Problems › We Need a Business Plan for the Bank › Construction & Trades
A lender is not reading for ambition. They are reading for whether the downside case still services the debt. This page works through it for construction and trade contractors specifically — including an unedited excerpt from a real analysis of a contractor.
A lender is not reading for ambition. They are reading for whether the downside case still services the debt. What makes this harder for construction and trade contractors is structural: service work earns double the margin of projects and loses every staffing argument to liquidated-damages clauses. Any credible answer therefore has to hold job gross margin and backlog cover in the same view, which is exactly where most internal analysis stops because the two live in different systems.
Plans written for lenders fail on the same thing: an optimistic single case with no visible arithmetic. The reader is trying to establish whether they get paid back if things go moderately wrong, and a plan with only a good case gives them nothing to test.
What survives scrutiny is a base case with stated assumptions, a downside that is genuinely bad rather than politely reduced, and a clear line from operating performance to debt service in both. The upside case matters least.
The second failure is inconsistency — a revenue line that does not reconcile to the headcount plan, or working capital that does not move with sales. Lenders read these documents for a living and find those quickly.
These three together are the signature. One on its own usually points somewhere else.
✓ You need the document by a deadline set by someone else
✓ The projections exist in a spreadsheet nobody outside the business has stress-tested
✓ There is no downside case, or it is the base case minus ten percent
The move that usually makes it worse. Writing the plan to be persuasive rather than to be checkable, which is the fastest way to lose a reader who checks for a living.
It is for you if you run or finance a contractor and you need the document by a deadline set by someone else. It is the situation where the numbers are available but nobody has put them in an order that produces a decision.
It is not for you if Percision is the wrong tool if you already know the answer and only need execution capacity, or if the business is pre-revenue — then the constraint is evidence about the market, not analysis of your own figures. Percision is not a lawyer, tax advisor, auditor, licensed appraiser, clinical or regulatory filer, or an AI implementation shop. It does not do HR casework, creative-only brand work, or impersonate a named consulting firm. It is a strategy analysis engine — not a template library. Also wrong if you need facilitation, politics, or someone to sit with a lender or buyer. Those are human jobs.
Percision is not a lawyer, tax advisor, auditor, licensed appraiser, clinical or regulatory filer, or an AI implementation shop. It does not do HR casework, creative-only brand work, or impersonate a named consulting firm. It is a strategy analysis engine — not a template library.
Below is an excerpt from a real run of this analysis on a contractor. It is a sample profile rather than a customer, and it is unedited engine output — this is the format you get, on your own numbers.
The subject is Halloway Mechanical, a sample company profile used for testing rather than a customer — $180M revenue, mechanical contracting.
Excerpt from a real Percision run · Pricing Strategy · sample company profile
The move. Convert sole-source hospital service contracts into shared-savings performance contracts that extend durability from 36-48 months to 48+ months while adding 15-25% performance-fee revenue.
The leak it closes. Plugs $5.4M annual change-order leakage by shifting from construction margin (14.9% gross) to service margin (32% gross) plus performance fees
The assumption it rests on. Hospital systems will convert existing sole-source service contracts to shared-savings structure within 12 months — the engine put the probability at 0.75.
| Investment required | $2.1M Phase 1 (existing cash) + $1.8M Phase 2 (reinvested service margin) + $3.2M Phase 3 (ESOP-compliant revolver draw) = $7.1M total over 36 months |
| Expected return | 5.3× on $7.1M total investment yielding $12.1M incremental Year 3 revenue at 32% gross margin plus 15-25% performance fees |
| Revenue, year 1 | $0.8M performance-fee revenue from 3 pilot contracts |
| Revenue, year 2 | $4.8M performance-fee revenue plus $1.2M incremental service renewals |
| Revenue, year 3 | $12.1M total incremental revenue (performance fees + service renewals + franchise fees) |
| Exit criteria | Exit this move if (a) fewer than 2 of 3 pilot hospitals convert to performance contracts by Month 12, OR (b) net margin on performance contracts falls below 12% for two consecutive quarters, OR (c) unfilled journeyman positions exceed 30 by Month 18 despite $720K recruiting investment |
This is one move out of a full analysis. Read a complete report — every page, no email required.
This question routes to Business Plan Studio, one of 29 engagements the platform runs. For construction and trade contractors it works through job gross margin, backlog cover, change-order capture and service attach rate, then produces the sequence rather than a list of options — which move first, what it funds, and the observation that would say the sequence is wrong.
You watch the analysis get built before paying anything. Read a complete report here if you would rather see the depth first.
Short enough to be read and complete enough to be tested. The financials and the assumptions behind them carry the decision; narrative beyond what is needed to explain them adds risk rather than confidence.
Whether the cash flow services the debt under a case that is not the good one, and whether the numbers reconcile internally. Almost everything else is context for those two.
Match the term of the facility, monthly for the first year. Detail beyond the horizon of the loan signals unfamiliarity rather than rigour.
Materially, yes. Service work earns double the margin of projects and loses every staffing argument to liquidated-damages clauses — which changes both the diagnosis and the order of the fixes. The metrics that decide it here are job gross margin, backlog cover, change-order capture, and an answer built on industry-general benchmarks will usually point at the wrong one first.
Less than most people expect. Your last twelve months of revenue and cost split the way you already split it, plus whatever you hold on job gross margin and backlog cover. The analysis is explicit about what it is assuming where your data stops, which is more useful than waiting for numbers you may never have.
Percision is the wrong tool if you already know the answer and only need execution capacity, or if the business is pre-revenue — then the constraint is evidence about the market, not analysis of your own figures. Percision is not a lawyer, tax advisor, auditor, licensed appraiser, clinical or regulatory filer, or an AI implementation shop. It does not do HR casework, creative-only brand work, or impersonate a named consulting firm. It is a strategy analysis engine — not a template library. Also wrong if you need facilitation, politics, or someone to sit with a lender or buyer. Those are human jobs.
Percision is not a lawyer, tax advisor, auditor, licensed appraiser, clinical or regulatory filer, or an AI implementation shop. It does not do HR casework, creative-only brand work, or impersonate a named consulting firm. It is a strategy analysis engine — not a template library.
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