Commercial & Domestic Contractor:
Margin by design.

─── THE SITUATION

Strong revenue. No clear picture of what it was actually worth.

A commercial and domestic contractor was generating strong top-line revenue across a mixed portfolio of jobs. The business was busy. The owner was busier. And despite the volume of work coming through the door, the financial picture underneath it remained stubbornly unclear.

EBITDA was not being tracked with any precision. Job profitability varied widely and no one had the visibility to understand why. Pricing was based on instinct and precedent rather than a structured commercial model. Escalation decisions came to the owner by default, regardless of whether they needed to.

The business had the scale of a properly structured operation but none of the architecture to run like one.

─── WHAT WE DID

Built the commercial architecture the business was missing.

The engagement focused on three areas simultaneously: EBITDA clarity, pricing discipline and escalation design.

On the financial side, we worked to establish clean visibility across job profitability, overhead allocation and real margin per contract type. The owner needed to understand which parts of the business were making money and which were consuming it.

On pricing, we built a structured commercial model that replaced instinct with logic. Rates, margins and job acceptance thresholds were defined. The business gained the ability to price with confidence rather than hope.

On escalation, we redesigned the decision architecture so that not everything defaulted to the owner. Clear thresholds were set. The team was given the authority and the framework to handle decisions at the appropriate level.

─── WHAT WE CHANGED

A clearer business, better margins and an owner no longer at the centre of every decision.

The engagement produced a commercially sharper operation with real visibility into where profit was being made and a structure that did not require the owner to be involved in everything.