Epi 219: How Builders Used The QBE SYSTEM To Turn Around Quotes In 3 DAYS | Haydn Simmons
The Builders Ladder: Business Growth Strategies for Residential Construction BusinessesShow Notes
Haydn from Price A Plan breaks down the massive operational flaw of residential builders doing their own estimating. Because owners lack the time to concentrate, they fall into the bad habit of delivering broad-brushstroke estimates just to win the job. This creates a chaotic cycle where the builder is forced to sit back down in the office and manually reprice materials while the project is already active, leading to nasty financial surprises for the client and locked-in losses for the business.
To break this cycle, Hayden introduces the concept of partnering with an outsourced estimating firm like Price to Plan. By delivering highly detailed front-end estimates, the builder can immediately transition a signed contract straight into accurate purchase ordering. This system saves the owner 80 hours of weekend work per million dollars of project value and eliminates the massive risk of hiring and training an in-house estimator who might leave to start their own company.
Links & Resources Price to Plan Website - priceaplan.com.au 🕒 Timestamped Key Points 00:01:06 Addressing the trouble spot of builders lacking the concentration to write accurate estimates. 00:02:45 Utilizing a Qualifying Estimate to ensure a client aligns with the proposed budget within five days. 00:06:01 Breaking the bad habit of delivering broad-brushstroke estimates just to secure a contract. 00:06:29 Stopping the cycle of constantly repricing materials while a project is already active. 00:07:03 Implementing detailed front-end estimates to immediately transition into accurate purchase ordering. 00:09:50 Identifying the $10 million revenue threshold required to justify an in-house estimator. 00:11:03 Saving 80 hours of weekend quoting time per every million dollars of project value. https://www.facebook.com/groups/TPBmember: https://www.facebook.com/TheProfessionalBuilder See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
More from The Builders Ladder: Business Growth Strategies for Residential Construction Businesses
Coach Chase has gone through the numbers of over 100 building companies as a coach at The Professional Builder. His dad was a builder who did new builds, remodels and commercial work, but couldn't always pick him up from school on time. So Chase coaches building company owners on how to run the business without missing key life moments.
Coach Chase came back to Texas from a land development business in Portugal. He joined The Professional Builder as an accountability coach, moved up to performance coach, and now runs partnerships across North America from Austin. He and Owen go after a habit both of them see in owners: spending hours trying to AI-ify the whole business, with no extra jobs signed and nobody on the team in charge of what got built. The fix starts with the Business Maturity Date. Owen sets a 3 to 5 year target and works it back: $12M a year is 12 projects, and at a 50% close rate that needs 24 quotes and 48 qualified leads. Next he splits 12 to 18 metrics across finance and pricing, pipeline, project management, and administration and legal. Each department goes to one person, and that person installs the AI. From there, Chase covers checking every AI output against someone who knows what a good result looks like. He also covers keeping data access read-only and training estimating AI on a cost catalog. The strongest result in the episode: one member did $400K less revenue and made $100K more gross profit by sticking to $150K to $200K remodels.
Louis, a developer based in Vancouver, faced a critical operational bottleneck when scaling his residential construction company. He was trapped trying to solve technical issues on site and relying on the undocumented loyalty of subcontractors who had worked alongside him for 11 years. This lack of clear expectations meant trades arrived on unprepared sites, wasting schedule time and pulling Louis away from high-level sales.
Will Pritikin, founder of Aforma Design Studio, saw high-end builders repeatedly losing money because their in-house designers quit or fell months behind schedule. Instead of relying on blind optimism and jumping into massive portfolio projects without proper planning, Will introduced a structured system for charging for pre-construction. By shifting to a visual-first design approach and leveraging third-party design teams, builders can secure client decisions early, keep trade partners profitable, and stop hemorrhaging cash on site delays. Links & Resources Aforma Design Studio - https://www.aforma.co/ 🕒 Timestamped Key Points 04:30 Transitioning from unreliable in-house design hires to scalable third-party design teams. 08:50 Why chasing large portfolio projects without charging for pre-construction drains company margins. 14:15 Utilizing Professional Service Agreements to secure premium funding before drafting plans. 23:30 Implementing Integrated Project Delivery to hold the builder, designer, and client mutually accountable. 26:45 Using visual-first architectural renderings to catch MEP errors before the electrician arrives. 33:20 Quantifying the half-million dollar penalty of losing a rockstar superintendent to site burnout. 45:05 Deploying Target Value Design to stop client indecision from delaying the construction schedule. https://www.facebook.com/groups/TPBmember: https://www.facebook.com/TheProfessionalBuilder See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Narelle and Graham Brown of Pedersen Homes realized they were the primary obstacles to their own company's success. Despite growing to 12 staff members, Graham was still manually erecting site fences and emptying rubbish trailers. Worse, he was taking up to 16 phone calls a day from a single foreman, bleeding site problems into their family dinner time and forcing the couple to take separate holidays just to keep the business running.