From Job Costing to Cash Flow: How Contractors Gain CFO-Level Clarity | Bryce Wisan (Levvigo)

Rishi Srivastava (00:41)
Today our guest is Bryce Wisan Bryce, welcome.

Bryce Wisan (00:44)
Thank you. It’s pleasure to be here, Rishi

Rishi Srivastava (00:46)
Same here, great to have you. The first section is on your path and POV. You grew up around construction accounting and later led finance at multiple firms. What did you learn early about contractors that most accountants never fully understand?

Bryce Wisan (01:04)
wow. I learned early on that construction accounting was a lot more than just historical accounting. A lot of accountants treat accounting in industries as just a historical scorekeeping exercise. And that’s just not the case in construction. I’m sure we’ll talk more about how

accounting in the construction industry is more of a operational reality for contractors than for ⁓ management teams in other industries, even though contractors don’t necessarily think about how they’re using accounting data as actual accounting.

Rishi Srivastava (01:39)
Hmm. Yeah, it is. The proximity to operations is just incredible in construction.

Bryce Wisan (01:45)
Indeed.

Rishi Srivastava (01:46)
You’ve said contractors don’t want to talk about accounting. They want to talk about profitability, cash flow, and jobs. When did that realization click for you?

Bryce Wisan (01:56)
boy, as soon as I started trying to sell contractors accounting services, I learned that they don’t want to talk about accounting. Yeah, they they look at accounting as, ironically enough, just a historical record keeping bookkeeping activity. I am generalizing here, but a lot of contractors look at accounting as just something that they need to do for their tax accountant.

Rishi Srivastava (02:01)
Mmm.

Bryce Wisan (02:19)
They don’t consider the relationship always between the actual record keeping, debits and credits, not some bolts of accounting, and the work that they’re actually doing day to day. One of the things that’s so interesting about construction overall is that

from an accounting perspective, is that accounting is such a part of what they do. It’s part of estimating, right? When you bid for a job as a contractor, all you are doing is projecting forward your understanding of your job costs. Where do you get an understanding of your job costs? From accounting. What do you look for when you are monitoring progress of jobs? Well, some boys

you’re going to look for is inputs from the field, but a big portion of what you’re going to be looking for is how your costs are performing relative to estimates on the job. it’s real-time job costing. So contractors definitely want to talk about estimating. They want to talk about how they’re bidding.

they certainly want to talk about profits. Contractors love talking about the bottom line almost as much as they like talking about the top line in some cases. So profitability is a big one. Cash flow is a big one. Those are conversations that are very relevant to them. And less so

than talking directly about accounting. So I learned that in order to interact effectively with contractors in a sales and consulting relationship that I needed to speak with them in their terms and talking to them about accounting as an accountant was getting me nowhere. What I had to do was talk to them about things that they really cared about.

certainly cash flow profitability. would add bonding to that list. Bonding and credibility with sureties is all related to accounting. So yeah, good luck having a productive long conversation about accounting with contractors. But certainly if you want to talk about

bidding or estimating or cash flows or productivity, profitability, those are conversations you can have with contractors all day long.

Rishi Srivastava (04:30)
Yeah, yeah. And it doesn’t have to exactly be accounting. Accounting is driving all those other things.

Bryce Wisan (04:36)
Correct, yeah, that’s true, that’s a good point.

Rishi Srivastava (04:38)
The next section here, is on near shore accounting and team design. What specific accounting gaps do you see most often inside construction companies today?

