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Iron House · Construction business performance

You know how to build. Now build the business.

A construction brain, built into your business — thirty years of running a building company, installed on your machine.

Find where profit is leaking See what it runs
Where it goes

It starts leaking the day you price it.

Six losses down the job, and the overheads draw off before anything is left. Switch the system on and watch where it stops.

Margin · Tender to profit
A pressure main carrying a tender sum left to right through contract, build, claim and gross margin to a small copper net profit outlet, leaking from six valves along the way, with an overheads chamber drawing off near the end.
Priced too light The job was under-priced before a nail went in. Priced off constants measured on your own finished jobs.
Scope gaps Ambiguity and omissions nobody tagged before signing. A scope schedule that gets signed with the contract.
Variations never charged Done on site, never written up, never invoiced. Every instruction written up and priced the same week.
Labour overrun Hours against the element, discovered far too late. Hours coded to the element and checked every week.
Claim short-paid A claim that did not comply, so it did not hold. Payment claims that comply with the Act, first time.
Defects & disputes Comes back after you have been paid. Can be near nothing, or the year. Held as a reserve and closed out before you leave site.
Discipline
turns potential
into profit
A stronger
construction
industry
Swipe the manifold to see the full run
  • Priced too lightThe job was under-priced before a nail went in.Priced off constants measured on your own finished jobs.
  • Scope gapsAmbiguity and omissions nobody tagged before signing.A scope schedule that gets signed with the contract.
  • Variations never chargedDone on site, never written up, never invoiced.Every instruction written up and priced the same week.
  • Labour overrunHours against the element, discovered far too late.Hours coded to the element and checked every week.
  • Claim short-paidA claim that did not comply, so it did not hold.Payment claims that comply with the Act, first time.
  • Defects & disputesComes back after you have been paid. Can be near nothing, or the year.Held as a reserve and closed out before you leave site.

The pipe gets thinner every stage. By the time it reaches profit there is a fraction of what you priced — and none of it showed up anywhere until the job was finished.

01 · The problem

Busy is not the same as profitable.

A full pipeline hides a lot. These are the symptoms we see first, and they arrive together.

Commercial diagnostic6 faults detected
D-01Plenty of work, no cash
D-02Jobs finishing under margin
D-03Pricing on instinct, not evidence
D-04Labour overruns found too late
D-05Site decisions cut off from the numbers
D-06The owner carrying the whole thing
02 · What it is

A construction brain, not a chatbot.

It does not just have the knowledge. It knows how to apply it.

Eleven agents and thirty-one skills, installed on your machine. Not a course. Not coaching. It does not know about the Construction Contracts Act — it writes the payment claim that complies with it. It does not explain back-costing — it runs one on your job, off your own ledger.

01Back-costingWhat the job actually made, off your own ledger, while you can still act on it.
02Payment claimsCompliant under the Act, first time. The only real leverage a NZ builder has.
03Estimating & proposalsPriced off constants measured on your own finished jobs.
04ClarificationsReads the plans for the gaps and omissions nobody tagged before signing.
05VariationsHunted and priced while they can still be charged, not when they are disputed.
06Job P&LEvery job stands on its own two feet, or it doesn't.
07ProgrammeSequencing, look-aheads and the discipline that holds them.
08ContractsNZCB, NZS 3910, CCA. It tells you the clause you signed and what it time-bars you at.
The Iron House engine: Eddie at command over seven front-of-house agents, then an install stage and six numbered build stages - win the right work, lock in the agreement, set up for control, build and stay in control, claim and protect margin, close out properly - all sitting on a foundation of construction knowledge, live systems, governance and the back office.
Eleven agents · thirty-one skills · every connection in the system. This is the whole thing, running.
03 · The catch nobody mentions

You cannot teach it what you do not know.

You can buy a general AI brain for a couple of thousand and set it up yourself. Plenty of builders will. Then they hit the wall.

