By Greg Allan, tradesman and creator of Data First Coaching
What's the real cost of getting the labourer ratio wrong?
Most bricklaying businesses lose money on crew ratio in two directions, and both are expensive. Too many labourers on a straightforward face brick job means someone is standing around while the brickie works through a day rate that was already tight. Too few labourers on a big blockwork run or a retaining wall means the brickie is mixing mortar, loading out blocks and shifting scaffold boards instead of laying brick, which is the only part of the day that actually earns.
On a footing job or a small cavity wall, one labourer keeping up with mortar and supply might be plenty. On a long face brick run with a scaffold lift every few courses, the same brickie can sit idle waiting on materials if the labourer is stretched between mixing, cleaning down and loading out. The cost does not show up as a line item. It shows up as a day that cost more than it should have and a job that made less than the quote said it would.
Why does the right number change from job to job?
The ratio that works on one site often fails on the next, because the mix of brickwork, blockwork, lintels and damp course work changes what the labourer is actually doing all day. A retaining wall with heavy block and steady mortar use eats labourer time differently to a feature face brick job where the brickie is working slow and careful and the labourer has gaps between carries.
Weather adds another layer. A wet week that stops laying but still needs cleaning down and site tidy can leave a labourer on the clock with nothing billable to show for it, while a run of fine weather on a big job can leave the crew short handed just when the builder is pushing for progress. Subcontract pricing per thousand bricks behaves differently again to a day rate job, because the labourer's time is now tied to how fast the brickie can lay, not to a fixed hourly cost.
What number in your own job data tells you the right ratio?
The number worth trusting is gross profit margin, checked job by job rather than once a month after the invoices are in. A bricklayer who looks at margin on a per job basis, broken down by job type, face brick against blockwork against retaining wall, starts to see which jobs actually carry a second labourer and which ones are better run lean.
This is data first thinking: instead of deciding crew size from memory or from how the last site felt, the decision comes from what the numbers on this job type, this rate structure and this builder's payment terms actually show. A bricklayer running day rate jobs for one builder and rate per thousand for another often finds the ratio that protects margin is different for each, and that only shows up when the data is tracked properly rather than guessed from feel.
Picture a bricklayer running two labourers across two sites, one laying face brick for a builder on progress payments, the other building a blockwork retaining wall. Without checking margin on each separately, it is easy to assume both jobs need the same crew. The numbers often say otherwise.
How can AI agents help you get the labourer ratio right every job?
AI agents can take on the tracking that most bricklaying businesses never get around to doing, because an AI agent is simply software that does a job the way the owner would, using their rates, their wording and their rules. For a bricklayer, that might mean an agent that watches hours against bricks laid or square metres covered on each job, and flags the moment a job's margin starts slipping before the final invoice is written.
This matters because the fix usually needs to happen before the next lift goes up, not after the job is closed out. AI agents built around a bricklayer's own job types, their rate per thousand jobs, their day rate jobs and their retaining wall work, can put the right information in front of the owner at the point the crew is being planned, rather than weeks later when the numbers are already locked in.
Should you build your own crew system or keep an off-the-shelf app?
Some off-the-shelf scheduling or job costing tools suit a bricklayer well enough, and the fair answer is that a bricklayer's own data shows which ones earn their keep and which ones are just another subscription being paid for out of habit. A generic app built for every trade at once rarely understands the difference between a face brick job charged per thousand and a blockwork job charged by the day.
The alternative is systems built around how a bricklaying business actually runs, shaped by the owner's own rates, their builders' payment terms and their own crew's day rate or piece rate mix. This is not about cancelling every tool a bricklayer already uses. It is about letting the job and finance data decide which tools fit this business and which ones are quietly costing margin on every site.
How does Data First Coaching approach this?
Data First Coaching, built by Greg Allan, starts from the bricklayer's own job and finance data through the Trade Business Intelligence, not from a general rule about crew ratios. It looks at margin by job type, by builder and by rate structure to find where a labourer ratio is actually costing money, because that is rarely where it first appears to be.
The how, working out what the data shows and building the systems and agents that act on it, is worked through inside the Academy, with other members. The Academy is for bricklayers and other trade owners who are open minded, innovative and willing to share, because the Trade Business Intelligence is powered by every member, for every member.
