same first step.

All of this comes out of building and running these systems while working inside large Boston residential general contractors.
What you hire me for depends on what your operation needs.
01
Construction OS implementation
Configure Document Workbench, Construction Intelligence, and automation workflows around your documents, standards, pricing rules, and terminology.
For companies producing the same paperwork job after job and answering the same questions every week.
You end up with working Construction OS systems configured around how your company actually operates.
02
AI strategy and advisory
Where AI fits, what to build versus buy, and how to scope it so it doesn’t fail.
For leadership teams under pressure to “do something with AI” who want a clear-eyed read before committing budget.
You end up with a decision you can defend, and a roadmap with priorities and sequencing.
03
Purpose-built systems
A system built around the workflow nothing off-the-shelf handles.
The spreadsheet nobody wants to maintain. The approval that dies in email. The report someone rebuilds every Friday.
You end up with something built around your process, not somebody else’s.
04
Operations and process work
Document how the company actually runs—workflows, decisions, pricing logic, and the knowledge that lives in one person’s head.
For companies that need this whether or not AI is ever involved.
You end up with a structured record of your own operation.
Some engagements end after Phase 1 by design. Others continue into implementation or a purpose-built system.
Phase 1

Every engagement starts the same way.

Operational Architecture · 2–4 weeks · Fixed fee
I spend time inside the business—observing, mapping, and extracting how it actually operates.
Not the ideal version.
The real one.
What Phase 1 produces
Workflow Maps
How the work moves today: triggers, inputs, handoffs, bottlenecks, approvals, and outputs.
Knowledge Inventory
Where the procedures, standards, pricing logic, documents, examples, and operating knowledge actually live.
Decision Architecture
The rules, judgment points, dependencies, and exceptions behind how the work gets done.
Implementation Roadmap
What should change, what is worth building, what existing software should handle, and what should be left alone.
Deliverable
At the end of Phase 1, your business has a structured record of how the priority parts of the operation actually work.
Workflows documented. Decisions written down. Pricing logic captured where relevant. Knowledge that lived in one person’s head made accessible to the team.
That’s valuable whether or not anything gets built on top of it.
Fixed fee, quoted after the scoping call. No hourly billing.
The approach

I don’t start with AI. I start with the work.

Show me how the process actually happens today.
I want to understand:
01
Where does the information come from? Who touches it?
02
What gets copied, checked, reformatted, or chased?
03
Where does the process slow down?
04
What requires real construction judgment?
05
What is simply repetitive production?
The question isn’t “where can AI help?” It’s “why is your team still doing this the hard way?”
What it takes

What I need from your side.

Phase 1 only works if I can see how the work actually happens.
That means time from the people who do it.
Time
Typically 4–8 hours across Phase 1 from each key person involved in the scoped workflows.
That may include the owner or operations lead, a PM who runs the work daily, the estimator when pricing is relevant, and the person handling the administrative work.
That last perspective often reveals where the time is really going.
Depending on what’s in scope, I may ask for:
Documents
Contract templates and subcontract forms.
Scopes from recent jobs—one that went well and one that didn’t.
Your pricing structure, markups, and rate card.
Whatever procedures or checklists exist, however rough.
A real change order, RFI, pay app, or closeout package.
Any spreadsheet somebody maintains by hand.
Access
Read access to your project management system if you have one.
A sample project folder as it actually looks.
Permission to sit in on one recurring meeting.
A point of contact
One point of contact who can keep documents, access, and decisions moving.
Phase 2

What gets built.

4–12 weeks · Fixed fee
I build the systems identified in Phase 1—grounded in your actual operations and tested against real work.
What gets built depends on what Phase 1 found.
Sometimes that’s a Construction OS configuration.
Sometimes it’s a purpose-built tool.
Sometimes the honest answer is that the documented process was the fix.
Examples
Construction OS configuration
Estimating systems
Change order systems
Knowledge assistants
Document production systems
Workflow automation
Fixed fee, quoted from the Phase 1 roadmap.
Ongoing

Keeping it running.

Systems built around a company’s operation need to change when the operation does—new templates, revised pricing, or a workflow that turns out to matter more than expected.
Ongoing support and development is available monthly for updates as standards change and continued work on what comes next.
Scope

Scope is defined before anything is signed.

What the scoping call covers
Where operational knowledge currently lives—and where it doesn’t
Which workflows cause the most friction for your team
Team structure, handoff points, and who holds the knowledge
Current documentation state and AI readiness
Whether Phase 1 is the right entry point
What gets agreed before signing
Before Phase 1 begins, 3–5 priority workflows are identified and agreed in writing.
The engagement is scoped to those workflows.
Nothing open-ended.
Example — residential GC: estimating · change orders · PM onboarding
Estimating · Change orders · PM onboarding
The limits

Not every problem needs a system built for it.

If the software you already have solves the problem well, use it.
If judgment is what creates the value, keep the judgment.
Build only where the business case is real.
Who this isn’t for.
Companies looking for self-service, per-seat software.
I configure systems around a business. I don’t sell seats.
Companies where the people who know how the work happens can’t spend a few hours with me.
Phase 1 produces a map of nothing.
Companies that want AI layered on top of a process nobody has agreed on.
That automates the disagreement.
Companies that want a system running unsupervised.
Review and approval stay with your team.
Companies whose real problem is a software selection.
Sometimes the answer is to buy the product that already does it.
Ownership

What you own.

Everything you share during an engagement is treated as confidential.
Your source documents, project information, operating knowledge, pricing logic, and company-specific procedures remain yours.
The workflow maps, documented procedures, inventories, and other client-specific Phase 1 deliverables are yours to keep and use whether or not the engagement continues.
Construction OS, reusable system components, methods, and underlying intellectual property remain mine unless the engagement agreement specifically says otherwise.
Any Phase 2 ownership, licensing, or ongoing-support terms are defined before that work begins.
Engagements
Start with a 30-minute scoping call.
Bring the workflow, paperwork, knowledge bottleneck, or repetitive process your team is tired of dealing with.
Book a call
No commitment until scope is agreed.
Phase 1 stands alone as a deliverable.