The Week Audit: Alder Ridge Construction
Prepared by Gabriel Grosan · GMG Click · September 2026
Audit fee: fixed price, credited toward Phase 1 if you go ahead.
1. Summary
Where you stand. You run a healthy business on 54-hour weeks: 32 hours on site and 22 in the truck and at the kitchen table. The work on site is what customers pay for. The other 22 hours are where your week goes, and about 9 of them are the same task repeated: estimates written from scratch, quotes nobody chased, messages answered at 7 pm, the same client update typed for the fourth time. Those are the hours AI can take.
The three biggest opportunities:
- Estimates. Six hours a week, every one written from a blank page. AI drafts them in your format from your own past estimates; you check the numbers and send. Six hours becomes two.
- Quotes with no answer. Of your last 20 quotes, 9 got no reply and 7 were never followed up. A follow-up list that writes itself every Monday recovers some of those jobs.
- Inquiries that arrive while you’re on a roof. The first contractor to answer usually gets the visit. An automatic reply within a minute keeps you first, without you touching the phone.
What I recommend first: the estimates. It is the biggest block of hours, it runs on a subscription you may already pay for, and you see the result the first evening.
2. Where your week goes
Three sources: your call with me, one ordinary week where you noted what you did between jobs, and a look at your estimate folder, your sent quotes and your phone log. Here is the 22 hours.
| Where the office hours go | Hours a week | What changes |
|---|---|---|
| Writing estimates from scratch, in the evening | 6 | AI drafts, you check: 2 |
| Calls, texts and inquiries, half of them answered after 6 pm | 5 | First reply automatic: 3 |
| Scheduling subs and ordering materials | 4 | Stays with you: 4 |
| Client updates and photos | 3 | AI drafts from your notes: 1 |
| Change orders and paperwork | 2 | Phase 3, later: 1 |
| Chasing quotes that got no answer | 1, plus the ones nobody chases | The list builds itself, you send: 1 |
| Invoicing | 1 | Out of scope: 1 |
| Total | 22 | 13 |
Nine hours a week back once all three phases run. Over a year of 48 working weeks that is more than 400 hours, which is ten working weeks on site or at home.
Scheduling stays with you on purpose. Who shows up when is a judgment call and a phone relationship with your subs. AI cannot do that well yet, and I would rather tell you that than sell you a tool for it.
3. What I checked, and what I didn’t
| Area | What I looked at |
|---|---|
| Your estimates | The last 20: how each was written, what repeats, how long from site visit to sent |
| Your sent quotes | Which got a reply, which got a follow-up, which quietly died |
| How customers reach you | Website form, Google Business Profile messages, texts, calls, and when you answered |
| Client communication | Daily updates on three current jobs, and how long each took to write |
| Change orders | How the last six were agreed and whether they were written down |
| The tools you already pay for | Your phone, Gmail, Google Sheets, QuickBooks, and a ChatGPT subscription used twice |
Not in scope: invoicing and bookkeeping, permits and inspections, job costing, and scheduling software. Each is its own subject, none of them is where your week goes, and I do not touch money systems in a first engagement.
4. Findings
Fix soon: costing money or time today · Plan for it: will bite as you grow · Worth knowing.
1. Every estimate starts from a blank page.
- What I found:
- about three estimates a week at two hours each, written in Word from memory, evenings. Roughly half of them turn into jobs.
- Why it matters:
- 80 percent of each estimate repeats the last one: your clauses, your line items, your prices. That is 300 hours a year retyping what you already wrote, and a slow reply loses jobs to whoever answered first.
- What I recommend:
- a private workspace in the Claude app, called a Project, holding your last 20 estimates, your price list and your standard clauses. You describe the job in a few lines from the truck. It drafts the estimate in your format. You check every number and send it.
- How it runs:
- on demand, when you sit down. On your own subscription. Nothing runs without you.
2. Nine of your last 20 quotes got no reply, and seven of those were never followed up.
- What I found:
- a quote goes out, the customer goes quiet, and the job is forgotten unless they call.
