The most valuable insight in a construction business tends to surface early in a serious examination — in the first two to three weeks of looking at the right data and asking the right questions. The remainder of the work is validation, quantification, and translating what we find into something that can be acted on within the real constraints of a live business.
We will also tell you, early in the process, if what we are finding is not what either of us expected. That is not always comfortable. It is always more useful than weeks of work arriving at a conclusion that serves the narrative rather than the business.
We listen carefully to the business owner's account of the situation. Then we go to the data. Every business owner has a theory about where performance is being lost. The data rarely confirms it exactly — and the gap between the two is almost always where the most useful work is done.
Construction businesses operate under real constraints — cash flow, management capacity, a pipeline that does not pause. Every recommendation we make has to be achievable within that environment. If it is not, we find a different recommendation. The measure of good advice in this industry is whether it can actually be implemented.
How long an engagement takes depends on the size of the business, the quality of its records, and how engaged the principal is throughout. We tell you upfront what those factors mean for your situation — and we hold to it. Overpromising a timeline serves no one.
This is how most Altese engagements run. The phases are consistent across clients. The pace and depth at each stage varies with the business.
Week 1 — We listen. How the business is structured, what it has been through recently, what the owner believes is working and what is not. No structured intake process — a genuine conversation. By the end of it, we will have a clear view on whether we can help and what an engagement would sensibly look like.
Weeks 1–2 — If both parties are comfortable proceeding, we agree on scope, timeline, and access. Financial records, project cost data, procurement history, tender files. The completeness of that material determines how quickly and accurately the analysis can proceed.
Weeks 2–5 — The substantive work. We examine the financials, speak with the people who run the projects, and look carefully at how work is won, procured, and delivered. This is the stage where the real picture of a business emerges — and it is rarely exactly what anyone expected going in.
Weeks 5–6 — Specific findings, not general observations. Where performance is strong, where it is not, and — critically — which changes will have the greatest impact given the business's current position. Priorities are ranked by what will move the needle most, and by what is realistically achievable now.
Weeks 6–7 — A practical document, not a presentation. Specific actions, sequenced against the procurement cycle and project pipeline. Some improvements become visible quickly. Others take longer to embed. The roadmap reflects that honestly — and gives the business a clear point from which to begin.
Optional — Many clients continue the relationship beyond the initial engagement. Regular reviews, access when significant decisions arise, and a clear-eyed assessment of whether the improvements are holding over time. The compounding benefit of this kind of work tends to sit in the continuity.
These are not caveats offered in small print. They are the variables that genuinely determine pace, and we would rather be direct about them from the outset.
Documentation quality is the single most significant factor. A business with clean project cost records, properly coded procurement data, and accessible tender files moves through the analysis in four to five weeks. One where the cost picture is distributed across multiple spreadsheets and institutional memory takes considerably longer to assemble — and the quality of what we produce is only as good as the picture we can construct from the available material.
Business size and complexity add time in proportion. A focused builder operating in one sector is more straightforward than a business running residential, commercial, and government work simultaneously. The additional time reflects additional scope, not additional inefficiency on our part.
Process maturity changes the nature of the work. In a well-structured business, we are identifying specific areas of underperformance within a functioning system. In an earlier-stage business, part of the work is establishing how things actually operate before we can assess how well they are being done.
The principal's engagement determines pace more than anything else. Timely access to people and data, responsiveness to questions, and an owner who is genuinely committed to the process — these compress timeline more than any other single variable. The engagements that move fastest are the ones where the client is as invested in the process as we are.
We will tell you honestly what we think we can do for your business and what the engagement would involve. If it is not the right fit, we will say so directly.
Get in touch