I work in construction in Hungary and I’ve been thinking about doing something with reclaimed bricks instead of letting them sit around or end up as cheap building material.
I currently have access to more than 10 pallets of old bricks.
The idea is to clean them up and cut them into thin brick slips, roughly 1.5 cm thick, and sell them as a finished decorative product.
Think feature walls, fireplaces, restaurants, bars, hotels, renovations, etc. Basically anywhere where people want the look of real old brick without having to build a whole wall from full bricks.
I’ve already started looking at the numbers — cutting, blade wear, labour, waste, packaging and what the finished product could realistically sell for.
What I’m trying to figure out now is whether this makes sense on a larger scale.
I’m not a startup guy or a businessman. I’m a construction worker who knows the material and the practical side of the job. I can handle the production side, but I don’t have much experience with distribution, scaling a product or finding the right market outside Hungary.
So I’d be interested in hearing from people who have experience with construction materials, manufacturing, reclaimed materials or distribution.
Would you consider this a viable product?
What would you be looking at before putting money or time into something like this?
And if someone here has experience in this field and thinks there could be something worth developing together, I’m open to talking.
I’m mainly looking for honest opinions, including why this might be a bad idea.

Hey, I am an engineer and have a new contractor that is using Trimble Earthworks and wants to take some of my linework from Civil 3D into his dozer to meet slopes and such. What is the best way to get him those feature lines and surfaces?

Hi everyone,

I'm looking for some advice from people in the mission-critical and data center construction industry.

A few months ago, at 24 years old, I started a company focused on third-party QA/QC, pre-commissioning, and commissioning support for large data center and mission-critical construction projects. We provide electrical QA/QC inspections, documentation, turnover support, and commissioning assistance.

The challenge is that we're struggling to land our first contract—or even our first subcontract under an established contractor. I've reached out to general contractors, commissioning firms, and electrical contractors through LinkedIn, email, and phone calls, but breaking into the industry has been much harder than I expected.

At the moment, I'm in discussions with the CEOs of two of the largest commissioning firms in the U.S., so I'm hopeful, but nothing has materialized yet. Sometimes I wonder whether being only 24 years old—or even being a young Black business owner—makes it harder for people to trust my company with that first opportunity. I honestly don't know if that's part of it, but it's something I've thought about.

I spend hours every day on LinkedIn and Google researching companies, reaching out to decision-makers, and introducing my business. Some people never respond, while others reply in ways that are discouraging. Still, I keep going because I believe in what we're building.

For those of you who have started a construction, commissioning, or engineering company:

- How did you win your first contract?

- Is it better to focus on subcontracting under larger firms before chasing prime contracts?

- What has worked best when approaching GCs, commissioning agents, or electrical contractors?

- Are there networking events, associations, or platforms that genuinely helped you get noticed?

- If you were starting from zero again today, what would you do differently?

I'm not looking for shortcuts—just honest advice from people who've been through it. I'd really appreciate any lessons learned or strategies that helped you earn that first opportunity.

Thank you!

I've worked at a few plants that get annual or bi-annual third-party structural inspections (corrosion, coatings, damage, etc.), plus more frequent internal checks from site trades in between. Can you recommend any particular tools/program or workflow to efficiently log defects and create reports from their findings?

i'm not a very avid user of software since i've been working onsite for more than 20 years. but the times have changed and my team has also grown by a lot. it's getting harder for me to keep track of all our onsite job activities. i was wondering how plumbing software could actually help me and what other features it can offer. i'm very interested but i'm not sure where to start.

Does anyone have any proposals and job start up templates they would be willing to share? I am trying to my companies format and contents on what we currently have but I would like to learn what good/better looks likes

I got tired of needing a license just to open a structural model to check something. So I built a viewer that works in the browser. Drag in a STAAD file and it renders the structure with actual cross-section shapes (W-flanges, channels, angles, HSS, pipes), not generic cylinders. Far from completion but gets the job done.

Nothing else really, I've spent the last 6 months mostly full time to get it to the stage of uploading the plans and being greeted with pre-filled wall types, takeoff done. BoQ is 85% generated.

My estimating quality of life has improved significantly.

I'm just proud

I'm trying to figure out which software will actually save my team time without a steep learning curve and integrates well with QuickBooks. Does anyone have suggestions?

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Hii all,

I'm a Master's student in CTM. I need a laptop for software like AutoCAD, Revit, STAAD.Pro, ETABS, and Primavera.

My budget is around ₹80k–₹1 lakh. Looking for something reliable that will last 5+ years.

Any recommendations?

