The joinery firm that finally knew what a job was worth
Family-run joinery business, 14 staff · Growth Partnership
Where it started
Three generations in, and the firm was still pricing jobs the way the founder's dad did in the 1980s: a bit of guesswork, a look at what the last similar job cost, and a gut check. Work was steady, but margins were thin, and nobody could say with any confidence why one job made money and the next one didn't.
What we did
We spent the first month getting the real numbers: material costs, labour hours, overheads, all of it, job by job. Turned out three of their five most common jobs were running at a loss. We rebuilt the pricing model from the ground up and gave the estimating team a simple system they could actually use, no spreadsheet PhD required.