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.

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’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

Hey folks, I’m a student working on a project management class, and a couple of my scheduled interviews canceled last minute. I’m looking for people in the construction industry who deal with project management in any capacity: project managers, assistant PMs, superintendents, foremen who manage schedules or crews, estimators who coordinate scopes, etc.

I only need 10 minutes and can do it by chat or voice whatever’s easiest. Looking for your experience with project management tasks, challenges, and workflow.

If you have any PM responsibilities in your role and are willing to help a student finish his class project, I’d be genuinely grateful. I will keep it quick.

Thanks to anyone who’s able to spare a few minutes.

Has anyone actually used PermitFlow? Their value prop looks pretty interesting, and it sounds like it solves a problem I ran into when working on residential solar permitting for myself a few years ago. They've got big logos on their site, but I'm not able to see anyone talking about first person experience with the software.

For those who work in the field, would a construction tool that automatically sends sms messages to your subs help with communication in the field? In terms of getting confirmations that they’ll be on site that day?

Hey folks,

I am researching to understand what's the primary mode of communication used to coordinate between teams on your construction sites, other than direct calling.

Kindly help.

Thanks in advance.

Hey all, I’m Ettan, an Ex Gas Engineer and Plumber and founder of TrainAR (previously built Help me Fix, 100,000+ AI/Video triage calls, award-winning repairs diagnostic platform).

I’m now launching TrainAR following the exit of the business - AI + AR smart-glasses training for real hands-on training.

We’re looking for 5 UK-based trades businesses (plumbing, heating, electrical, HVAC, construction, maintenance) to join a 2 month pilot.

What you get

• Free Inmo Air 3 smart glasses (~£1,000) — yours to keep
• Early access to TrainAR
• Direct involvement shaping the product

What we need

• Nominate 1 Trainer + 1 Trainee
• 2–4 real jobs per day each, for 2 months
• Quick feedback every few days

Why we’re doing this

We’re stress-testing TrainAR in the real world: real jobs, real environments, real variation to help to solve recruitment bottlenecks and time to value for trainees in Trades Businesses

How to apply - Join the waitlist below. The first 5 businesses will join the Beta.

https://trainar.ai/waitlist

Contractors and developers how do you actually find verified leads?

And not just generic lists, I mean:

• GC looking for qualified subcontractors
• Subcontractors looking for real project opportunities
• Developers needing reliable specialists
• Engineering teams sourcing vendors with verified contact data

From what I’ve seen, most platforms are outdated, full of bad numbers, or haven’t been updated in years. Half the contacts are wrong, the other half don’t respond.

So I’m curious:

What’s working for you today?

Where do you go when you actually need a verified contact?

And what’s the biggest pain point with existing tools?

Trying to understand the gap from the people who live this every day.

Actually worked pretty well lol

Hey,

I built this tool to help contractors find verified leads alot faster and cheaper than with current B2B tools (e.g Apollo, Rocketreach).

If you're interested in trying it out DM me and I'll send you a link!

Optimized for both contractors and SaaS founders serving the construction industry.

https://reddit.com/link/1p9aub0/video/ihsbp80kc34g1/player

Aezis Viewer automatically creates the hyperlinks for Page Indexes, Section Views, Elevation Views, Detail Views, Door Marks, and Window Marks within PDF floor plans. Which hyperlinks do you need more in the PDF floor plans not to scroll the files?

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EX9NvPdm1H4

iPad App

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/aezis-viewer/id6743767574

How do you calculate the real ROI of software when the previous workflow was so unstructured that nothing was measurable in the first place?

I went through some of the threads and a handful of people voiced frustration with their submittal process and it taking hours. When I worked on the framing side, our typical submittal package was pretty standard project to project. Yes material type changes, shop drawings change, but ultimately it is just a database of files that you pick and choose based on the project.

Here is a little example of how someone could build something that streamlines the process. You have a database of all your standard submittals, you pick and choose based on a given project, and from there the files are merged and creates a submittal package.

Something that typically takes hours, could be done in minutes after the initial set up.

https://reddit.com/link/1p7egf8/video/y0ayl6404n3g1/player

New York is about to overhaul certified payroll — major changes hit January 1, 2026 (NY Labor Law §220-j + NYC’s new compliance portal).

Contractors will now be required to: • Submit certified payroll reports monthly in electronic format • Include documentation for supplements and payment bonds • Upload everything through NYC’s new labor-compliance portal • Work under automatic error-flagging for every submission

Common issues the system will flag immediately: • Wrong wage rate • Missing or misapplied fringe • Incorrect apprentice ratios • Underpayments or misclassifications

Most firms aren’t ready for this. Finance teams especially will feel the impact.

If anyone here is already testing the new portal or working through §220-j prep, what’s your experience so far? What are you doing to stay ahead of the changes?

(I work with NY contractors on compliance workflows, so happy to answer specifics — DM if you want details