A brain is only worth what you teach it. To make one useful on a building job you would have to write the skills yourself — how to price off constants measured on your own finished jobs, what makes a payment claim comply under the Act, how to read a set of plans for the gaps nobody tagged, how to back-cost against a budget, which contract clause you signed and what it time-bars you at.

If you knew all of that well enough to write it down, you would not be looking for help in the first place.

That is the loop most builders get stuck in. They buy the tool, they cannot teach it, and they end up with an expensive chatbot.

It arrives already taughtThirty-one skills, written out of thirty years of doing the work. You are not buying a brain. You are buying what is already in it.
You cannot buy the time backThe cost codes are one curated standard. The chart of accounts is structured with your accountant. The skills took thirty years to know well enough to write down. That is the part that cannot be bought cheaply.
And coaching is the long way roundCoaching is you trying to learn those skills. This is you having them — written down, running, and the same every time.

What applying it actually looks like.

Knowing the rules is the easy half. This is the half that takes the hours — and it is the half that comes back in minutes.

Reads the drawingsFinds it in the setThe detail, the dimension, the weatherboard profile and cover — located on the sheet it is on, in a set of hundreds of pages, and rendered zoomed so you can actually read it.
De-risks the positionBuilds your clarificationsThe contractual, general and scope-of-work clauses that protect you, written against the job in front of it. Not pulled off a template.
Sequences the jobBuilds the programmePhased task breakdown, sequence, durations, dependencies and trade allocation — ready to go into Asta.
Puts it togetherAssembles the proposalCover, executive summary, method statement, programme, pricing and clarifications, in order — and it cross-checks that the pieces agree before it goes out.
04 · Where it lives

On your machine. Not behind someone's login.

No terminal, no code, no subscription to your own data.

A desktop app, not a coder's editorYou do not need to be technical. Eddie isn't either — that was the point.
Local and privateYour job costs, your margins and your contracts stay on your computer. They do not go and live on someone else's server.
Yours to keepNot a login you lose the day you stop paying.

So what is the monthly for?

A general business brain does not go stale. A construction brain does.

NZS 3910 was revised in 2023. The Building Act moves. MBIE guidance moves. The Construction Contracts Act has been amended twice. When those change, the agents change — and every client gets the update.

A system that stops being updated does not stop working. It keeps working and starts being wrong, and wrong is worse than nothing when it is writing your payment claims. Stop the monthly and you keep everything you paid to install. It just stops learning.

05 · The change

The week stops running you.

Before

  • Reactive — the week runs you
  • Numbers arrive too late to use
  • Margin based on hope
  • Everything depends on the owner
  • Constant firefighting
  • No feedback loop from finished jobs

After

  • Controlled — you run the week
  • Live commercial visibility
  • Margin tracked through the job
  • Clear accountability across the team
  • Repeatable operating systems
  • Every job teaches the next quote
06 · How it goes in

You do not set it up. We do.

This is where most software dies — bought, never set up, sitting there. So we build it before you show up, install it with you, and check the coding underneath it before a single number comes out of it.

01 Built

We research your business and build the brain before you show up — folder structure, context files, your voice, your contracts. Hours of work done in advance.

02 Installed

Cost codes loaded, chart of accounts structured with your accountant, job folders built, your accounts connected. On your machine, with you.

03 Checked

We verify the coding ourselves before anything is switched on. Every time — including when you installed it yourself.

04 Running

You tell it what to do. It does it properly. We manage the edges when something needs sorting.

07 · The levels

How much of it is switched on.

The same engine every time. What changes between levels is how much of it is running, and how much of Iron House comes with it.

Iron Clad

Foundation

See where the money went

Your office runs, your numbers become visible, and you get a back-cost on a real job. Most builders have never seen one of their own.

  • The install — files indexed, cost codes loaded, chart of accounts structured
  • Front of house — research, outreach, marketing, writing, your right hand
  • Enquiry and lead capture
  • The money-brief — live Xero, coded to job
  • Back-costing and job P&L
Two ways in
Done for youWe index the files, load the cost codes and structure the chart of accounts with your accountant.
Self-installYou do the work to our standard, using our code set and templates. Costs less, takes your time.