Bryce Wisan (04:50)
gaps inside of construction companies. That’s a really interesting question. I tend to see one of two different patterns with a lot of contractors and one on the accounting side of the business. One is that a contractor will have

an accountant in place who knows the construction industry because they’ve spent a lot of time in it but who doesn’t have a lot of formal training in accounting maybe they grew up in the business doing payroll or AP some bookkeeping perhaps all of the above but without formal accounting training and what this leaves them

with the contractors is a person with a lot of responsibility and not a lot of horsepower in terms of accounting know-how. The other the other thing that we see a lot is a contractor will hire a very pedigreed credentialed seasoned accountant without construction expertise and they’ll end up in a very similar

situation. In this case, while the accountant might have a lot of robust accounting experience and training, if they don’t know the construction industry, the contractor is going to be underserved. So ultimately what we see is ⁓ half right hire in a lot of cases.

the first case that I mentioned being someone who’s experienced in construction but doesn’t have formal accounting training or someone who has formal accounting training but not experienced in construction doesn’t understand the industry. In either case, it almost inevitably leads to frustration on the part of the contractor because they don’t get what they’re really looking for out of either scenario. And what I’ve seen many times in my career is contractors almost bounce

back and forth between those two roles, they’ll realize, I promoted someone or hired someone that doesn’t have the horsepower to really do what I need done. And they’ll say, I need someone with pedigree, someone with a degree, master’s degree. They hire that person without sufficient construction experience. And yeah, they’ll find, again, they’re underserved. They’re not getting what they want.

So they’ll then bounce back to someone with more construction experience. Those are the gaps that I typically see. Someone with construction industry experience but not sufficient accounting horsepower or a contractor hiring someone with a pedigree but without the construction experience.

Rishi Srivastava (07:18)
Yeah, it’s not an easy industry actually.

Bryce Wisan (07:22)
yes, yes. Rockin’ a hard place.

Rishi Srivastava (07:25)
Yeah, walk us through Levvigo’s model, how do near shore accountants embedded full time change outcomes versus outsourcing or temp staffing.

Bryce Wisan (07:37)
Yeah, Rishi, let me tell you where the idea for Levvigo came from. So for almost 20 years, I’ve been working with contractors in one form or another. And I was frequently asked a question that I couldn’t, couldn’t reliably answer. And that question was, can you help me find a good accountant? I need a new controller. I need an assistant controller. need, I need a CFO. And

To put the right person in that role, the contractor was looking for a series of elements. One is the construction experience, the industry expertise. Another is the formal accounting training.

Another is someone who is available, right? It doesn’t help if they’re gainfully and happily employed somewhere else. Someone that is economically viable for the business, meaning, yeah, accountants have gotten expensive in the last five or 10 years. If it doesn’t make sense economically to hire what you’re looking for, then that…

That doesn’t make sense, right? The numbers have to work. And then lastly, someone who is located within a reasonable commuting radius of your office because they typically want someone in office. So when contractors would ask for us to help them find an accountant, that’s the answer that they were looking for.

And when you combine all of those elements and look at the crossroads, it would take the pool of available candidates in many markets, including major metropolitan markets, to essentially zero. You just couldn’t find a candidate that would check all those boxes. So that brings us to…

Levvigo and where Levvigo came from what we said is okay We’re gonna break the radius and what we mean by that is We’re not going to limit ourselves to accountants that are within commuting radius of an office and The other thing that we’re gonna do is we’re gonna fill the gap on the construction training piece So I’ve tried for almost 20 years to find experienced construction accountants

for to hire for my own teams or to help point in the direction of my clients, I found it to be extraordinarily challenging. And so what I’ve done is I’ve spent much of my career training accountants on construction. So with Levvigo, what we do is we say, all right, we’re gonna find good accountants with the right training.

formal accountants with degrees, some credentialed, all of them experienced. We’re gonna provide some robust construction accounting training and supervision. And we’re gonna put them in a position with technology tools that are gonna allow them to work effectively on a remote basis for the contractors. So that’s where the near shore piece came in, as we just said, well.

Accountants are difficult to find in many US markets. They’re extraordinarily expensive almost everywhere. So how can we address those shortfalls? And that’s where the Nearshore Model with Levvigo comes in.

Rishi Srivastava (10:45)
Why has Latin America worked so well for construction accounting talent and what misconceptions do US contractors usually have?

