Most electrical contractors we talk to are not short on work. They are short on estimator hours, office capacity and clean information. Takeoffs pile up before bid day, supplier quotes arrive as PDFs that someone retypes, and change orders get priced on a truck tailgate and documented weeks later. The field crews are skilled. The handoffs between estimating, project management, the shop and accounting are where margin leaks.
InTheory acts as your fractional AI and technology lead. We would start by mapping one expensive recurring workflow, such as bid follow-up or pay app preparation, then decide whether it needs a settings change in Accubid, ServiceTitan or Procore, a small automation, or nothing new at all. A person on your team still approves every price, scope and document that leaves the building.
One or two senior estimators carry the whole bid calendar. They count fixtures and measure conduit runs in Bluebeam, chase supplier pricing from CED or Graybar, and build labor units by hand. When bid day stacks three jobs in one week, the smaller bids get rushed or declined, and nobody tracks which ones were worth chasing.
A foreman agrees to add circuits or relocate a panel because the GC asked on site. The extra work gets done, but the change order paperwork waits until the PM has time. By then the details are fuzzy, the GC disputes the cost, and the job closes with labor the company never billed.
Monthly AIA G702/G703 pay applications, conditional and unconditional lien waivers, certified payroll on public work and retainage tracking all land on a small office team. Each GC wants a different portal or format. Late or rejected pay apps push cash out by a month, which hurts when copper and gear prices swing.
Many shops run residential service, panel upgrades and EV charger installs in ServiceTitan or BuildOps while commercial projects live in Procore, spreadsheets and Foundation or Sage. Dispatchers, PMs and accounting each keep their own version of the truth, so nobody can say which division, customer type or estimator is actually making money.
We fix one at a time, starting with the one that costs you most. Each page shows the steps, the tools, what stays human and what we would measure.
Pull counts from Bluebeam markups, match them to your assembly library and current supplier pricing, and give the estimator a consistent draft takeoff to review. The estimator still sets labor units, exclusions and the final number.
See the workflow →Track every bid and service quote after it goes out, remind the estimator when a GC has gone quiet, and draft polite follow-ups that ask about award timing, scope questions or the competing number.
See the workflow →Match service calls and project crews to the right license level, truck stock and location, so dispatchers stop juggling journeymen, apprentices and inspection windows across a whiteboard and three group texts.
See the workflow →Turn daily reports, RFIs and inspection results into short weekly updates for GCs and owners, so PMs stop rewriting the same status email and nobody is surprised by a missed rough-in inspection.
See the workflow →Read supplier quotes, packing slips, submittal data sheets and GC subcontracts, then pull the line items, dates and terms into your systems so the office stops retyping them from PDFs.
See the workflow →Keep pay apps, lien waivers and retainage releases on a schedule, and send consistent reminders on overdue service invoices, with a person approving anything that goes to a general contractor or owner.
See the workflow →See bid hit rate, backlog, labor hours against estimate, change order recovery and days sales outstanding by division without someone rebuilding a spreadsheet from Accubid, Procore and QuickBooks every Monday.
See the workflow →Screen journeyman and apprentice applicants, verify license and certification details, and walk new hires through safety orientation, tool policies and truck setup without the office manager chasing paperwork for weeks.
See the workflow →How we deliver this: AI automation for small business or fractional CTO leadership, scoped in writing and run over 90 days. See pricing or the sample scope.
We start with what you already pay for. New tools have to earn their place.
Electrical contractors handle customer addresses, building access details, employee license numbers, payroll and, on public work, certified payroll records with wage and fringe data. Bid numbers and supplier pricing are commercially sensitive, and GC subcontracts often limit how project documents are shared. Any AI tool should run under a business account that does not train on your data. Licensing questions belong with the Colorado State Electrical Board and your counsel, and we would treat code compliance as a human decision, never an automated one.
General information, not legal advice.
Defaults are illustrative for electrical contractors (additional jobs won per month). Change them to your numbers.
a month in staff time, before any lost sales
Illustration only, not a forecast or guarantee. Recovered staff time becomes a cash saving only if spending actually declines or the time goes into paid work. Tool costs are an assumption; we replace every number here with yours before recommending a scope.
It can speed up parts of a takeoff, such as counting devices on clean drawings or matching items to your assembly library, but it should not produce a final bid. Drawings are often incomplete, specs conflict and labor units depend on site conditions only your estimator knows. The realistic goal is a faster, more consistent first draft that a senior estimator reviews and adjusts.
You may not. A typical first step is reviewing how your current tools are set up and used. Many contractors use a fraction of what they already pay for, and the fix is configuration, templates or a simple integration. We only recommend a new tool when the existing stack clearly cannot handle the workflow, and we say so plainly when the answer is to build nothing.
We would treat them as separate workflows with different economics. Service and residential work lives on call volume, dispatch speed and average ticket. Commercial project work lives on bid hit rate, labor productivity and change order recovery. The first 30 days usually pick one side, set a baseline and agree on what success means before touching anything.
Plans run from $2,500 a month for advisory to $5,000 a month for lead plus delivery on one scoped workstream, or $7,000 a month embedded with your team. The initial engagement is 90 days with a written scope before kickoff. Software licenses and major custom builds are budgeted separately, so you see the full cost before deciding.
That is not the aim. Good estimators and project coordinators are hard to hire and harder to replace. The aim is to take retyping, chasing and reformatting off their plates so they can bid more work, catch change orders and get pay apps out on time. People still approve prices, scope, submittals and anything sent to a GC or owner.
In 30 minutes we look at one recurring workflow, what it costs you today and whether there is a credible case to improve it. If there is not, we will say so.
30 minutes with Phil or Martin. No technical brief, no pitch deck. Phil or Martin replies personally, usually within one business day.