Find the Secure AI revenue in construction.
A full-day working session for Ingram Micro Microsoft partners. How contractors, subcontractors and housebuilders make money, where AI could help, who signs the order, and how to reach them. Included with Cumulus Practice and Executive. £500 per MSP for Community members, up to 2 seats.
Microsoft co-op funding. Subject to eligibility, you may be able to claim back up to 100% of the £500. We give you the invoice and the proof-of-execution paperwork the claim needs. Check with Ingram that you qualify before you rely on it.
You sell the same technology to every industry. You cannot sell the same business case to every industry.
The same Microsoft work sells differently to a contractor than to a manufacturer, because their money is made and lost in different places.
A contractor tenders at six per cent and delivers at two. Four points on £180m, and nobody can say where they went. Much of it goes on variations: 2,400 a year worth £14.4m, of which 62% are recovered in full. The rest settle at a discount, because the site records arrive on Friday and the notice was due on Tuesday.
Commercial consulting goes deep into one sector. Technology implementation works largely the same way across all of them. Both matter, and they are bought by different people.
They need measurable business outcomes.
They need IT policies and change management.
Secure AI adds a business conversation above the technical one. Neither is better. An MSP needs both, and needs to know which one it is in.
Answers: I already know Microsoft, so why do I need a construction workshop? You already sell across the horizontal. This workshop builds the vertical.
This is how Cumulus reads the sector. It comes from our own model and from interviews with people who run these firms. Treat it as a pattern to test on your own customers, not a fact.
Being brought in after the business decision has already been made.
That decision gets made in a conversation about the customer’s business, not their IT. This workshop is about how to get into that conversation.
We only hear about it when they ask us to quote.
We built exactly what they asked for, but there was no next conversation.
Whoever leads the commercial conversation writes the requirement everybody else quotes against. A requirement written without you leaves you competing inside somebody else’s decision, often on scope and price rather than business value.
Three numbers a construction board watches.
Most technical sales conversations do not begin with these. If yours does, you have a much stronger reason to speak with the people who answer for the economics.
6% vs 2%
What you priced the job at, against what it finished at. The board number, and the gap is the business.
Cost to bid
What it costs to price a tender, against the work actually won. A bid team that is full declines tenders, and every decline is margin already paid to find.
Retentions
Retentions, unagreed variations, and work done but not certified. On a subcontractor it is often the year’s profit, sitting in somebody else’s bank account.
Five kinds of contractor. One method.
All five price work before they do it and then have to prove what they did, so one model covers them all. What changes is where the margin goes.
Which one you are in front of changes the examples, not the method.
Answers: will this cover the contractors I actually sell to? The worked example is a regional main contractor, because variations hurt most there.
The 4-Step Vertical Business Outcomes System, applied to construction.
One method, applied to a different sector each month.
Know the sector
How contractors make money, the numbers their board watches, and where margin and cash get lost between tender and handover.
Open the door
The customers you already have, the firms worth targeting, and how to get a meeting with the person who signs. This is not a cold-calling list.
Find the AI opportunity
Where AI could make them more money, free up time, or cut risk. Then how a customer moves through the four steps, starting with a free assessment.
Build the case
How the work should run afterwards, what it is worth, and how to prove it if they ask.
Know the sector → open the door → find the AI opportunity → build the case
Answers: what will the day teach me to do? Sector knowledge, then trusted access, then a customer opportunity, then a commercial case.
Where the opportunity sits in a contractor.
Five places to look. They are not equal, and the biggest one is usually not where you start.
The one worth most is often the one they cannot build yet. Telling them apart is the job.
Answers: where would I actually start? Sizing any of this in a contractor’s own numbers is what the Secure AI Business Case & Process Design does, not the workshop.
One thing this sector does differently. The time saving and the recovered variation value are two benefits, and we keep them apart. On a £180m contractor the measured time released pays back in 12.4 months on its own. Add the recovered variation value and it is 3.6 months — but that second number is an estimate the contractor’s own surveyor makes, not ours. We quote both, in that order, every time. This is the only sector of the ten where the time saving is the smaller half of the case, and saying so is the reason a commercial director keeps listening.
Who you need in the room at the customer.
These vary by sector. In construction they are usually:
Answers for tendered against delivered
And the plan. Ask what one point of margin is worth on their turnover, and let them do the sum.
Answers for cash locked up
Knows what sits in retentions and unagreed variations, and will check your arithmetic before anyone else does.
Captures the record, or does not
If recording is slower than skipping it, they skip it. Design for them or the case fails.
Answers for variation recovery
Knows what gets settled at a discount and has rarely multiplied it out. Do that sum in front of them and the conversation becomes serious.
How MSPs usually get ready for a sector.
All three are sensible. Here is where each one stops being enough.
You get the size of the market and the growth rate.
Your engineers learn the product properly, and usually for free.
You get a list of things AI can do, with examples.
The workshop gives you the part none of them cover. How a contractor makes money, where AI could help, who signs the order, and up to 200 target accounts.
Four things these contractors say.
If you have sold into construction you have heard at least two of them. Each one is margin, and none of them sounds like an AI problem.
Site records arrive after the notice was due.
We settle variations at a discount because the evidence is thin.
We tendered at six and delivered at two, and nobody can tell me why.
The same content gets rebuilt for every tender.
Their words beat your list every time. The workshop covers what each one costs, and which of them AI can do something about.
What you leave with on the day.
The five sub-sectors, the three board numbers, and the eight processes that carry the money.
One opportunity packaged into something your team can quote.
Four roles, what each one answers for, and the number each is measured on.
Up to 200 named UK contractors, subcontractors and housebuilders, picked to match the kind of firm the workshop covers. Enough to start booking meetings.
What to say first, and what to ask before you propose anything.
How to move a customer from a first conversation to an implementation, without asking them to commit early.
Three priced steps, then the build.
The customer only buys the next step if the last one was worth it.
- 1 Secure AI Opportunity Assessment Free. Find where Secure AI could create value.
- 2 Secure AI Business Envisioning Workshop £2,500. One day with the leadership team. Find the business needs, rank the Secure AI opportunities, and agree which one moves forward.
- 3 Secure AI Business Case & Process Design From £15,000. Four to eight weeks. Build the business case, redesign the process and produce the high-level solution design needed to decide on the build.
- 4 Secure AI Implementation Your price. You complete the detailed technical design, then build, deploy and integrate it, and run it for a monthly fee.
One day does not make you a construction consultant. It does let you open the right conversation and work out whether there is a deal in it. If a real opportunity needs deeper work, Cumulus does the commercial side. Your customer stays yours.
Practice and Executive members pay nothing, because this workshop is included. Community members pay £500 per MSP, plus VAT, and that covers two seats.
Eligible partners may be able to use Microsoft co-op funding. Check your eligibility and the claim route with Ingram Micro before you count on the money.
Book your MSP’s place.
Thursday 24 June 2027, virtual. Four short steps. Two seats are included, and you can add the second person later.
Ten sectors. One workshop a month. Construction & Property is the eighth.
Book Construction & Property for £500. Or join Cumulus Practice for £3,500 a year and get all ten workshops plus the complete 5P System. Ten workshops bought separately would cost £5,000.
Win the business case before you win the build.