What a custom agent looks like inside a commercial mechanical, electrical, plumbing or specialty subcontractor — the ten roles in your language, and what each plugs into in a business running Procore alongside construction accounting.
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A commercial subcontractor lives inside somebody else's process. The general contractor owns the schedule, the platform, the change order approval and the timing of payment, and your administrative burden is largely the cost of complying with all of it — submittals in their format, billing on their cycle, waivers before their release, all while running field crews of your own.
The honest version of "does it integrate with my software." These are the systems this industry actually runs on, and what each one means for a build.
The general contractor's system, which you are required to work inside — submittals, RFIs, change orders and daily reports, on their permissions.
Your own system of record for job cost, AIA billing, retainage and certified payroll.
Accubid, Trimble or trade-specific takeoff systems, where bid accuracy determines whether the job was profitable before it started.
Mobile time capture against cost codes, which is the only way labor productivity becomes visible before the job is over.
Material procurement, prefab scheduling and delivery coordination against a schedule you do not control.
Conditional and unconditional waivers, certified payroll and insurance documentation, all gating whether payment is released.
Where the subcontractor also runs service and maintenance work, typically on a completely separate system from the project side.
Each of these is a real build, not a feature of a product you already pay for. Follow one through to see how it works in general.
Nothing you are owed gets dropped.
Whatever arrives, in whatever format, becomes a clean record.
Writes the recurring document from your own past work.
Knows what expires, renews or comes due — and says so first.
Answers from your own records, not from the internet.
The conversation becomes the record, without anyone typing it up.
Assembles the recurring report from systems that do not talk.
Matches two sets of records and queues only the exceptions.
Two systems that do not talk, now talking.
Applies your rules, escalates only what needs judgment.
If that is a job in your business, the next step is half an hour on a call. Bring whatever you know about the volume — how many a month, who owns it now, which systems it touches. That is enough to scope it properly and quote it flat before anything starts.
Everything in this library is built to order rather than bought off a shelf — and whatever I build, I host and maintain. The rest of the library is here.