Here's mine: A construction programme is your methodology expressed through time. The Gantt chart is only the output. The actual work is deciding how the team will deliver the project: - Break the scope into activities with clear owners. - Sequence the work from the required milestones. - Calculate durations using quantities and realistic production rates. - Identify the critical path and low-float activities. - Optimise the work that can actually change the completion date. Crashing critical-path work usually costs more. Fast-tracking it introduces more risk. Doing either to non-critical work will not bring the completion date forward. Do I think a planner should build the programme alone and hand it to the site team? No. The people delivering the project need to help build the methodology and commit to it. This is my attempt to explain it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QahPnqB4UHo

Which model is best at reading and understanding construction drawings? @Josh Turner and I just launched an AI benchmark for construction tasks. If you've not come across a benchmark, it's a way to score AI models. There's benchmarks for software engineering, legal, maths, etc. For our benchmark, we went through multiple sets of large construction drawings and created a database of questions and answers (Very time-consuming). Questions like "how many footings are in the slab" or "what are the cable tray specifications. We then scored each model based on what percentage of questions they answered correctly and the cost of the analysis. So far, we've tested 9 recent mods. GPT 5.6 won. Surprisingly, Opus 5 and 4.8 both beat Fable 5. One caveat: we tested the models via the API, so you would likely get different performance (almost certainly better results) if you used the harness (Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, etc.) We'll be running and updating this for every new model that comes out. We will also be adding more domains to our analysis - take-offs, estimating, scheduling, etc. We've got come up with some pretty interesting ways to test them. Check out the results here: https://contractoros.build/benchmarks/

Hey everyone Victor here. Just joined the community, and I’m looking forward to connecting with contractors and learning more about the industry. I’m mainly interested in the systems behind growth — lead generation, follow-up, CRM, automation, and making sure good leads don’t get lost after they come in. I’ve noticed a lot of businesses can generate leads, but the real challenge is often what happens after someone calls, fills out a form, or asks for a quote. Curious to hear from the contractors here: What’s currently the biggest headache in your business: getting leads, following up, booking jobs, or managing everything once the leads start coming in? Looking forward to learning from everyone here 🤝

Before you run another ad or ask for another referral — do this free check on your own Google listing. Takes 5 minutes. Most contractors who run it are surprised by what they find. Check 1 — Your last review date When was your last Google review posted? If it's been 6+ weeks, your Maps ranking is already dropping. New customers searching your area are seeing competitors first — even if your work is better. Check 2 — The competitor gap Search "[your service] + [your city]" right now. Look at the top 3 results. How many reviews do they have vs you? Every 10-review gap = roughly 1–2 lost jobs per month just from ranking. That's before anyone even looks at your price. Check 3 — Your unresponded reviews Any 1-star or 2-star reviews sitting unanswered? Research shows 88% of customers read business responses before making a decision. An unanswered bad review isn't just one lost job — it's every person who reads it and picks someone else. The math nobody talks about: 5 missed or lost jobs/month × $400 avg job = $2,000/month That's $24,000/year lost — not from bad work, but from a Maps listing that's slowly falling behind. The contractors winning right now aren't just better at the job. They've figured out what happens after the job — the review, the follow-up, the rebooking. What does your Maps listing look like right now? Drop your star rating and when your last review came in — curious what others are working with.