Senior Retained Cost, Data
and Technology Teams

Every engagement is a dedicated workstream mapped to an operational challenge, with a scoped outcome, that we deliver against every month.

You define the scope, we deliver the solution.

The challenges below are the ones we see most consistently across general contractors and subcontractors. They're a starting point, not a ceiling. If your problem isn't listed, don't worry, we have the engineering chops to find a solution. Click a challenge in the navigation to see what we deliver.

Labor Shortages & Productivity

Labor Shortages, Skill Gaps & Low Productivity

Thin crews and hard-to-find talent push administrative work onto your most valuable people. Estimators spend hours on cleanup instead of bidding. Superintendents carry paperwork instead of running the job. Foremen fill out forms instead of directing work.

We build the tools, workflows, and automations that multiply what your existing team can do, without adding headcount.

Types of Solutions Provided
Common Workstreams Under This Service
  • Automated Document & Data Cleanup for Estimating
  • Field-to-Office Automation for Superintendents & Project Admins
  • Foreman Workflow Simplification & Guided Execution
  • Knowledge Capture & On-Demand Skill Augmentation

Fragmented Data, Siloed Systems & Poor Interoperability

Your project data exists. It's in your ERP, your PM platform, your BIM model, your field photos, and your accounting system. The problem is none of them talk to each other. Reconciliation happens in spreadsheets. Reporting takes days. Decisions get made on yesterday's numbers.

We build the data path, connect the systems, and create the structure that makes everything downstream — reporting, analytics, and AI — actually work.

Fragmented Data & Systems
Types of Solutions Provided
Common Workstreams Under This Service
  • Field & Document Data Ingestion Pipeline
  • Unified Project Data Model & Master Data Governance
  • Core System Integration Layer (ERP ↔ PM ↔ Accounting)
  • Real-Time Reporting & Analytics Foundation
Cost Overruns & Thin Margins

Cost Overruns, Schedule Delays & Thin Margins

The gap between what you bid and what you keep rarely comes from one catastrophic failure. It comes from small leaks, a cost model built on memory instead of history, a change order process that runs two weeks behind, a forecast that doesn't reflect what the field is actually telling you.

We close those leaks with systems that connect field actuals to office forecasts and give you real numbers before the job goes sideways.

Types of Solutions Provided
Common Workstreams Under This Service
  • Field actuals to office forecast loop (progress, production, committed cost)
  • Change order and RFI workflow with cost and schedule impact attached
  • Predictive variance and risk flag on cost or schedule
  • Bid and contingency model built from the firm's own project history

Cash Flow & Payment Friction

Late pay-apps, missing documentation, and payment holds are a tax on every job. For subcontractors especially, the gap between work completed and payment received is a cash-flow problem that compounds every month it isn't fixed.

We build the workflows that get clean submittals out faster, documentation in order before it's asked for, and payment moving sooner.

Cash Flow & Payment Friction
Types of Solutions Provided
Common Workstreams Under This Service
  • Pay-app draft tied to verified progress (quantities, photos, schedule percent complete)
  • Digital lien-waiver, invoice, and approval path
  • Cash-forecast early warning (retainage, aging, holds)
Safety, Compliance & Quality

Safety, Compliance, Quality & Multi-Party Coordination

Punch lists that never close. Certifications that go missing mid-project. Quality records that exist on paper and nowhere else. When something goes wrong, the documentation isn't there. When an audit happens, someone spends a week pulling folders.

We build the systems that make compliance auditable, quality trackable, and coordination visible across every tier of the project.

Types of Solutions Provided
Common Workstreams Under This Service
  • Mobile checklist and incident capture that writes to a durable record
  • Training, permit, and certification status across tiers of subcontractors
  • BIM-based quality or clash check that feeds a field punch list
  • Auditable compliance pack for a specific standard the client already fails or fears

Slow Adoption, Underused Tools & Change Resistance

You're paying for software your team isn't using. Procore licenses that never left the office. A BIM model that the field ignores. An accounting integration that someone turned off because it was easier to re-enter manually. The tools aren't always the problem, the workflow around them is.

We find out what broke, fix the workflow, instrument the adoption, and retire the shadow spreadsheets that replaced the tool nobody used.

Slow Adoption & Change Resistance
Types of Solutions Provided
Common Workstreams Under This Service
  • Adoption and ROI instrumentation on software already in the stack
  • Field-first redesign of one painful workflow
  • Kill, keep, or integrate decision on a bloated tool stack
  • Internal platform slice that replaces a shadow spreadsheet
Your Operation Has a Problem Unique to It

You Have a Problem Unique to Your Operation

Not every problem fits a category. Construction operations are complex enough that the real issue is sometimes a combination of challenges, or something that doesn't have a name yet but is clearly costing you time or money every month.

