Your work has outgrown the company supporting it.
As you grow, the quality of your work, the way buyers see it, and the systems that protect cash, profit, and time can drift apart. Align brings them back together.
How Align works, start to finish.
The whole model, in one image. The rest of this page walks through it.
The owner says cash is tight. That's rarely the whole problem.
The superintendent performed extra work based on a field conversation. The project manager didn't get the information for three days. The estimate didn't clearly show what was excluded. Nobody knew who owned pricing the change. Accounting couldn't bill what it couldn't see. The job-cost report arrived after the owner had already committed more labor.
What looked like a cash problem was a handoff problem, an information problem, and an accountability problem at the same time. And because every uncertain decision came back to the owner, it was a leadership problem too.
That's how problems behave inside an owner-led construction company. They rarely stay in one place.
Connecting the advice falls to the owner.
A branding company looks at the brand. An accountant looks at the numbers. An operations advisor looks at the process. Each may be good at what it does, and the owner is left deciding whether the recommendations fit together and which one comes first.
We look across six connected areas, find where the problem actually begins, and work the piece creating the most value or the most exposure, wherever in the business it lives.
Not six advisors. One accountable lead.
- 01One leadOwns the plan, communication, quality, budget, measurement, and handoff.
- 02One priority at a timeNot all six areas at once.
- 03Experts only when neededEach gets a defined role, budget, and limit. You get the knowledge without another team to supervise.
Six parts of the business that aren't about building.
You already know how to build. These are the parts that decide whether the company survives doing it. A weakness in one usually shows up as a symptom somewhere else.
- 01MoneyWhether you can see what a job is earning while there's still time to act on it.
- 02PeopleWho owns what, what authority comes with it, and what happens when someone leaves.
- 03LegalContracts, change orders, lien rights, licensing. What's in writing and what isn't.
- 04Insurance and riskCoverage, subcontractor certificates, and what happens if something goes wrong on an active job.
- 05How the market sees youWhether the quality already inside the company is visible to the right prospects.
- 06How the work runsScheduling, handoffs, change orders, closeout, and how much of it depends on you personally.
1. Money
We look at how job costs are tracked, how fast you can see estimated against actual margin, how change orders get priced and approved, and how long money sits before it's billed. A number that arrives after the job closes explains what happened. One that arrives in time protects the business.
2. People
Hiring good people doesn't create accountability by itself. We look at how someone is classified and paid, what authority comes with a role, what happens on a first day and a last day, and who covers when a key person is out for two weeks.
3. Legal
Disputes get decided by what was written down at the time, not by who was right. We look at your contract template, how change orders get authorized, how a slow-paying customer gets handled, and whether licensing is current. Where something needs an attorney, we say so. We don't give legal advice.
4. Insurance and risk
A subcontractor working without current coverage is your exposure, not his. We look at your policies and limits, how certificates get verified before work starts, your claims history and experience mod, and what you could bond today. Adequacy is your broker's call. We find the gaps worth showing him.
5. How the market sees you
Some contractors perform work far better than they present it. That gap attracts the wrong work and forces the company to compete on price. The goal isn't to sound better than you are. It's to make the quality already inside the company visible to people who would pay for it.
6. How the work runs
A job moves through a chain: lead to estimate, contract to handoff, completion to closeout. At every transition information thins out and responsibility gets blurry. We also look at how much of that chain runs through you personally. The goal isn't a thick manual. It's work clear enough to run without you pushing every step.
We don't try to change the entire company at once.
We record the starting point, separate what we verified from what we couldn't, and look at all six areas. Then we rank what we found by what it's costing you, what it could do to you if it goes wrong, and what has to be fixed before anything else can work.
A problem doesn't care which area it lives in. A subcontractor working without current coverage is insurance, operations, and legal at once. We work the problem, not the category.
You get a short list of what to do first, sized to what you can carry while you're still running jobs. Everything else stays visible on a longer view.
Eight weeks. Six areas. One clear answer about what to fix first.
We talk to you, read your books and policies and contracts, and tell you what we found, what we're sure about, and what we're not.
You end up with one page listing the three things that matter now, a short explanation of why those three, and the full record for you and your advisors.
It stands on its own. If we never do another hour of work for you, you still have a plan you can act on.
You decide what comes next, one piece at a time.
If you want help after the diagnostic, here's how the work runs.
- 01We show you a first-year viewWhat we would work on, in what order, and why. A direction and a budget range, not a contract.
- 02You start one phaseFour months. One problem, one result it has to produce, and deliverables you can use. You see the scope and the price before you say yes.
- 03We do the workYou know what we're handling, what you're handling, and what belongs to your attorney, CPA, or broker.
- 04We sit down at the endWhat got delivered, what you can see now that you couldn't before, and whether the next priority is still the right one. Four months of real information sometimes changes the answer.
- 05You decide againConfirm the next phase, change it, replace it, or stop. Stopping is a normal answer. If the work stopped being useful you should stop buying it.
Three phases a year is the most anyone would do. Fewer is normal.
Every phase has to be worth having on its own. You can walk away after any of them and keep what you got. That's the whole point of working this way instead of selling you a year up front.
The diagnostic is guaranteed.
If it isn't worth what you paid, you don't pay for it. We'll walk you through the terms before you sign anything.
Agree on the measures before the work begins.
We record the starting point, agree on the few measures that will show whether the work is helping, and track what we can actually influence. We don't claim that one engagement causes every business result. Depending on the problem, improvement usually shows up in one of these ways.
Money
- Work that used to go unbilled getting billed
- Job margin visible while the job is still running
- Change orders priced and approved before the work starts
Protection
- Subcontractor certificates verified before work begins
- Coverage gaps identified and taken to your broker
- Change orders authorized in writing
How the work runs
- Clear ownership at the handoffs that matter
- Shorter closeout
- Fewer open items getting lost between people
Room to run the company
- Fewer preventable problems reaching you
- Routine decisions handled by the team
- Jobs moving without daily intervention from you
Forum and Lighthouse Contractors.
Forum is a private group of six to eight owners meeting monthly for six months. You bring a real business choice, other owners share what they've seen, and you choose the action. It's for business advice, not referrals. Connect is separate and doesn't require Align.
Lighthouse Contractors are early clients we select on purpose. The engagement is paid, and it has to create measurable value for the contractor.
The challenges facing owner-led construction companies are different from those of a typical small business. They need help with market positioning, financial controls and employee accountability to build stronger, more valuable businesses that depend less on the owner. BuildLogIQ has the expertise to address these real issues.Craig R., Founder, PacifiCom (Retired)
Tell us where your company is falling behind the quality of your work.
Start with the diagnostic. Eight weeks later you'll know what to fix first, and why.