By Greg Allan, tradesman and creator of Data First Coaching
Why do the same leaks keep coming back on different jobs?
Because the membrane, cure time and flood test steps were never locked down the same way twice, not because the crew is careless. A waterproofer can run a tight job personally and still find that the same type of callback, a shower hob, a balcony upstand, a basement joint, keeps turning up once someone else is doing the install.
That pattern is not bad luck. It is a sign that the sequence lives in the owner's head rather than in the business. Every job that skips a step the owner would never skip is a defect waiting to surface, sometimes straight after handover and sometimes well after the builder has moved on to the next stage.
Is it really a staff problem when a new installer does the job differently?
No. A new installer or apprentice brings habits from their last boss or their last trade, and without a deliberate system they will apply membrane, cure time and flood test the way they were taught there, not the way this business needs it done. That shows up in the certificate and the warranty, not just in the workmanship.
Picture a waterproofer who takes on a second installer to keep up with a builder sending steady work on new townhouse wet areas. The installer has done wet areas before, so the owner assumes the standard carries across. Six jobs in, a bathroom comes back with water tracking under the tiles, and the flood test record for that job cannot be found. The installer was not being lazy. He was doing it the way he always had, because nobody had ever told him it had to be different here.
What number in a waterproofing business actually shows where the problem starts?
The number that tells the truth is the pattern across defect and remedial callbacks against the jobs, crew members and job types they come from, read alongside gross profit margin on those same jobs. Memory tells a waterproofer it was "one bad job." The data, read properly, usually shows a step, a job type or a crew member that recurs.
Gross profit margin matters here too, because remedial and insurance work eats margin quietly. A flood test that was skipped does not cost anything on the day. It costs a return visit, a materials bill, and sometimes an insurance claim once the tiles are up and the leak has tracked somewhere nobody expected. Checking margin at the point of quoting, not once a month in the books, is what catches that before it becomes a pattern.
How do you build the system before you hand a wet area job to someone else?
You build it on yourself first, while the business is still small enough that you are the one doing the inspection, the membrane, the cure time and the flood test. That is when the missing steps are cheapest to find, because they only cost you a conversation with yourself, not a warranty claim six jobs later.
Documenting your own sequence for wet areas, balconies, bathrooms and basements, including the sign off before a tiler goes over the top, means a new installer is handed something concrete instead of an assumption. The certificate and the warranty depend on that sequence holding the same way every time, for every job, whoever is doing it.
How should a waterproofing quote protect the margin when materials and labour costs move?
By pricing the job as separate components, membrane, flashing, flood testing and certification, rather than one lump figure. When a quote is one number, a rise in membrane cost or labour cost eats straight into margin and nobody notices until the job is done.
Itemised pricing lets a waterproofer see exactly where the margin sits on each part of the job, and adjust before the quote goes out rather than after it is accepted. It also makes variations on remedial and insurance work easier to justify to a builder, because the certificate and flood test are visibly priced, not buried.
What changes when AI agents take on the proof point work?
An AI agent is software that does a job the way you would, with your wording, your sequence and your rules, and for a waterproofer that means it can hold the inspection, cure time and flood test steps for every job and will not let the job move to the next stage until they are recorded. Two agents working this way, one on job progression and one on quoting, take that non-billable checking off your plate without lowering the standard.
This is what a data first approach to a waterproofing business looks like in practice. Instead of trusting memory or a verbal handover to keep the certificate and the warranty safe, the proof points sit in the system itself, checked the same way on every job, whether it is the owner, an apprentice or a subbie holding the trowel.
How does Data First Coaching approach this?
Data First Coaching looks at the owner's own job and finance data first, through the Trade Business Intelligence, to see where defect and remedial callbacks for this waterproofing business actually start, rather than starting with an explanation of the business. Greg Allan built his coaching on running his own trade business, and he puts it plainly: “It's not my people, it's my systems.” For a waterproofer that usually means finding the exact point in the inspection, flood test or certificate sequence that was never locked down the same way for everyone. The how, building that system and the agents that hold it, is worked through inside the Academy, with members, because the Trade Business Intelligence is powered by every member who joins open minded and willing to share.
