Busy, but the money doesn't show up?

You're a fit if

• You own or run a founder- or family-owned commercial contracting firm: mechanical/HVAC, controls, electrical, plumbing, fire protection or a specialty trade.
• You do $10M–$75M a year, anywhere in the US (on site across the New York metro, remote everywhere else).
• Margin fades between bid and close, or cash comes in slowly.
• Pricing, approvals and hiring still go through you.
• Any tech level works: ServiceTitan, QuickBooks or spreadsheets.

Not the right fit if

• You're residential-only.
• You're PE-owned with an operations team already in place.
• You're a general contractor or construction manager.
• You won't share job and financial data.

Where Contractor Profit Leaks

• Margin fades between bid and close. Underbilling, uncaptured change orders and callbacks quietly eat profit you already priced in. We compare what you bid with what each job actually cost, by job type.
• Cash sits in work you've already done. Pay apps go out late, change orders get billed months after the work, T&M tickets sit in the truck, and retainage waits at closeout. On service work, the average commercial shop takes 66 days to collect; top shops take 25.
• Everything goes through the owner. Pricing, approvals and hiring wait on you, so the business can only move as fast as you can. A business that runs through its owner is also worth less to a buyer.
• Crews are booked, but jobs drag. Top commercial shops finish a job in 11.2 days; the average takes 21.6. The gap is waiting on scheduling, parts, approvals and paperwork, not effort. With skilled labor this tight, more jobs from the crews you have is the cheapest capacity you'll find.

Benchmark source

BuildOps 2026 Commercial Contractor Benchmark Report (1,500+ commercial specialty contractors). Days to collect are for service work.

What a leak is worth at your size

At $30M in revenue, every 10 days faster to collect frees about $820,000 in cash, and one point of gross margin is worth about $300,000 a year. Try your own numbers.

How we find it

We run Six Sigma's improvement cycle on your own job data: find the leaks, fix the workflows, keep the gains. Works with ServiceTitan, BuildOps, QuickBooks, Sage, spreadsheets or paper job files.

• Mine your job dates: scheduled, done, billed, paid (process mining).
• Measure where margin and time vary, job by job (Six Sigma).
• Fix the costliest workflow with your team, on a weekly rhythm.
• Take the paperwork off your office, with a person approving every output.

The workflows where the money goes missing

Each fix comes with a written procedure your team runs. Where it pays back, we also take a piece of the paperwork off your office, like turning signed T&M tickets into draft invoices the same day, and your team approves every one.

• Change orders: Field changes priced and signed before the work, not billed months later. We sample field tickets against billing to find the change orders that never got billed.
• Job close to invoice: Finished work and T&M tickets billed in days, not weeks.
• Pay apps and retainage: Pay apps out on cutoff, and a closeout checklist that releases retainage.
• Scheduling and dispatch: Fewer return trips and less waiting, so each crew finishes more jobs.
• Estimating and quote follow-up: Faster turnaround and a follow-up routine, so more quotes turn into work.
• Callbacks and closeout: We trace repeat callbacks to their cause by tech, equipment and job type, then fix it at the source. Punch lists closed, fewer free return visits.

Find it. Fix it. Keep it.

Every Retrofit and Fractional COO engagement starts with the Inspection. You only continue if the numbers justify it.

Not ready for a full engagement? Ask about COO On Call on your 30-minute call: a monthly strategy session with the owner, monthly training for your managers, and answers between sessions.

• 30-Day Profit Leak Inspection: Find it: every leak, in dollars. Process mining and benchmarks.
• 90-Day Operations Retrofit: Fix it: your costliest workflows, with your team. Workflow rebuild and one automation. Weekly operating rhythm.
• Fractional COO Service Agreement: Keep it: one workflow faster every quarter. Control charts and a weekly rhythm.

We guarantee the finding and the fixing.

Conditions apply.

• Find guarantee: If we don't identify at least $75,000 in profit and cash opportunities (10× the $7,500 fee), we keep working at no extra charge for up to 30 more days.
• Fix guarantee: If 2 of the 3 KPIs we agree from your Inspection haven't improved by day 90 of the Retrofit, month 4 is on us.
• Exit: Stop the Retrofit after month 1 and pay only for that month.

The experience behind Path to Scale

From enterprise programs our founder led before Path to Scale. Client results will be published as engagements complete.

• $100M+ in programs managed across our founder's career.
• $10M–$65M programs led with full P&L.
• 24% margin recovered on a fixed-deadline NYC infrastructure program.
• $52M in contracts won as part of a cross-functional bid team.

30-Minute Call

A free 30-minute call. Bring three rough numbers: days to collect, days from finished work (or pay-app cutoff) to invoice, and gross margin by job type. Don't know them? We'll estimate them together on the call. On the call we build your 3-KPI Leak Snapshot against top-performing commercial shops. It's yours whether or not we work together.

7 questions · 2 minutes · your score against top contractors

What Happens After You Book

• 1. Free 30-minute call (30 min · free): We look at three of your numbers and confirm fit.
• 2. If it's a fit: the Inspection: $7,500, paid upfront. We sign an NDA and send a one-page data checklist. Your office sends exports or job files within 7 days, and the 30 days start when they arrive.
• 3. Day-30 readout: Every leak in dollars, ranked, with a 90-day plan.
• 4. You decide: Fix it yourself, or have us fix it with your team.

Who leads the work

Every engagement is led personally by our founder, a senior operator with 18+ years running field-heavy programs with full P&L. We built Path to Scale for contractors who are busy but not keeping enough of what they earn.

Common Questions