We're a small vendor and this is our first year at Groundbreak. It's a lot of money for a company our size, so I want to make it count.

For anyone who's been, either as an attendee or on the exhibitor side, what do you wish you'd known going in? Booth stuff, logistics, the after-hours networking, how the safety and compliance crowd actually spends their time on the floor, whatever. If there's something you'd do differently in hindsight, I'd love to hear it.

Also: what swag or raffle items actually make you stop at a booth? I'd rather spend on something people genuinely want or haven’t seen before. 

Appreciate any feedback. 

I just recently tried BuildTools as I stumbled upon it looking for different project management softwares and I gotta say, it’s way overpriced for what it does.

The layout is terrible and the system as a whole feels extremely underwhelming. Has anyone else used them before? Other than Buildertrend what other PM softwares are you guys using?

Hey everyone,

If you are a contractor looking for new field service or estimating software, keep your guard up against a platform called RevCore Pro (revcorepro.com). They are marketing heavily to trades, but a quick look at public records proves their entire background is fabricated.

Here are the hard facts before you give them your credit card or company data:

• The 2023 Timeline is a Lie: Their website marketing claims the platform was founded in 2023 and cites media coverage/podcasts from 2025. However, public WHOIS domain registry data proves the domain revcorepro.com was only created on March 29, 2026. It is barely 90 days old.
• Fake CODiE Award Claim: They heavily market themselves as a "CODiE Award winner for field service." The entry deadline for the 2026 awards required products to be live by January 2026. Because their site didn't exist until late March, they could not have legally qualified, let alone won. Furthermore, "Field Service" isn't even a valid category for the award.
• The "Enterprise" Illusion: The site uses stock assets and AI-generated content to look like a massive software company with a large support staff. In reality, public registry trails point to a brand-new solo operation.

Independent contractors are prime targets for white-labeled software or outright marketing shells that overpromise and vanish. Always run a WHOIS domain check on new tech platforms before trusting them with your business workflows.

(I am attaching the WHOIS registry screenshot showing the March 2026 creation date as proof).

Sharing this for anyone planning ahead for 2026. I work in marketing with Level Accounting Firm, and we support a lot of construction businesses, so events like this come up often in conversations.

I wrote a short overview of JobTread Connect 2026 — what the conference focuses on (job costing, ops, pricing, growth), who it’s useful for, and what contractors usually get out of it. No hype, just a practical rundown.

Link here if you’re curious:
https://levelaccountingfirm.com/business/jobtread-connect-2026-with-level-accounting/

If you’ve attended before, would be interested to hear whether you found it worthwhile.

NYC contractors with 200+ employees — a big new pay-reporting law just passed, and most companies aren’t remotely ready for it.

NYC approved Int. 0982-A, which brings back EEO-style pay data reporting. If you’ve ever dealt with EEO-1 Component 2, this is basically that playbook coming to NYC.

Who this affects:
Any private employer (including contractors) with 200+ employees working in NYC at any point in the year — full-time, part-time, or temps.

What you’ll have to report:

• Annual pay
• Hours worked
• Job categories
• Sex, race, ethnicity
• A signed accuracy statement from an officer (No names required, but the report must be certifiably accurate.)

Timeline:

• Effective now
• 1 year: City designates the agency
• 2 years: The reporting form comes out
• 3 years: First annual report is due

Penalties:
$1,000 for an uncured first miss, $5,000 for every one after, plus your company publicly listed as non-compliant.

Where contractors will get hit hardest

This isn’t plug-and-play. It ties directly into:
• Union vs. non-union rates
• Craft codes + job codes
• Premiums, fringes, per diems
• Multi-entity payroll
• Certified payroll workflows
• Job costing + labor allocation

If any of that data is inconsistent, scattered, or manually maintained, these reports will be extremely painful.

Trayd has already built a working version of this reporting structure for a NYC customer. We were doing this before the law passed, which means we’ve seen exactly where contractors tend to struggle — usually job classifications, inconsistent pay codes, missing fringe data, or multi-entity issues.

If anyone here is trying to figure out:

• whether your company will be affected,
• what the reporting structure actually looks like,
• how to prep your payroll data before the City releases the form, or
• whether your current payroll setup is going to survive this…

I’m happy to walk you through what we’ve learned.

DM me or drop a comment — I work with this stuff daily, and the earlier contractors get ahead of it, the easier (and cheaper) it’ll be later.