Bryce Wisan (10:53)
Yeah, as far as why it’s worked so well…

I think it’s a great cultural fit for a lot of contractors, just given the presence of Latin Americans in the workforce, on the management team, and as owners of construction companies. So culturally, there’s a lot of consistency, a lot of familiarity with the construction industry and Latin workers, managers, owners. So that’s part of the good fit. Some of the reluctance, I think, is natural.

And it is based in the experience and belief that they’re not going to get as much production out of someone who they can’t physically monitor in their offices. Which is interesting in a couple of different ways, Rishi, because one of the things that contractors do inherently well

is manage remote teams. What I mean by that is by definition when you’re a contractor, your most productive and also highest risk employees are working remotely. They’re not working in your offices. They’re working on job sites. So contractors are by design very good at monitoring remote work and is productivity. So I certainly understand

the reticence for having someone work remotely. But I also think there are very few industries that are so well positioned to overcome this concern because contractors spend all day every day monitoring workers who are remote, right? And in this case, they’re remote on job sites and they’re working out in the field.

Right now we’re talking about a remote accountant. That’s not field, but admin related. I think one of the other big concerns is data security. And it’s a very justified concern. I would be concerned about data security. Now, one of the things that we do for a contractor, now, I’m gonna take a little bit of a step back there. I’d say there’s very little,

that can and should be done for a remote accountant that shouldn’t be done for someone working in office in terms of access to data, data security. I think the risks are very similar for someone sitting 10 feet down the hall than for someone sitting.

in the next state or nearby country. I just think the risks are tremendous and I don’t see, I’ll rephrase that, I believe there’s a false sense of security for people who think, well, if someone’s in my office, then my data is not at as much risk.

Rishi Srivastava (13:32)
Definitely. The next section is on job costing to cash flow. You argue that robust job costing is the foundation of cash flow forecasting. Why do so many contractors still underestimate this connection?

Bryce Wisan (13:46)
Well, I do think that robust job costing is essential for cash forecasting. Why do contractors underestimate this relationship? I think one of the major problems is they don’t have the right accountant to do the work that needs to be done to make that connection real for the contractors.

⁓ to borrow the Top Gun reference, they don’t have the right pilot in the box. So if you think about what it would take to go from job costing to cash projection, you could break it down into a couple of key elements. One of them is I need to understand what my estimated cost to complete

Rishi Srivastava (14:12)
Mmm.

Bryce Wisan (14:28)
on the job really is, right? If that number is a wild-ass guess versus something that I have a high confidence understanding of,

Those are those are two very different scenarios from a cash projection point of view. If my job costing is so good that I can reliably forecast what it’s going to cost me to perform in the field on a job, then at any point in the in the process of that job, I should be able to have a fairly reliable estimate of my cost to complete.

And if I have a fairly reliable estimate of my cost to complete, I can break that cost down into its component parts. And those components have different characteristics. For example, if I’m through the major material purchases on a job and don’t have a lot of subcontractor work remaining on the job and all I have left is labor, well,

I know what labor looks like week to week, period to period, from a cash flow basis, right? I can project that in my cash projection based on my understanding of job cost. Now, let’s suppose that we’re on a different job or the job has different characteristics. We’re still going to have an idea when our big cash expenditures are going to be for other kinds of

job costs like materials purchases or subcontractor expenses or equipment rental. But again, if we have robust job costs, then we’re going to have robust estimates. And if we have robust estimates, when we get out in the field, we’re going to be able to reliably predict what our our job costs are going to be within reason. Right. No estimate is perfect.

