Pricing, programme, people, problems — nothing moves without you. You're the bottleneck in your own business, and holidays feel like a risk.
Jobs feel busy and profitable — until the accounts land. Without a live commercial spine, you learn in month twelve what you needed to know in week three.
A buyer doesn't buy turnover — they buy a machine that runs without the founder. If you left tomorrow, what exactly would they be buying?
There are two ways to make more profit: win more work, or make more on the work you already have. Winning more work means more sites, more staff, more cash tied up, more risk. Making more on each job goes straight into your pocket — lifting your margin by two points is worth the same as winning half your turnover again.
Nearly every euro that comes in goes straight back out — wages, subbies, materials, overhead.
What's actually left at the end of the year — even for a well-run contractor:
€320,000 — a 4% margin. That thin dark sliver is the profit.
Now plug the leaks — the mispriced jobs, the variations never charged, the prelims that quietly drift — and lift that margin by two points:
€480,000 — a 6% margin. Same jobs, same crew, same turnover.
And to make that €160,000 by growing instead? At a 4% margin you'd need to win another €4M of work a year — half again the business already on your books, with all the staff, sites and risk that comes with it. In a trade where 3–4% is a good year, two extra points is the difference between surviving and building something worth selling. That idea is what the whole Savvy programme is built on — and it's what a buyer pays for on the day you sell: what you keep, not what you turn over.
One operating system, five components — developed inside a live, high-end contractor, then handed over to you and made to stick. Machinery, not a slide deck.
The written way your business works — from enquiry to handover — so quality stops depending on who happens to be on site.
→ 02Enquiries, quotes and clients in one system — visible, forecastable, and no longer living in your head.
→ 03One source of truth for cost, value and margin on every live project, every week. See the leak in week three — not in the year-end accounts.
→ 04Project and company cashflow forecasting that shows you the squeeze months before it arrives.
→ 05Start at the exit — the margin, systems and team a buyer pays for — and work back year by year to what has to change next Monday.
→A struggling project assessed in 48 hours and put back on track. Often the first engagement — and the proof the method works.
The operating system goes in — SOPs, commercial control, cashflow — so the next project cannot drift the same way.
With margin under control and the machine running, the choice opens up: grow on margin, step back, or build to a sale at a proper multiple.
The entry point. A struggling project assessed in 48 hours and reset in 30 days — recovery plan, owners, deadlines and daily follow-up until momentum holds.
→ 02The operating system installed over two to five years — SOPs, commercial control, cashflow, the work-back plan — until the business runs, and sells, without you.
→ 03Part-time, senior, inside your leadership team. Tier-one discipline applied to how your business actually operates — people, process and performance aligned so you can scale without chaos.
→ 04Turning your best tradesmen into site managers — simple, practical tools to run projects, so delivery stops depending on you being on every site.
→A 30-minute discovery call. No pitch deck — bring your numbers and your biggest headache, and leave knowing whether the programme fits.
Book a discovery call — pick a time that suitsOr reach Joe directly: WhatsApp · joesavage@savvyprojects.ie · +353 83 398 9980 · LinkedIn