By Greg Allan, tradesman and creator of Data First Coaching
Why does a council hold up still cost money even when the crew looks busy?
When a pool build stalls waiting on a council inspection or a compliance certificate for the pool fence, the invoice for excavation and shell work is already sent, so the job looks settled on paper. But wages, plant hire and site overhead keep ticking over whether or not an inspector turns up, and that cost rarely gets attached back to the stalled job.
Most pool builders redeploy the crew onto another concrete pool or fibreglass install while the paperwork is held up, which feels efficient. The crew looks busy, the diary looks full, and nothing seems wrong. But the hours spent waiting, chasing and re-scheduling around that one job do not disappear, they just get buried inside the time charged to whichever job the crew moved to next.
What happens to gross profit margin when a pool build sits waiting on sign off?
The quote for that pool build still shows a healthy gross profit margin, because the materials, labour and subbie costs were priced correctly at the start. What that margin does not show is the non-billable time that gets soaked up afterwards: redeployed crew, idle equipment, a site that needs monitoring, and an owner on the phone to council rather than quoting the next job.
A trade business can look profitable job by job and still feel tight on cash by the end of a season, because the real cost of a delay often shows up later, when the wages for that non-billable time have already gone out and the job that should have been finished and paid for is still sitting there, half signed off.
How do you see the real cost of a council delay in your own numbers?
You see it by looking at the split between billable and non-billable hours on that specific job, not the business as a whole. That number tells the truth a feeling cannot, because it is the one place a stalled excavation, a delayed compliance certificate or a council hold up on the pool fence actually shows up as cost rather than disappearing into general overhead.
Data first thinking means starting from what the job data actually shows rather than from memory of how busy everyone felt. A pool builder who tracks this weekly, rather than at the end of the season, can see a council delay costing money while it is still happening, not three invoices later when the cash is already tight.
How can AI agents take the chasing off your plate?
AI agents are software that do a piece of office work the way you would, with your own prices, wording and rules. These agents can take over the back and forth that eats a pool builder’s week without ever touching a trowel, including chasing council departments, updating subcontractors and pulling tender paperwork together while you are on the tools or quoting the next concrete pool.
Picture a pool builder putting together a response to a council tender for a public pool build. Normally that means writing a full methodology with a timeline and chasing excavation, fencing and equipment subcontractors for pricing, a job that eats days and days or gets rushed the night before it is due. An agent built around that pool builder’s own pricing and wording can pull the tender in, draft the emails to the subcontractors needed for the job, write the methodology with the timeline, and bring the subcontractor replies back in as they land, so the owner is checking and sending rather than starting from a blank page.
What should you track each week so a season does not get eaten by delays?
You track two numbers alongside each other: billable hours against actual hours on the job, and billable hours against total hours paid including travel and standby. Watching both through the season matters because pool building work is lumpy, a run of concrete pool builds queued for summer, renovation and resurfacing jobs squeezed in between, and a maintenance round of servicing, water testing and chemical drops that still has to happen regardless.
A pool builder who only checks this at tax time finds out the season’s margin was thinner than it looked, after the wages are already paid. Checking it weekly, while jobs are still moving, means a stalled pump install or a chlorinator and heating fit off waiting on a power connection shows up as a cost early enough to do something about it.
Should you just book in more pool builds to cover the dead time?
Filling the gap with more work feels like the obvious fix, but it usually just adds another job that can also stall on council approval, pool fence compliance or an inspection booking, without fixing the leak underneath. Some pool builders do need more leads, but the data usually shows whether the real problem is too little work coming in or too much paid time going unbilled on the work already on the books.
Off the shelf scheduling or job management tools can help a pool builder see where crew and equipment are sitting idle, and some are worth keeping. But a tool built for every trade at once was never shaped around how council approvals, inspections and compliance certificates actually move through a pool build, so it rarely shows the true cost of a hold up the way the business’s own data can.
How does Data First Coaching approach this?
Data First Coaching, built by Greg Allan, starts from the owner’s own job and finance data through the Trade Business Intelligence, not from a description of the business. For a pool builder losing margin to council delays, that means looking first at where the non-billable time is actually landing, job by job, rather than assuming the fix is simply working faster or chasing council harder. Greg has said the real cost sits in “the time you're not being billable,” and finding exactly where that starts is how the fix goes in at the root. The how, the agents and the tracking built around it, is worked through inside the Academy, with members, because the Trade Business Intelligence is powered by every member who joins it.