But with reliable job costs, we’re gonna be able to break down our remaining cost to complete into its component parts. And those component parts are the fundamental elements that are gonna go into our cash projection. So Rishi that is how we get from robust job costing to…

cash projection. Now in order to make that connection, you’ve got to have an accountant in place who can take the information from the field.

who can take the information from estimating and who can convert that information into cash flows. So again, to sum it all up, I think the reason more contractors don’t understand that connection is that they don’t have the right accountant in place. They don’t have the right pilot in the box. And I’ll say one thing, part of what the right accountant will do in that situation is help the different stakeholders in the construction company understand the

importance

of those information flows and help make that information flow happen. You can have the best accountant in the world who knows construction in and out, but if they can’t interact with the field and can’t help put some communication…

protocols in place for lack of better way of describing it then yeah you’re really going to have a tough time getting from job costing to cash projections.

Rishi Srivastava (17:35)
This is again very involved accounting, construction accounting.

Bryce Wisan (17:39)
Indeed.

Rishi Srivastava (17:40)
Can you break down in contractor terms how job costing flows into estimating accuracy, percent complete confidence, and short-term cash projections?

Bryce Wisan (17:51)
Yeah, short-term cash projection. think we just covered that pretty well. And the answers with respect to estimating accuracy and I’m sorry, the second bullet point was job costing. Oh, percent complete. Yeah. Yeah. So really, it’s a very similar answer to the last question, which is that with a little bit more. What we said

Rishi Srivastava (18:04)
percent complete confidence.

Bryce Wisan (18:19)
in the last question was, if I have robust job costs, then I can have high confidence projections. And those projections are based on reliable estimates. Well, how do I get from where I am today to having robust estimates? Well, the answer is by tracking

what your actual job costs are and then critically using those as inputs into your future estimates. So I’ve seen hundreds of contractors over the years who have estimating and estimating is sitting over here in this part of the office and accounting is over here in this part of the office and

if they don’t interact, if the estimators aren’t getting feedback on what actual job costs are, then estimates aren’t ever going to improve. But when there is that feedback, estimates can and do improve. So we like to look at job postmortems. So we’ll take an original estimate. We’ll look at change orders.

and the estimated cost for those change orders. And then we’ll look at actuals and we’ll just see where the differences occur. And the differences typically come into a couple of common elements. it a labor productivity issue? Are we using labor productivity estimates that are not accurate for jobs like this? That’s often the case. Is it a material cost issue? Certainly in the last

five, 10 years, cost increases have been unexpected in many cases, and certainly material. Or are we talking about a mistake in our estimate, right? Did we miss something on the takeoff? And certainly there are unexpected conditions in job sites. can go to ⁓ a site and have expectations on what you’re gonna have.

once you start digging, if you’re doing any kind of underground or earth work based on soil testing and engineers estimates, but the reality is you just don’t know what it’s gonna be like until you actually start moving dirt. But the point is we want to get the feedback from our actual job costs and incorporate that into our future estimates.

And when we do get that, that has positive benefits for our percent complete going forward, right? It’s gonna mean that our estimates are better. Our estimates are gonna be better. And as we discussed a few minutes ago, we’re gonna be better able to project our cash flows.

Rishi Srivastava (20:47)
In volatile or choppy markets, what does high confidence cash forecasting allow owners to do differently?

Bryce Wisan (20:55)
Well, yeah, that’s a real simple answer. It’s make decisions, right? It is infinitely harder to make decisions when you have less reliable information about cash flows, right? If I have a high confidence estimate of what it’s going to take me to complete a job, then…

that is actionable Intel that I don’t have if I’m really flying by the seat of my pants. Now I’m going to try to make this a little bit more tangible to you. Let’s suppose that I have a million dollar job that I think is going to cost me $800,000. And let’s say I’m $600,000 a cost into the job. So if I’m the owner and I’m looking at that,

I could say, all right, well, I’ve got $200,000 of cost left. If all I’m doing to finish that job is running out labor, and I know I’m making a lot of heroic assumptions, and let’s say it’s a big labor intensive job, I’m gonna make this real easy. Let’s say my labor accrues 25,000 bucks a week. Well, I’ve got eight weeks of labor.

