Aigentic

Sample · 2026

Strategy Blueprint

Reynolds & Co

Where AI fits at a structural-steel fabricator, and what is worth doing first.

Prepared for

Jane Reynolds, MD

Prepared by

Aigentic

From

Your answers to seven questions

Raphael Queisser

rq@aigentic.co.uk

aigentic.co.uk

Illustrative sample. Reynolds & Co is a fictional company, used to show the exact format of a real Blueprint without exposing anyone's numbers. Yours is built entirely from your own answers.

The Verdict / Yes, AI can help here

You are not short of work. You are short of a way to see the money leaving.

You told us the problem is the pipeline. Your own answers describe a business that wins plenty of work and loses margin after it wins it:

The same job prices two ways. Two estimators, two spreadsheets, about eight per cent apart.
No job's real margin is visible until the year-end accounts, long after anything can be done about it.
Cash you have already earned sits in retentions that nobody is chasing.

Fixing what you keep is faster and cheaper than chasing more of what you win. Everything below sits on an AI Foundation: the business written down in a form AI can use, so the answers are yours rather than generic.

01 What We Found

Drawn from your own answers. Each function is scored for how much it hurts, how repetitive the work is, and how much could go wrong if AI got it wrong.

Function	Pain	Repetitive	AI Risk	What your answers show
Estimating & pricing	5	4	2	Two estimators, two spreadsheets, an eight per cent spread on the same package.
Finance & job costing	5	4	3	A job's real margin only appears at year-end.
Applications & retentions	4	5	2	Retentions chased late, sometimes a year late.
Sales & new business	3	2	3	Referral-only; three contractors bring in most of the work.
Shop floor	2	3	4	Not enough in the answers to size. Half an hour on the floor would fix that.

Reading the map High pain, high repetition and low risk moves first. That puts pricing at the top, with job costing straight after it.

Priority 1The same job prices two ways

Each estimator builds a quote from their own spreadsheet. Price the same steel package through both and it lands about eight per cent apart.
Asked which number would have been right, nobody could say.

Root cause. Pricing lives in two people's heads and a folder of old spreadsheets. There is no single rate card, so the price depends on who picks up the enquiry.

What it costs. On £8.5 million of turnover, a couple of points of drift is roughly £170,000 a year, given away one quote at a time. And if either estimator leaves, the judgement leaves with them.

Our recommendation

Do it yourself, this week. Put both estimators in a room and write one rate card and one standard build-up. It's free, needs no AI, and removes most of the spread on its own.

Then an estimating assistant. It reads the drawings, produces a first-pass take-off and prices it against that rate card, so the estimator checks a draft instead of starting from a blank sheet.

Priority 2You can't see a job's margin until it's over

Jobs run over on labour hours and steel wastage.
The real margin only appears when the year-end accounts land.

Root cause. No monthly job-costing view. The numbers exist, spread across the accounts and the job records, but nobody pulls them together in time to act.

What it costs. You find out which jobs made money a year too late to change anything, and the thin ones hide inside a healthy-looking annual figure.

Our recommendation

Do it yourself, now. Take the three biggest live jobs and check actual cost against the quote this month, by hand. Rough, but it shows you the leak.

Then an AI Finance Director. Margin by job and by month, where you'll finish the year, and an early warning when a job starts running thin, on the same date every month.

Priority 3Cash is sitting in retentions nobody is chasing

Applications for payment and retention release sit on a spreadsheet only the bookkeeper fully understands. Retentions get chased late, sometimes a year late. That's money already earned.

Our recommendation

Do it yourself. List every retention with its release date and put the dates in the diary. A list and a date, not a project.

Priority 4Most of the work comes from three contractors

It feels like a pipeline problem, and that's what you named. It is also a concentration risk: losing one of the three would hurt more than a slow quarter.

Our recommendation

Not first. Once the margin leaks are closed, make sure Reynolds is named when a contractor asks an AI assistant who fabricates steel in your region. Ask one yourself today to see where you stand. It takes a minute.

02 What It Is Worth

What this document describes is the output of three jobs. Priced as hires, before employer costs:

What the work actually is	The hire it would take	Cost of that hire
Consistent pricing and a first-pass take-off on every enquiry	Estimator	£40,000–£50,000
Monthly job costing, margin and cash, read at owner level	Fractional Finance Director	£25,000–£40,000
Applications, retentions and the paperwork around them	Commercial Assistant	£28,000–£35,000
All three		£93,000–£125,000 a year

The point is not that you would hire all three. It is that you could not justify hiring any of them, so the work stays with you and two estimators, and the margin leaks in the gaps.

Next steps

The first step is a conversation. Whether this reads accurately, what we have got wrong, and which finding matters most from where you sit.

Two things are worth doing whatever you decide, because they cost nothing and don't need us: write the rate card, and put every retention date in the diary.

If you want to take it further, the AI Foundation is where it starts, then the estimating assistant and the monthly job-costing view, in that order.

About this sample

Reynolds & Co is invented. The names, numbers and situation are illustrative, chosen to show a typical owner-run business: a sound operation with money leaking through processes nobody has had time to fix.

What is real is the format. Every Blueprint gives you a straight verdict, what we found ranked with its root cause, cost and our recommendation, what the work is worth, and the next steps. It is built entirely from your own answers, and it is yours to keep whether or not you go further.

Want one for your business?

Seven questions, about fifteen minutes. You get back a Blueprint like this one, built on your business.

Start the seven questions · rq@aigentic.co.uk