Fractional COO for retrofit businesses

Obligation-funded measures, social housing framework work, able-to-pay private jobs and lead-generated installs are four different businesses sharing one survey and install team. A weekly view of margin by funding route, cost per measure against the rate claimed, abortive surveys as a proportion of those booked, and remediation cost by measure type turns opinion into fact — and usually shows that one funding stream is quietly subsidising another.

Every job costed against a fixed funding rate carries the risk that the property is not typical. A documented pricing basis — survey standards, ventilation provision, access and scaffold, loft clearance and making good, electrical allowances, design and lodgement time, exclusions and sign-off thresholds — lets work be priced without the founder checking it first, and makes an underwater job something that can be reviewed rather than argued about.

Allocating surveyors, coordinators and install teams from memory works until a scheme deadline moves, and then every property needs its assessment, design and ventilation works at once. A weekly plan against confirmed survey, install and sign-off dates, a named coordinator on each property, and a standing rule for where a team goes when a date slips moves scheduling out of the owner’s head and onto a document the whole team can read.

Additional works agreed on site — ventilation upgrades, remedial repairs, access provision — get done and claimed weeks later, if at all. Claims go in incomplete because assembling the evidence is nobody’s job, and the funding sits unlodged while the cost has already gone out. A written instruction rule, a register of additional works, a fixed claim and lodgement rhythm, and retentions tracked as a scheduled debtor with release dates diarised turn work already completed into cash already banked — usually the fastest improvement available.

Pre-install photographs, ventilation calculations, design documents, installer declarations and lodgement references live with whoever did the job. A documented standard for the evidence pack, files held centrally against the property rather than on a phone or in an inbox, and packs completed at handover rather than chased months afterwards mean the record holds when that person is on holiday, or leaves — and when an audit arrives.

Buyers pay for what happens without the founder in the room: revenue spread across more than one funding route, framework and accreditation positions held by the business rather than by an individual, evidence packs that survive audit sampling, and remediation liability that has been quantified rather than assumed away. Each of those is improvable, and each takes longer than a sale process allows, which is why the work that raises the multiple happens well before the business goes to market.