vertical-construction

# Vertical: construction — don't spec it naive Construction has its own money physics. A spec that treats a contractor's billing like a SaaS invoice will ship something no contractor can use, because the cash flow it ignores (retainage held back, draws against a schedule of values, subs gated on lien waivers) is *the* thing the contractor is trying to manage. This skill gives architect and pm the vocabulary and the non-obvious rules so the four construction products are specced from domain reality, not intuition. The four products and their incumbents: | Product | Archetype | Wedge against | |---|---|---| | bid-builder | marketplace-lite | Excel (small contractors estimate in spreadsheets) | | project-mgmt | crud | Buildertrend, Contractor Foreman | | subcontractor-portal | marketplace-lite | Procore, manual COI/payment tracking | | field-docs | crud | Procore field tools, paper daily reports | Incumbents: **Procore** (enterprise, ~$375+/mo minimum — too expensive and heavy for small contractors; do not fight it head-on), **Buildertrend** (residential-focused), **Contractor Foreman**, **Autodesk Construction Cloud** (enterprise). The opening is small contractors priced and complexity'd out of these. ## Domain vocabulary (use these terms exactly in specs) - **Estimate** — internal cost calculation (what the job will cost the contractor). **Bid** — the priced number submitted to win the job (estimate + markup). **Proposal** — the customer-facing document wrapping the ...