Right? Left on that job, according to my estimate. Now, if that’s a high confidence estimate, then I know that give or take in eight weeks I’m gonna be through the job, my spend is gonna be over. But let’s suppose that I think the job is gonna cost $800,000 and it actually ends up costing me $950,000. Well, that’s an extra $150,000.

that I was not anticipating having to spend on the job, right? And you take a choppy market and then add $150,000 of, because we’re not just talking about cost here, we’re talking about capacity.

of our labor force, wow, that really makes decision making challenging, particularly in a choppy market. So the better information I have about my job costs, the better I’m able to project and the more effective my decision making is going to be.

Rishi Srivastava (22:51)
Quality cash forecast. It’s tough to get. CFO level insights for contractors. Many contractors feel busy but blind. What reports or metrics give owners clarity without overwhelming them?

Bryce Wisan (22:53)
Yeah.

Yeah, think a WIP report along is the foundation of everything. So if I’m an owner, I want a monthly WIP report and that’s gonna form the basis for what I do. On a weekly basis, what I’m gonna be looking for are budget to actuals on my key jobs and some form of

productivity, labor productivity report. Really construction for the most part in most trades is all about labor productivity. So on my,

Monthly WIP I’m going to get a good global idea of how the business is doing, how my jobs are going on my weekly budget to actual. I’m going to get some intel that’s going to lead me to some conclusions about cash flows. Maybe I have a monthly cash projection. Maybe I have a weekly cash projection. And then, like I say, the third element is really going to be about labor productivity. How’s my team doing in the field?

Rishi Srivastava (23:58)
Yeah. So.

At what revenue or complexity point does a contractor outgrow reactive accounting and need CFO level insight?

Bryce Wisan (24:10)
That’s a really great question. And I don’t think the answer has cut and dry. I don’t think the answer is cut and dry. I don’t think there are hard and fast rules. In general, what we see is that as contractors volume grows, they are forced to make changes in the way they manage the business.

And I’ll give you a couple of examples that are roughly numbers based. Like if you’re starting out with a proverbial pickup truck and shovel, right, you can often manage that business yourself up to one or $2 million of revenue and do it effectively. When what I’ve seen.

the construction company gets closer to five, six, seven, eight million dollars, you really can’t manage it using the pick up truck and shovel method. You end up having to hire some help and that changes the way that you manage the business or you’re not able to do it successfully. Now, same thing happens when you get to 15, 20, 25 million dollars, depending on the trade, depending on the contractor, depending on the environment, depending on the kind of jobs.

And at that point, you really start needing to rely on financial measurement of jobs and progress in addition to field management of jobs and progress. So I recognize that I just said, I don’t know that there’s a number where contractors really need.

where I could say, yeah, contractor definitely needs CFO level insights at this. But certainly in my experience around 20, 25, 30, $35 million, most contractors need to start relying on financial progress of their jobs, not just field reports.

Rishi Srivastava (25:54)
I on a smaller revenue, a million or two million, you’re probably just looking at your bank statements. You’re like, ⁓ who cares about accounting? ⁓ The next section is on technology, systems, and automation. You’ve been vocal about technology being liberating, not threatening. What accounting or job costing systems do you see contractors underutilizing today?

Bryce Wisan (26:01)
Probably, probably.

Well, I see contractors utilizing essentially every job costing and accounting system. The pattern that has been most pronounced in my career is contractors will spend a lot of money on a platform and have that platform and not ever fully utilize it. Rarely, rarely is the case that I’ve seen where a contractor has something and is utilizing it to the fullest. So.

I think what’s far more common in my experience is they get this big fancy toy, not calling it a toy is a bad, bad example, but they get this big fancy platform, spend a lot of money on it, have high expectations of it and really don’t utilize it to its potential. Is that 40 % utilized, 60%, 80 %?

whatever it is it’s generally significantly less than 100%. So that’s the big pattern that I’ve seen is they whatever they have they underutilize.

