Excavation contractors: keep the iron moving and the bids flowing

Sitework is won in the bid room and lost in the paperwork. Sherpa builds and runs the systems that keep excavation contractors bidding, documented, and paid.

How Excavation & Earthwork actually works

Excavation sells to GCs, developers, and municipalities, not homeowners. Work comes through invitations to bid, plan-room takeoffs, and relationships with estimators, then gets delivered against weather, utility conflicts, and soils nobody priced. Margin lives in equipment utilization and change orders: rock clauses, unsuitable material, standby time. The contractor who documents T&M daily and bids the next phase while the current one is still moving dirt wins.

The Sherpa climb, mapped to excavation contractors

Four camps, in order. Each one solves the next-most-expensive problem excavation contractors face. Start where your business leaks most.

Level 01 · Trailhead Attract new customers

GCs vet subs the same way homeowners do: they search, then they check. Trailhead builds the presence that passes the check: a professional site, project history, and rankings for excavation and sitework searches, including the AI results estimators now use.

Trailhead for excavation contractors → Level 02 · Basecamp Win more jobs

An estimator with a gap in the bid list calls the sub who responds. Basecamp answers every inquiry in seconds, logs every ITB, and follows up on submitted bids, while keeping past GCs warm for the next project.

Basecamp for excavation contractors → Level 03 · Peak Operate like a pro

Dirt margins die in undocumented work. Peak puts AI on daily reports, T&M tickets, change orders, and dispatch so every hour of standby and every yard of unsuitable material is signed, priced, and invoiced while the GC still remembers it.

Peak for excavation contractors → Level 04 · Stratos Scale like an enterprise

A fleet-heavy earthwork operation runs on utilization math no off-the-shelf setup captures. Stratos builds custom dispatch and job-costing systems, dashboards, and AI trained on your own production rates, owned by you, built around your fleet.

Stratos for excavation contractors →

Get the Excavation & Earthwork playbook for your company

The free 360° audit maps these systems to how your operation actually runs, and shows the highest-leverage gap first.

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