The pressure these CFOs and COOs face
The cycle is against you. Interest rates have made the commercial pipeline uncertain, multifamily has already softened in most markets, and the labor pool is aging faster than it's being replaced. Project-based revenue recognition makes WIP accounting hard on a clean quarter and brutal on a bad one. Most of the industry is still running Sage 300 CRE, Viewpoint Vista, or a homegrown Access database, and the bonding company is asking for tighter financials than that stack can produce.
If you sit at a PE-backed specialty-trade roll-up, the value-creation thesis was always the integration — three to eight acquisitions in, the chart of accounts is still inconsistent, the field-tech stack is a different vendor in every region, and the local-brand customer relationships you paid up for are getting nervous about who they're calling next week. If you sit at a family-owned GC heading into a generational transition, the second generation is asking what the company needs to look like in five years and the answer involves a stack the founder never had to think about.
That's the seat. The work isn't strategic. It's structural.
The three jobs we help with
Integrate three to eight acquired specialty-trade companies into one operating platform. Chart of accounts, ERP, project accounting, fleet, field tech — consolidated so the platform actually operates as one company, without losing the local-brand customer relationships the roll-up paid up for. The integration is the value-creation thesis. We treat it like one.
Modernize the project-accounting and ERP stack the bonding company believes. Off Sage 300 CRE, off Viewpoint Vista, off the homegrown database — onto Acumatica, Trimble Viewpoint, Procore + Sage Intacct, or whichever target stack fits the operating model. WIP accounting stays clean through the migration. The surety sees better financials, not worse, six months in.
Deploy AI and automation into estimating, scheduling, dispatch, and field-data capture. Defend margin against labor inflation and a cyclical pipeline, and make the company more sellable at exit. Use-case selection, vendor evaluation, integration with the project-accounting and field-tech stacks, and the operating routines that turn AI from a board topic into a Monday-morning capability.
How we approach it differently
Versus Big 4 construction practices. Real on tax, audit, and M&A advisory; light on operating execution. We are operator-led, not audit-led. The work product is shipped capability, not a recommendation memo.
Versus construction-specialist consultancies (FMI, Wipfli, MCa). Deep domain expertise — FMI in particular runs a credible strategy and leadership playbook. We complement it with AI-native execution muscle the strategy firms don't carry, and we ship faster on the integration and tech-modernization side.
Versus ERP-implementation consultancies. They sell you the platform and the implementation. We are independent of the platform. The platform decision goes where the operating model goes, not where the vendor's incentive goes.
Versus PE-aligned operating-partner consultancies. Strong on cost-out integration playbooks. Less native on AI in field operations. The combination — operator judgment plus AI execution — is the difference.
The councils behind this work
The Supply Chain Council is directly relevant for materials, fleet, and field procurement. The AI Operations Council is where peer operators are debating what's working in estimating, dispatch, and field-data capture right now. Cybersecurity comes up on every PE-owned platform engagement where the diligence team is starting to ask harder questions about field-tech security and ransomware exposure.