By Greg Allan, tradesman and creator of Data First Coaching
Why does a quoted concreting job still end up thin on margin?
A concreting job can be quoted well and still come in thin because the gap between the quote and the final number opens up on pour day, not at tax time. Base preparation runs longer than planned, an extra load of ready-mix gets ordered, the pump truck sits waiting, and none of that gets written down as a cost against the job in the moment. By the time the invoice goes out to the builder, the real gross profit on that slab or driveway is already decided, and it is usually smaller than the quote promised.
Most concreters can feel when a job has gone sideways. The crew worked harder than the money suggests, the weather cost a day, the reo order was short and someone made a run to the supplier. What is harder to see is which part of the job actually ate the margin, because by the time it is noticed the job is finished and the next one has started.
Why doesn't generic invoicing software fix this?
Generic invoicing software is built to send a nice-looking invoice, not to hold every line of a concreting job as a cost against that job before the pour even happens. It treats the quote as a single number rather than a stack of moving parts, so it has no way of flagging the detail that actually causes the blowout.
It is rarely the big-ticket item that catches a concreter out. A missed expansion joint timing requirement, a control joint spacing the plans did not spell out clearly, or a plan that shows a slightly different square metreage to what gets excavated on site, these are the small things that sit outside a template built for every trade at once. A system that was not built around how a concreter actually quotes and pours will not catch them, because it was never asked to.
What should your own system actually capture to protect gross profit?
Your system should capture every line of a pour day as cost of sales, base preparation, reo, formwork, ready-mix volume, pump truck hire, crew hours and any decorative or exposed aggregate finishing time, so gross profit margin is a number you can see and protect every month, not something you discover once at the end of a job.
Gross profit margin is not a one-off calculation you do on a quote and forget. It is the number that tells you whether the business is actually making money this month, across every slab, path, kerb and driveway on the books, not just whether last year's tax return looked fine. A concreter running several crews across multiple sites needs that number current, because a foundation stage business watching every job closely and a growth stage business juggling several pour days a week are protecting the same margin in very different ways.
How can AI agents take the office work off your hands?
An AI agent is software that does a job the way you would do it yourself, using your prices, your wording and your rules, so quoting and admin work gets done without you writing it all out by hand. For a concreter still quoting on paper or in a generic template, that is hours each week that are not spent on site, not spent with the crew, and not spent chasing the next job.
AI agents can hold your pricing for base preparation, reo, formwork and ready-mix, apply your rules for pump truck hire and decorative finishing, and build a detailed quote in the time it used to take to write one line by hand. That frees you to check the plans for the detail that actually matters, the expansion joint, the square metreage, the access for the pump truck, rather than spending that time on the paperwork itself.
Should you build your own system or keep renting software made for every trade?
There is no single piece of software built for every concreter, because every concreting business books pour days around weather and pump trucks differently, supplies ready-mix on different terms, and gets paid by builders on a different progress schedule. A data first approach starts from your own job and cost numbers and builds around how your jobs actually run, rather than fitting your business into someone else's template.
Some off-the-shelf tools do suit parts of a concreting business well, and the honest answer is to look at what your own numbers say is working before replacing anything. The point is not to throw out every tool you use. It is to know, from your own data, which ones are actually protecting your gross profit and which ones are just producing nicer-looking paperwork around a job that is quietly losing money.
How does Data First Coaching approach this?
Data First Coaching, built by Greg Allan, starts from a concreter's own job and cost data through the Trade Business Intelligence, not from a description of the business. It looks first at where gross profit is actually leaking on real pour days, because that is where the truth sits, not in memory of how a job felt. Greg has shown, working through a live concreting and decking tender, that the detail which blows out margin is rarely the big line item, it is the small specified requirement a generic system never flags. He has also pointed out the time cost of a manual, paper-based quote, describing “the realisation that that will only take a few minutes once he can get rid of the ruler and the pencil”. The how of fixing this is worked through inside the Academy, with members, because the Trade Business Intelligence is powered by every member who joins open minded, innovative and willing to share.
Looking for a business coach who starts from your numbers? Concreter Business Coach or every answer for concreters.
