By Greg Allan, tradesman and creator of Data First Coaching
Why do remedial and leak repair quotes often go to the lowest price?
A remedial or leak repair quote often loses to a lower number because every quote in the builder's inbox looks the same: the same membrane system, the same square metre rate, the same promise of a certificate at the end. With nothing else to compare, the builder picks on price, even though the real risk on a defect job sits in the diagnosis, not the materials used to fix it.
Most waterproofers quoting remedial work write the quote the way they always have: a scope of the wet area or balcony, a membrane brand, a price. On a new build that quote competes against other new build quotes on roughly even terms. On a remedial job it sits next to a builder who has already had one waterproofing job fail, who does not trust the next quote any more than the last, and who has no way to tell a careful diagnosis from a guess dressed up the same way.
What's the real reason a waterproofer misses repeat defect and warranty work?
The real reason is rarely price. It is speed and follow up. A builder or tiler dealing with an active leak into a bathroom below, or water tracking through a balcony door, wants the phone answered, a visit booked fast and a clear quote in hand without having to chase for it.
Picture a tiler who has just pulled up tiles on a leaking shower and found the membrane has failed at the hob. He calls three waterproofers. One does not pick up. One promises to call back and does not. The third visits that afternoon, explains exactly where the membrane failed and why, and has a quote in his inbox by the next morning. Price barely comes into it. The tiler now has someone he trusts for every leak that comes across his jobs, not just this one.
How do you become the builder's or tiler's backup when someone else's job fails?
You become the backup by being the waterproofer who is visibly ready to step in the moment something else has not held up, not the one who has to be found. Remedial and rectification work exists because another trade, sometimes another waterproofer, let the builder down. Being the name that comes to mind when that happens is how this stream of defect and warranty work keeps arriving.
That means answering enquiries fast, being easy to find when a builder is standing on a wet balcony wondering who to call, and following up on quotes without waiting to be chased. A builder who has already been let down once is testing for reliability as much as for price. Impress them there, and the price conversation mostly disappears.
How do you prove your diagnosis before you ever touch the membrane?
You prove it by talking the builder or tiler through what you find, out loud, as you find it. On a remedial job the builder never sees the leak detection, the flood test interpretation, the reason a membrane failed at a hob or an upstand. If you fix it silently, all they see is a bill.
Walking through the inspection as it happens, showing where the water is tracking, why the cure time on the original job was probably too short or the detailing around a drain was wrong, is what proves the expertise behind the fix. It is also what lets a waterproofer present a proper good, better, best set of options, a patch, a partial rectification or a full re-membrane with a new certificate, rather than a single price the builder either accepts or shops elsewhere.
What number in your own job data actually shows how you're winning this work?
The number that tells the truth is how fast an enquiry turns into a visit and a quote, and what proportion of your remedial quotes actually convert, compared with your new build quotes. You might carry a feeling about this, pretty quick, we win most of them, but that feeling is usually out of date and shaped by whichever job is freshest in your memory.
A data first look at your own job records usually shows something sharper: which builders send you remedial work and which have stopped, how long your quotes sit unanswered, and whether the margin on certificate backed remedial work is actually being protected or quietly discounted to win the job. That last one matters, because remedial work carries real risk and real expertise, and the gross profit margin on it deserves to be checked and defended every time you send a quote, not averaged away at the end of the month.
Can systems or AI agents help you respond to leak calls faster?
They can, and this is where some owners choose to stop renting the same booking and quoting tools every other waterproofer uses and build something shaped around their own jobs instead, with AI agents doing some of the office work. An AI agent is software that does a piece of work the way you would do it yourself, with your prices, your wording and your rules, so a remedial enquiry gets a fast acknowledgement and a scoped quote without you drafting it from a ute at six in the evening.
Some off-the-shelf job management tools suit a waterproofer well enough, and the data from your own business is what shows which ones earn their place and which just add another login. Whether you're still quoting every remedial job yourself or you've reached the stage where someone else handles the first visit, what AI agents change is the office work around the job, the chasing, the quote drafting, the certificate paperwork, so the people in the business spend their time on the diagnosis, the customer and the crew instead of the admin behind it.
How does Data First Coaching approach this?
Data First Coaching starts from the waterproofer's own job records through the Trade Business Intelligence, not from a guess about what is wrong. For remedial and leak work that usually means looking at response times, quote conversion by builder and margin on certificate backed work side by side, because the real problem is often not the price being quoted, it is where in the process trust is being lost. Greg Allan built his own trade business before coaching others, and puts it simply: “If you can build trust, if you can build reliability, if you can impress someone, they're not gonna look at price.” The how, the systems that make that happen, is worked through inside the Academy, with members, because the Trade Business Intelligence is powered by every member who is open minded, innovative and willing to share.