If you read through the challenges above and didn't see yourself, or if you saw yourself in all of them and don't know where to start, that's exactly the conversation we're built for.

Tell us what's broken. We'll tell you what we can move on and how.

Not a consultant.
Not a vendor.
An embedded engineering team
with well defined deliverables.

Every Engagement ships five things: an Engagement Charter that defines the outcome, a baseline that puts a number on the current-state problem, a working artifact that lives in your operation, an operating cadence with weekly sessions and monthly reviews, and a runbook that makes sure your team can actually use what we built.

We staff each Engagement internally across cost, data, software, and AI engineering. A single Red Grey Principal Advisor decides internally which team or engineering resources are required, manages them and functions as your primary contact. You don't have to manage the team. Your role is to approve the outcomes and the success metrics.

Engagement Charter
The outcome, the systems in scope, the success metric, and the first 30-day milestone.
Baseline & Value Case
A number on the current-state problem — hours per week on admin, days of payment lag, forecast error, unused license spend.
Working Artifact
A pipeline, integration, dashboard, workflow, automation, software tool, or technology solution that exists in your operation — not a slide deck.
Operating Cadence
Weekly working session and monthly outcome review against the baseline.
Runbook & Adoption Pack
How your team runs it, who owns data quality, and how you know it is being used.

Month one is always Discovery.

Before any retainer begins, we run a 30-day Discovery Engagement. It produces a written findings report that documents the current state, identifies the gaps, and becomes the foundation of your SOW. Discovery is priced as month one of whichever package you choose, there is no separate onboarding fee.

Discovery Engagement

Cost Engineering & Margin Management

30-day assessment of core areas you may be losing margin like estimating & baseline scope accuracy, labor & productivity variance, procurement & material cost overruns, or change order & scope creep management. Delivers a written findings report with identified margin gaps and a prioritized recovery roadmap.

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Discovery Engagement

Data Engineering & AI Prep

30-day inventory and audit of your project, operations and financial data environment. Delivers a written findings report mapping how your data is managed, secured, and used, identifying gaps and quality issues, and outlining the pipeline architecture needed to support modern reporting and AI.

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Discovery Engagement

Systems Integration

30-day assessment of your current platform technology stack and how the information and work flows between non-integrated systems. Delivers a written findings report identifying integration gaps, manual re-entry points, and a prioritized connection roadmap.

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Discovery Engagement

Modernization & Platform Development

30-day assessment of your technology stack against modern construction industry best practices. Delivers a written findings report with a gap analysis, platform recommendations, and a phased modernization roadmap.

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Discovery Engagement

Software Engineering & Custom Development

30-day assessment of your current workflows and tooling to identify where purpose-built software would eliminate friction, reduce manual work, reduce cost, or close a capability gap. Delivers a written findings report with scoped development recommendations.

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Discovery Engagement

AI Development & Deployment

30-day assessment of your data readiness, infrastructure, and workflow candidates for AI deployment. Delivers a written findings report identifying where AI can move the needle, what infrastructure is required, and a sequenced deployment plan.

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Start with your key challenge. Scale as your operation requires.

Engagements are priced as a monthly retainer. Term is determined by scope and typically starts at six months. Multi-engagement packages include built-in pricing discounts, the more concurrent workstreams you run, the more efficiently shared capability gets built and reused across them.

Single Engagement

Single

One dedicated workstream.

Best for organizations addressing one known gap, or validating a modernization strategy before expanding. Weekly business value delivery and monthly progress reporting.

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Standard Engagement

Standard

Up to three concurrent workstreams.

Best for several related processes or systems that may not be fully integrated. Shared capability gets built once and reused across all scoped workstreams. Built in multi-stream discounts.

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Full Engagement

Full

Up to five concurrent workstreams.

Best for whole organization or simultaneous multi-system changes, custom software builds, or leaving expensive per user license agreements. Best pricing per Engagement.

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Pricing is discussed on the scoping call. Every engagement is scoped to the outcome, and the fee reflects the workstream or workstreams, not a time block. Our fee structure was built for our construction clients. It's the most straight forward, common sense pricing in the industry.
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Not sure which challenge to start with?

Most clients start with the challenges that are costing them the most right now. We can help you figure out what makes the most sense.