- Why it matters:
- a follow-up a week later gets a share of these back. One recovered kitchen is worth more than a year of the tool that finds it.
- What I recommend:
- every Monday at 7 am, a list of every quote older than seven days with no reply, each with a short follow-up text drafted in your words. You read them over coffee and send the ones you want.
- How it runs:
- by itself, once a week. You decide what goes out. It never sends anything on its own.
3. Inquiries land while you are on site and wait until evening.
- What I found:
- messages from the website form and Google arrive between 9 and 4. You answer them after 6 pm. Two of the last ten never heard back at all.
- Why it matters:
- homeowners message three contractors. The one who replies first usually gets the site visit.
- What I recommend:
- an automatic reply within a minute: it says when you will call back, asks the three questions you always ask (the address, the work, the timeline), and copies the inquiry into your job sheet so nothing is lost. It never quotes a price and never promises a date.
- How it runs:
- by itself, around the clock. You write what it is allowed to say.
4. Change orders are agreed by text and rarely written up.
- What I found:
- of the last six changes agreed with clients, two were on paper.
- Why it matters:
- work you did and did not bill, and the one dispute a year that costs more than all the paperwork you skipped.
- What I recommend:
- paste the text thread, get a written change order in your format for the client to approve before the work starts.
- How it runs:
- on demand. Phase 3, because it needs your clause wording settled in Phase 1 first.
5. Client updates take three hours a week.
- What I found:
- a paragraph and photos per job per day, typed on the phone at night.
- Why it matters:
- clients who hear from you daily do not call you at 8 pm, and they refer you.
- What I recommend:
- a few bullet notes and today’s photos become a short update in your voice, in the same Project as the estimates. You read it and send.
- How it runs:
- on demand. Three hours becomes one.
5. Quick wins this week, free
- Put your last 20 estimates in one folder. That is the training material for Phase 1, and it costs nothing.
- Save a text template on your phone: “Got your message. I’m on a job site until 5 and will call you tonight. Where is the property, and what are you thinking of?” Send it by hand until the automatic version exists.
- Turn on voicemail transcription on your phone, so you can read missed calls between cuts instead of listening to them in the truck.
- Every Monday, open your sent quotes older than a week and text each one. Fifteen minutes. Do it by hand until the list builds itself.
- You already pay for ChatGPT. Start one project in it with your price list inside, and ask it for a rough estimate on your next job. It will not be right yet, but you will see the shape of Phase 1 before spending anything.
6. The plan
Phase 1: AI Setup, estimates first, then client updates. I set up a Claude Project with your 20 estimates, your price list and your clauses, teach you to run it in one hour, and stay for the first week of real estimates. Then the same for updates. Outcome: estimates from six hours to two, updates from three to one, and every document still in your words.
Your running cost: a Claude subscription on the plan that includes Projects, paid to Anthropic, not to me. The workspace is yours.
Phase 2: Automations, the inquiry reply and the Monday list. Two small automations built in your own accounts, with a spending cap so nothing can run up a bill. Outcome: every inquiry answered within a minute, every silent quote back on your desk once a week, nothing sent that you did not approve.
Your running cost: the automation tool’s small monthly plan plus a few dollars of AI usage, quoted separately and in your name. You decide what runs alone and what waits for your OK.
Phase 3: change orders. After Phase 1 has settled your wording. Same Project, one more document type.
Your report carries the exact fixed price for each phase. The audit fee is credited toward Phase 1.
| Now | After Phases 1 and 2 | After Phase 3 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Office hours a week | 22 | 14 | 13 |
| Estimates | 6 | 2 | 2 |
| Evenings answering messages | most | few | few |
| Quotes that die quietly | 7 of 20 | followed up, every one | followed up, every one |
7. Next step
One 15-minute call to walk through this together. Nothing gets built until you have seen the plan and said yes to it. Everything I set up, the workspace, the accounts, the automations, is in your name. You own it, whether or not you hire me again after.
Gabriel Grosan · GMG Click · gmgclick.com