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← The Work
— Intervention

Master Project List

A custom ops system for a multi-job GC — simple at the jobsite, powerful at HQ — without forcing the business into enterprise software.

— Chapter 01

The Spreadsheet Was the System

A residential general contractor came to us running dozens of concurrent jobsites off a Master Project List in Excel.

It worked — until it didn't.

Tasks lived in a sheet. Status lived in texts and email. Risk lived nowhere. By the time a job slipped, the office was reconstructing truth from phones.

The broken state
Excel MPL
Manual entry
Text / Email
Status in threads
Lost Task
No portfolio signal
Jobsite Surprise
Too late to course-correct

⚠ Manual entry. Scattered status. Portfolio blind.

They didn't need another login tax. They needed the list to become an operating system.

— Chapter 02

Buying Software Wasn't the Fix

The market already sells construction platforms. Buildertrend. Procore. monday. Most mid-market GCs don't fail because those tools lack features.

They fail because the tools demand the business reshape itself — months of admin ownership, notification fatigue, and mobile friction — for portfolio visibility that still isn't clean.

The opening isn't "more software." It's portfolio control without enterprise drag.

Field staff need the next task. HQ needs pattern, risk, and variance across every job. One product. Two resolutions.

— Chapter 03

Progressive Complexity

We built MPL — Master Project List — around the work they already did, not a forced migration into a bloated suite.

What shipped:

  • One web app over their job data: tasks, assignees, due dates, vendors, locations, notes
  • Role-aware views — field sees what to do next; management sees the portfolio
  • Visibility controls (public / private / management) so sensitive work stays contained
  • Portfolio dashboard, per-job kanban, calendar, and workload signal — without a Procore-sized rollout
  • Notifications that respect urgency instead of drowning the team

Simple at the jobsite. Powerful at HQ.

The intervention
Field / Office
Captures the task
MPL App
Role-aware views
HQ Signal
Risk across all jobs
Right Person Acts
Judgment preserved

✓ Simple at the jobsite. Powerful at HQ.

Master Project List portfolio dashboard showing status across jobs
The after — one command surface for every active job
— Chapter 04

The Signal Cleared

Live Master Project List job view with task filters and progress
Live product — job detail with open work, progress, and filters
1
System of Record
Replaced spreadsheet + text-thread chaos with a single live ops surface.
0
Enterprise Drag
No Buildertrend/Procore implementation tax. Productive on existing job data.

The office stopped hunting for status. The field stopped drowning in noise. Management can answer "which jobs are in trouble?" without opening twelve tabs.

Live product: 1640-mpl.vercel.app

That's the intervention: not a bigger platform — a sharper one, fitted to how a GC actually runs.

Custom software earns its keep when it removes reconstruction work — the hours spent rebuilding the truth from fragments.

MPL didn't add busywork. It made the next right action obvious — on the jobsite and at HQ.