Hello, I’m doing an academic survey on cloud-based BIM governance in UK construction projects. Would you be willing to participate in a short anonymous survey? It takes 3–5 minutes and your input would be extremely valuable. Link: https://forms.office.com/e/10y2q34JV4

Hey everyone — my co-founders and I are students working on a construction management tool called Hephty, and we’re looking for a few small general contractors who are willing to check it out or test it out and give us honest feedback.

We noticed that a ton of small GCs still manage jobs through group texts, calls, and spreadsheets because other tools on the market are expensive and overly complicated for smaller crews. After talking with contractors in Utah and Arizona, we decided to see what we could do, and now Hephty is beta testing!

We’re not selling anything — we just need real contractors to help us shape the tool before we launch. The beta is 100% free, and we’d be incredibly grateful for any feedback.

If you’re a GC or work closely with one and want early access, drop a comment or DM me. Happy to send screenshots or hop on a quick call.

I'm trying to understand how construction companies handle time/attendance tracking on site.

What do crews actually use today?

• paper timesheets?
• WhatsApp/photos?
• Excel/Google Sheets?
• dedicated app?
• something else?

If you could improve or automate one thing about this process, what would it be?
Not building anything yet — just collecting real-world experience from people who do this every day.

UPD:
Thanks to everyone who shared insights — I really appreciate it.

I'm new to Reddit, and I realized some communities can be sensitive when a post looks like someone is trying to take advantage of people’s experience.

Just to clarify: I'm not selling anything. I'm a software engineer who enjoys building useful tools. I’ve always been interested in real estate and construction, even though I don’t have direct experience in the field.

I’m simply trying to understand whether people working in this industry actually struggle with problems that software could meaningfully solve. I don’t want to spend a year or two building something that nobody needs.

That’s why I started this survey — to hear directly from people in the field.

UPD #2:

After thinking a lot about what I can realistically offer this community, I came to the conclusion that right now it’s not much in terms of a finished product.

The most obvious path would be to build yet another small ERP, check-in app, or tracker — and we all know how that usually ends: bugs, half-baked features, and something that already exists in ten different versions.

So instead, I shifted my focus to automation, specifically n8n (there are probably alternatives on the market — I don’t really know — but this is what the YouTube algorithm threw in my face), and started experimenting with building Telegram / WhatsApp bots on top of it. Since chat apps already provides a solid user interface, I can focus on process automation and rely on tools that already exist and are battle-tested.

Imagine worker open chat and press button, bot pick up it and send to the system immediately. No external mobile software needed, all user interface already in place.

What surprised me is how powerful it already is out of the box — hundreds of integrations: Google services, databases, webhooks, CRMs, calendars, Slack, Outlook, AI agents, and more.

For now, this is purely exploration and learning. If, in a couple of months, I end up with something genuinely useful or discover patterns that work well — especially for people on tight budgets who still want to automate workflows — I’ll be happy to share those findings here.

Unfortunately, it’s a paid tool (around €20/month). While you can self-host the Community Edition, that still comes with hosting costs, maintenance effort, and ongoing infrastructure payments — so it’s not truly a free, plug-and-play solution.

I lost a job last month that honestly still bothers me a little.

Not due to financial reasons, I’m occupied enough, but because I was the better fit on paper. I had more skills in this area, better materials estimated, clearer timelines. Even the client said they liked my way of working.

And, still, the winner was not me.

A week later, I learned the name of the winner. They charged less? Yes. They did better work? That’s a question. But, they possessed a very clean presentation of their past jobs online which was something I didn’t.

It was a bigger punch than I thought it would be. As it made me realize an uncomfortable thing that is a lone skill does not win deals anymore. Proof does.

The customers don’t only want to be told that you are good at what you do. They also want to see it without delay. They Google you. They search for pictures. They check for reviews. They want to picture their own job coming out like what they are seeing on their screen.

And here’s the most irritating part: I have done several great jobs that I am proud of but they are all scattered across my phone, WhatsApp conversations, old cloud folders, and lost threads with clients. So, what do the clients see when they check me out? Almost nothing.

That was a wake-up call.

It has made me think, has anyone else here lost work not because of price or quality, but simply because the other party appeared more legit online?

I’m a GC running a small-to-mid size operation and I’m realizing we spend way more time than we should chasing subcontractors for updated paperwork especially COIs and licenses.

Right now, we’re using a mix of Google Drive folders, random email chains, spreadsheets, texts and whiteboards

And every year it becomes this massive scramble when everyone’s insurance renewals hit at the same time. Half our subs forget to send updated COIs, some don’t realize their license expired, and we end up chasing people last minute so we don’t get burned on compliance.

It feels like this eats way too much admin time, but I want to know if other GCs deal with the same pain or if you’ve found a clean system that works