Rishi Srivastava (27:16)
Also, the contractors are so averse to change. Some of these contractors I talked to, they’re sitting on systems from 40 years ago.

Bryce Wisan (27:24)
Yeah, yeah, there is a lot of resistance to change in the construction industry. Not as much as I would argue as is case in the accounting industry, but that’s a separate story.

Rishi Srivastava (27:35)
Yeah, once it’s working the stage 50 from 1980s, we just keep running of it.

Bryce Wisan (27:39)
Yeah,

yeah, ⁓ for real. ⁓

Rishi Srivastava (27:44)
hehe

Where do you see automation and AI genuinely helping accounting teams? And where is the hype still ahead of reality?

Bryce Wisan (27:54)
⁓ I think you’re gonna be disappointed in my answer here. So where I see AI genuinely, genuinely for real helping contractors is actually responding to my last question, under utilizing. How do we increase the utilization of the platforms that we have? AI is fantastic for that, especially when you can train models.

on whatever platform you have, right? It is not hard to get documentation from whatever system you have, whether it’s accounting or estimating or whatever the case may be, and train your AI agent with that, and then be able to use it conversationally to help you improve your usage of the platform. Now, what if you’ve got…

a scenario where you’ve got two different systems that you’re trying to better integrate. Let’s say project management and accounting, perhaps, right? Or estimating and accounting, perhaps, or estimating project management. For me, AI is golden for helping build those connections. A non-technical person can do a great deal of good using AI to connect data from different systems.

⁓ incredible, incredible time savings, efficiency gains, and productivity increases by using AI to ⁓ help connect systems. I’ve done that. I’ve never coded anything in Python, but I have all kinds of Python scripts connecting different segments of my business that…

I’ve used AI to help me develop. It’s amazing, amazing. So that’s really where I see AI helping contractors is, all right, here’s the situation we have. How do we improve our utilization of fill in the blank or scenario two, we’ve got these two different systems. How do we get data from them to better sync?

You asked about where the reality is. Yeah, yeah. I think a lot of the things that we’re excited about, that we hear about in presentations are coming. I think there are some contractors for whom those really exciting esoteric things are a reality today. I don’t think there is much of a reality for…

Rishi Srivastava (29:44)
It’s the hype. Yeah.

Bryce Wisan (30:05)
contractors day to day. Actually, I will add a third use case for AI that I think is extremely beneficial. There’s some tools out there that are used to, that can be used to help manage the data in the construction industry, and that’s a big deal, where we’ve got a lot of contracts going back and forth, a lot of correspondence between management,

the field, lot of correspondence between the field and subs, management and owners. Version control is a big issue. Data management is a big issue. And I’ve seen AI really help make that process more efficient. If I can save time by not having to hunt and peck for data.

then that’s a big deal to me and I think AI is really helping contractors there.

Rishi Srivastava (30:55)
And when are we getting that AI that can pore concrete?

Bryce Wisan (30:59)
Someday, someday.

Rishi Srivastava (31:01)
Actually, we do AI AP automation. So there’s a lot of interest in that, the back office where people are processing these accounts payable invoices, delivery tickets. We’ve seen major impacts there.

Bryce Wisan (31:04)
Yeah.

Yeah.

yeah, gosh, I can’t believe I didn’t. Absolutely. So a lot of the blocking and tackle, a lot of the really mundane accounting work is just, yeah. mean, isn’t it interesting that I didn’t mention that because it’s, to me it’s so obvious, but yeah, huge gains there. AP automation is a big, big deal, big deal.

Rishi Srivastava (31:32)
Yeah,

but this industry, it just takes time for people to come on board.

The next section in Bryce here is on people, process, and scaling. What does good accounting talent in construction actually look like beyond debits and credits?

Bryce Wisan (31:51)
That is a good question. To me, it’s got to involve communication. If you are a good construction accountant, you are able to talk to the management side of the business and the field side of the business. And you’ve got to do so credibly and consistently. So I think it’s very much about communication and understanding different stakeholders.

it actually goes back to the first question, maybe the second question you asked about contractors not wanting to talk about accounting. Well, by the same logic, think contractors don’t often want to talk to accountants.

