When Estimating Wins a Project, the Field CAN’T Build
The Challenge
You just got the call. Your team won the bid. Everyone's celebrating in the office, high-fiving, talking about the big win. But three months into the job, your superintendent is calling you stressed out because the numbers don't match reality. The scope that looked perfect on paper is falling apart in the field. Your crew is working overtime trying to figure out what the estimator actually meant. And now you're staring down a project that's bleeding money instead of making it.
This disconnect between what gets sold and what actually gets built is tearing construction companies apart from the inside. Your estimating team lives in spreadsheets and historical data. Your field team lives with weather delays, actual site conditions, and the mess that happens when plans meet dirt. And nobody is speaking the same language. The estimator thinks they nailed it. The project manager thinks the estimate was garbage. The superintendent feels set up to fail. And you're stuck in the middle, watching your profit margin disappear while everyone points fingers at each other.
The Impact
According to the Construction Financial Management Association, the average construction company operates on profit margins between 1.4% to 3.5%. That means there's almost no room for error. When estimating and field operations aren't aligned, those thin margins evaporate fast. A McKinsey study found that poor communication and coordination issues cost the construction industry billions annually in productivity losses. That's not just big company problems. That's your problem.
Here's what this disconnect is really costing you. Your field teams are spending hours figuring out what should have been clear from day one. That means lower productivity, which the Construction Industry Institute reports can drop by 30% or more when there's confusion about scope and execution. Your superintendents are making decisions without the context they need, leading to rework that typically adds 10% to 15% to project costs, according to research from the Business Roundtable. Your project managers are firefighting instead of managing, trying to bridge a gap that should never have existed in the first place.
But the real damage goes deeper than the money. Your best people are getting burned out. They're tired of being set up to fail. Tired of projects that were won on numbers that don't reflect reality. Tired of working twice as hard to make up for problems that started before the first shovel hit the ground. The Construction Industry Institute found that 52% of construction professionals report high stress levels, and a huge part of that comes from this exact issue. You're losing good superintendents and project managers because they're exhausted from constantly cleaning up messes that shouldn't exist. And in today's market, where skilled labor is already scarce, you can't afford to keep burning through your best people.
Your company culture is taking a hit, too. When estimating work that the field can't execute profitably, trust breaks down. The field stops believing the numbers. Estimating stops listening to field feedback. And everyone operates in their own silo, protecting themselves instead of working together. That's not a team. That's a company eating itself from the inside out.
The Shift
The whole point comes down to one thing. You need synergy from estimating to the field. Real synergy where information flows, assumptions are understood, and everyone is working from the same playbook.
It starts with your estimators creating a structured handoff process to bring field staff up to speed on the bid. Not just tossing over a number and saying good luck. A real handoff that covers the assumptions they made, the scope they included, the productivity rates they used, what's in the bid and what's not, and all the thinking that went into putting those numbers together. This is the most critical process every construction company MUST absolutely nail. Without it, you're just hoping things work out instead of setting your team up to win.
From there, you need clear accountability where everyone knows who owns what outcomes. You need structured meetings that move projects forward with real-time cost tracking, especially if you're labor-intensive. And you need financial transparency so your people are making informed decisions based on actual data instead of guessing their way through the job.
You need real schedules built, purchase orders and contracts locked in fast, and all of this has to happen when the project is most chaotic in the beginning, during that transition phase full of unknowns, BUT when everyone's energy is at its highest. The team is most ambitious during the start, so MAXIMIZE this powerful timeframe. You MUST build momentum in those first few weeks because trying to get that momentum back after months of confusion and frustration is extremely difficult!!
When you get this synergy right, everything changes. Your team stops working against each other and starts working together. Projects run smoothly. Margins get protected. And your best people stick around because they're finally set up for success.
The Closing
This problem doesn't fix itself. Every day you let this disconnect continue is another day you're leaving money on the table and burning out your best people. But here's the good news. This is completely fixable. You don't need a complete overhaul. You need a system. You need accountability. And you need someone who's been in your shoes and knows how to bridge this gap.
Look, I don't usually pitch services in the main body of my newsletter, BUT I'm genuinely excited about something I've been working on. I created a program specifically for this problem because I've lived it, I've seen it destroy good companies, and I know how to fix it. We take your estimate to the field together. I train your people based on 22 years of managing hundreds of millions in projects, estimating over $12 billion through the years, and helping contractors around the country build a proven system for starting projects the right way. Everyone learns their roles, accountability gets crystal clear, and your team actually plans properly to preserve those razor-thin margins this industry demands. You’ll get frameworks that you can utilize on each project.
The contractors who are thriving right now aren't the ones with the lowest bids. They're the ones with the tightest operations. The ones where estimating and field operations are aligned. The ones where everyone knows the plan, everyone knows their role, and everyone is working toward the same goal. That's what separates companies that are grinding it out from companies that are actually growing and making money.
You've built something worth protecting. Don't let this disconnect tear it down.
Gerard Aliberti
Pro-Accel,
Owner
- If you're ready to create real alignment between your estimating and field teams, reach out to me at jerry@pro-accel.com
- If you missed my Webinar with Patrick Shurney on Nov 13th and would like to purchase the replay for $79, click here https://3pcllc.com/replay-from-builder-to-ceo
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