Trustworthy data first, then decisions

One Forward Deployed Engineer runs the same three stages in every firm. Capture makes the data trustworthy. Control makes it legible. Intelligence makes it answer questions — with a person approving every action.

Talk to us Why an FDE, not a tool

What the FDE does

Three stages, in order, then a person in the loop

Each stage stands on the one before it. There is no useful intelligence on data you cannot trust yet.

01 · Capture

Inventory every system you run, connect them, and reconcile on a schedule. The first visible output is small and honest: a daily list of the jobs where two systems disagree, and why.

✓Inventory the systems — project management, ERP/accounting, payroll, field apps, and the spreadsheets on someone's desktop.
✓Stand up connections — through their APIs where they exist, through an integration layer where that is cleaner than building a connector ourselves.
✓Reconcile nightly — committed cost, invoiced-to-date and approved change orders matched across Procore and Sage into one table.
✓Surface the disagreements — the specific jobs where the systems do not line up, named, with both values.
✓Fix the data-entry gaps behind the disagreements, with your PMs and accounting team. The list gets shorter.

02 · Control

With the data trusted, the operational and financial picture — measured the same way on every job, updated daily instead of at month-end.

✓Job costing and margin by job, phase and cost code — one method every job.
✓Labor productivity against budgeted hours; where the field is losing time and on which activities.
✓Subcontractor performance — on-time, rework, change-order volume, default-risk signals.
✓Change-order and RFI cycle time — how long paper sits, and where.
✓Cash — WIP, over/under billing, retainage held and owed, and a forward view.

03 · Intelligence

Ask in plain language and get answers computed against your data, with the underlying records attached.

✓Plain-English questions answered against your data — “which jobs are fading margin faster than last month, and why?”
✓Margin-leak alerts — jobs fading faster than trend, unbilled work aging, productivity dropping on a crew or activity.
✓Cost-to-complete and cash forecasts that update as the source data changes.
✓Suggested next steps a named person reviews and approves before anything happens.

Advisory, not autonomous

The AI drafts. It does not act. Every figure a client sees can be followed back to the record it came from.

✓A model never originates a number. Displayed figures are computed from your records, with the line items attached.
✓Nothing is sent, moved or changed — no email, no ERP update, no subcontractor notification — without a named person approving it.
✓Where an LLM drafts a summary, it runs only against your scoped data, and its output is reviewed before anyone acts.

Yours to keep

The engagement is one person, priced against a hire — not a license to a product you rent.

✓The connections, data models, documentation and code the FDE builds live in your systems and stay yours.
✓If the engagement ends you keep all of it, with a written handover.
✓One monthly fee, reporting into your CFO or controller with a standing weekly review. See how the engagement works.

Why one Forward Deployed Engineer

A person who has done construction operations, not just software

One named person

Not a team, not a rotating bench, not a ticket queue. One engineer embedded in your firm, accountable to your finance lead.

Construction-native

Retention, cost types, change orders and WIP are the starting vocabulary. Nobody has to explain what a cost code is.

Honest about disagreements

When two systems disagree we surface it and name both values. Silent failure is how people stop trusting a number.

The harvest loop

Anything built for a third client that would help every client becomes core — so each engagement starts further along than the last.

How does an FDE compare to a tool, or to hiring your own?

An honest side-by-side — including where an embedded engineer is not the right call.

See the comparison

Sits on top of the systems you already run

ProcoreSage 300 CRE FoundationViewpoint Vista CMiCQuickBooks Autodesk / PlanGridExcel / Google Sheets

Client feedback

We don't have testimonials yet.

We do not publish a quote until a named person has approved the wording. When a contractor goes on record, their words will be here.

Notes

Planned — nothing published yet

Planned

What breaks when you sync Vista and Procore

The real failure modes — cost-code drift, vendor duplicates, retainage mismatches — and how the FDE reconciles each one.

See the outline

Planned

Why your job-cost report is three weeks stale

It is rarely accounting. It is the handoff before them.

All planned notes

Planned

Margin fade: catching it while you can still act

Spotting the jobs fading faster than trend, and tracing the reason to line items.

All planned notes

Bring us your worst month-end.

Tell us the systems you run and where the close hurts most, and we will tell you honestly whether an embedded FDE is the right fix — or not. No deck.

Talk to us Why an FDE