Either way, nothing goes live until we have checked the coding ourselves.

What it costs, and what you get back →
Iron Clad

Framework

The whole pipeline

Everything in Foundation, plus all six stages from first enquiry to close-out. This is where the hours live and where margin gets protected.

  • Estimating, proposals and tender
  • Clarifications — the plans read for gaps before you sign
  • Contract — NZCB, NZS 3910, CCA
  • Procurement, programme and coordination
  • QC, tolerances and the on-site build
  • Variations, hunted and priced while they can still be charged
  • Payment claims that comply, first time
  • Handover and CCC
What it costs, and what you get back →
Iron Clad

Fortress

We run it with you

Everything in Framework, plus Iron House inside the business. This is the part nobody can copy, because it is not software.

  • Monthly back-cost and job P&L review with Eddie
  • Tenders reviewed before they are issued
  • Claims checked before they go, not after they fail
  • Variations hunted with you, not just flagged
  • Disputes — adjudication and counsel
  • Ankica's back office, run on the same coding
What it costs, and what you get back →

You will have a working system, or you get your money back.

That is a promise about delivery, not about your profit. We can guarantee it is installed, verified and running. What it earns you depends on what you put into it — and on a self-install, on the work you do.

Scope and fee are agreed before anything starts, once we have been through your numbers together.

Start with a straight-talk session
08 · Proof

Priced at $36,366. Finished at $62,580.

A spouting replacement — a small job, complete and paid. It is our own, out of our own building company. Here is what the back-cost pulled out of it.

Job 25-004 · final account, GST exclusive

Contract as priced$36,366.01
Variation work$26,214.25
Invoiced to the client$62,580.26

The contract work was billed in full, to the cent. The back-cost reconciled its own budget to within $1.67 of the job software, on $51,365 of cost — which is what makes the rest of it worth trusting.

Variations were 72% of the contract$26,214 of variation work on a job priced at $36,366. Nine variations across a small spouting job. That is what walks off site when nobody writes them up the same week.
Nothing was left unbilledEvery dollar of the contract as priced was invoiced — $36,366.01 approved, $36,366.01 billed. On a job with nine variations running through it, that is not a given.
$3,189.61 went out at costEvery other cost type on the job carried between 12.5% and 42.9% markup. Two carried none at all. If that is happening here it is happening on every job you price.

Not one of those showed up anywhere until somebody ran the numbers — and by then the job was finished. Run it while the job is live and every one of them is still fixable.

What we do

Two services. The same books underneath.

These are two different things and they are charged separately. You can take either one on its own.

What connects them is the coding. The back office runs on the same cost codes and chart of accounts the install puts in — not on whatever is in there now. Most builders are missing one or the other, and usually both.

Iron Clad — the construction brain

Eleven agents and thirty-one skills installed on your machine. It prices a job, writes a payment claim that holds under the Act, hunts the variations you missed and tells you what the job actually made.

  • Cost codes, chart of accounts and job structure set up properly
  • Back-costing on real jobs, while you can still act on it
  • The whole build pipeline, from first enquiry to CCC
What it is →

Bookkeeping and back office

The whole construction back office, run by someone who has run one. Xero, GST, payroll, payables and debtors — plus the part a normal bookkeeper will not touch.

  • Payment claims and schedules under the Construction Contracts Act
  • Contract administration, retentions and variation orders
  • Job cost tracking on the same coding the system runs on
What is involved →
09 · Why Iron House

Not theory. Thirty years inside the work.

  • 30+ years in construction
  • New Zealand and international delivery
  • Built and ran a construction company
  • Commercial control from inside the industry

Iron House works inside the business — where the decisions, the pressure and the money actually live.

10 · Start

Your next job should not carry the mistakes from the last one.

Let's find out where the business is leaking margin, and what fixing it is worth.

Goes straight to Eddie. Or email eddie@ironhouse.co.nz directly.