But a good construction accountant can help them understand why what they’re doing on the accounting side can help the other stakeholder in the construction company. So I really think communication is at the top of list. And in order to communicate effectively as a construction accountant, you’re going to have to understand the business well enough to know.

what it is that you’re doing and the value of it to whoever you’re interacting with.

Rishi Srivastava (32:54)
Yeah, there’s actually

something physically happening in the field that you’re accounting for.

Bryce Wisan (32:59)
Yeah, totally, totally. So the old stereotype of accountants don’t need to have communication skills, I think is not functional in the construction industry.

Rishi Srivastava (33:14)
Yeah. For owners listening, what’s the biggest people or process mistake they make when trying to scale their back office?

Bryce Wisan (33:23)
people are, biggest people are process mistake when trying to scale the back office?

I think I’d probably say settling for the half right accounting hire. Earlier in the podcast I said, well, a lot of contractors end up hiring an accountant who has construction industry but not robust accounting horsepower, robust accounting training, which is a half right hire, or they end up with someone who’s pedigreed and…

Educated formally but without construction industry expertise which also ends up in the half right Category in my book. So so I think if I were a contractor trying to scale

or at least if I were observing a contractor trying to scale, looking at mistakes they make in the back office, I’d say just not having the right pilot in the box there. And the right pilot in the box is an accountant who has some horsepower, has some training, has some experience, but who also understands the construction industry. If not, it’s just a recipe for disappointment on the part of the contractor.

Rishi Srivastava (34:21)
I agree with you. The last section here is on practical takeaways. And this is also the last question. If a contractor listening today wants better cash visibility in the next 90 days, what are the first two to three moves you would recommend?

Bryce Wisan (34:37)
Okay, the first move I’d recommend is if I haven’t already done this, I’d work on a budget to actual for all my jobs currently in process. So where am I today versus my estimate? And what that’s going to tell me is, all right.

Rishi Srivastava (34:47)
Mmm.

Bryce Wisan (34:56)
what not only not only what are my remaining costs to complete but also what’s the nature of those costs we talked a little bit about different cost elements like labor material subcontractors having different cash profiles labor is relentless you have to pay people every week materials

costs are chunkier but less frequent. Same with subcontractor expenses. Equipment expenses can vary. So number one, I’d say budget to actual for all of my current contracts in progress. That I think would be number one.

Probably number two would be to take a look at two or three of my most recently completed contracts and do a post-mortem. So start with my estimate and compare my estimate, including change orders, right? Because change orders are part of jobs, but we also estimate costs for change orders. Start with my estimate and compare them with my actuals and look at what’s different and why. And what we’re gonna find is

Rishi Srivastava (35:41)
Hmm.

Bryce Wisan (35:58)
Whatever the differences are, the source of those differences is going to be valuable to me the next time I bid a job and certainly while I’m managing my current jobs. Those are the two things I probably say to a contractor who wants meaningful progress in the next, in the very near future.

Rishi Srivastava (36:16)
I used to do commodities trading and every beginning of month we estimated some P &L and end of month comes and the accounting comes with an actual P &L. It never lined up with estimates.

Bryce Wisan (36:27)
No,

no, we’d love it to, right? But there’s still value in generating the estimates.

Rishi Srivastava (36:30)
We love it too, yeah.

Yeah, I mean, at least a plan is good to have, know, it’s the planning process that matters the most, not necessarily, you know, the final outcome.

Bryce Wisan (36:43)
Indeed, indeed.

Rishi Srivastava (36:44)
Price, I had a great conversation with you. Thank you so much for coming on to the show.

Bryce Wisan (36:49)
It has been my pleasure, Grishi. Thank you so much for having me.

Rishi Srivastava (36:52)
push.