Increasing efficiency by implementing lean systems for civil contractors.
If your day starts with a fire, you’re normal.
Normal sucks.
It’s 6:15am. The first call of the day comes in from a foreman: “Did we get the material lined up?”
At 6:17am you call the supplier. He promises the materials will be on-site within an hour.
At 6:20am you call back your foreman to reassure him.
You’re 5 minutes into the day. 3 phone calls down.
76 more to go.
You’ve put out one fire.
Who knows how many more the day holds?
Rework is killing your margin.
You know that delays, errors, and unpaid rework are costing you hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars every year.
For example…
- You lose $2,000 when an inspector doesn’t show and you can’t pour. Your concrete crew and pump truck sit idle while the schedule slips a day.
- You lose $2,500 when stone trucks were expected all day but only arrive in the morning. The afternoon crew can’t work, because delivery windows were never confirmed.
- You lose $3,000 when a roller is promised to another site and pulled away. The lowboy ping-pongs between sites, and overtime piles up to catch up.
- You lose $3,500 when a truckload of pipe doesn’t arrive on schedule. Your trench crew is in the dirt with nothing to install, and backfill can’t close behind them.
- You lose $4,000 when the electrician doesn’t show on Monday because he thought the PM said “Wednesday.” The open trench is waiting on conduit, and you have to resequence the backfill crews.
- You lose $5,000 when an expired utility locate ticket forces your 6-man crew with rented equipment to stand idle all day.
It adds up. Quick.
The problem isn’t your people. The problem is the way your work flows.
You own a dirt business. You can move mountains when the plan is clear. You have the people and the equipment to get the job done right. But mistakes, miscommunications, and unforced errors keep making projects off-track, over-budget, overdue, and barely profitable.
You’re a problem solver. When something blows up, you fix it. When your people are disorganized, you step in to direct. But deep down, you realize that you’re so busy reacting to the urgent problems of the moment, you hardly have time to propel your business forward. You spend all your time working in your business, not on it.
In the office, your PMs struggle to keep each project moving along. They juggle half a dozen phone calls at once. Every miscommunication cascades into more problems, until work grinds to a halt and once-profitable projects end up deep in the red.
In the field, your supers roam the sites, trying to track where crews are at and which equipment is available. Nothing is coordinated, and decisions are made reactively instead of according to plan.
There has to be a better way.
The lean advantage for dirt work
In the 20th century, the manufacturing sector learned how to run lean. Standardizing the work, making problems visible, and improving every day.
Better safety. Better quality. Better efficiency.
Today, most civil contractors are still rife with inefficiency. Lacking systems and processes. Inconsistent quality. Blaming the uncontrollables.
They haven’t learned to run lean.
This is a massive opportunity for forward-thinking civil contractors to learn from other industries and make the shift into lean production. There is so much productivity (and profitability) to be gained…
But no one teaches the dirt world how to run lean.
Until now.
Daily Performance Coaching with Lean Dirt
Hey, I’m Zack Estes.
I built Lean Dirt for one reason: to help dirt businesses operate more efficiently, productively, and profitably by implementing lean production.
When your team is trained to run lean you get clear communication, achieve operational excellence, and drive daily improvement.
I’ve been hired by civil construction companies across North America, from small firms doing $2M in revenue, to larger firms doing north of $70M in revenue.
The patterns are the same. And so are the fixes.
How It Works
1 — Month 1: Onboarding
In our first month together, we will:
- Clarify a compelling vision for lean systems & processes in your business
- Implement lean action & accountability to start producing lean results
- Install Office OS (included for free!)
2 — Two 60-min Coaching Calls / Month
On these calls, we:
- Clarify the standards of safe, quality, and efficient work
- Make communication visible (instead of verbal)
- Identify friction and fat to cut from the system
- Build a culture of operational excellence
3 — Daily WhatsApp (M-F)
Every workday:
- Quick texts, voice notes, videos
- Ask questions, share wins, and unblock issues
Included for a Limited Time: Custom Installation of Office OS
Your projects need one place to live → the single source of truth.
I built Office OS as an intuitive workspace for civil contractors that:
- Shows the status of every project and what’s next
- Houses your SOPs and templates
- Keeps comms visible and reduces verbal chaos
So what does it do?
Office OS Gets Everyone on the Same Page
Right now, all the information you have about a single construction project lives… everywhere. Your brain, your team members’ brains, paper notebooks, your Notes app, Excel spreadsheets, and a hundred emails.
It’s hard for you to find anything. It’s even harder to get everyone on the same page. And when people don’t know what’s happening or what needs to happen next, mistakes happen.
Office OS is a unified home where the vital details of every project are kept up-to-date. Anyone who needs to know anything about any project can access it 24/7.
Office OS Shows You the Big Picture and Ensures Everyone Gets the Little Details Right
With Office OS, you’ll:
- See the full picture. Know the status of every project: where it’s at now + what’s next.
- Standardize how work gets done. Use templates to write and store all your SOPs.
- Plan ahead. Be proactive to push projects forward, not reactive to rescue them from avoidable mistakes.
Office OS is a Tool That Helps You Grow
Lean teams love using Office OS to plan, standardize, and track their work because:
- It increases profitability and reduces waste by making your business more lean.
- It reduces the amount of time that is currently required to manage project work.
- It gives you the ability to scale your business sustainably.
Office OS Costs Over $9,000 — But You Get It for Free
A custom installation of Office OS costs $9,250. When you commit to performance coaching, I waive the installation fee and give you a free lifetime license.
You don’t have to figure out how to use Office OS by yourself. I’ll install it for your business and train you and your team on how to use it.
I’ll even host a live training for your office staff to get them up and running. Soon, they won’t believe they used to manage projects with emails, Excel, piles of sticky notes, and frantic phone calls.
The Guarantee
Save $10,000 in 90 days… or I pause your future payments.
After 90 days of working together, if you can’t easily think of at least one $10,000 success story—an example of how the improvements we’ve made together have saved you at least $10,000 from avoiding mistakes, delays, and rework—I’ll pause all future payments until you do.
So Here’s Exactly What You Get
Daily Performance Coaching
- Clarify your lean vision and implement best-practice processes.
- Twice-monthly coaching calls to define standard of quality, make communication visible, cut friction, and build a culture of operational excellence.
- Unlimited, daily, async access to me on WhatsApp.
A Custom Office OS License
- Your custom build of Office OS, a single workspace for every detail of every project.
- Installation included at no additional cost.
- Onboarding, training, and support, so your full team will actually use this tool to communicate clearly, avoid mistakes, and help work get done in the field.
Lean Dirt’s Daily Performance Coaching — $3750/mo
Schedule Your Discovery Call Today!
What Clients Are Saying
Zack teaches you the mindset to build a lean, standardized, and efficient business—powered by a culture of people working toward the same goal: getting better every day. As I tell everyone I talk to about Zack’s methods: you want this, your people want this, and your customers want this.
— Matt Gillett, Owner of Gillett Excavating
Our company has been in business for ten years, and while some of our issues are due to geographic and seasonal challenges, our growth has stagnated due to a lack of structure and repeatable processes. Since working with Zack, we’ve been able to provide our team with clear expectations and our “standard way” of doing what we do. We were taught methods and tools to improve and standardize our way of doing our work and, better yet, can train inexperienced team members. While sometimes it’s easy to be embarrassed about the flaws that we have within our businesses, realize that Zack has seen it all. He’s personable, approachable, and helpful. And wants you, your people, and your business to succeed.
— Dave Newby, Owner of Great Divide Earthworks
I work with dozens of top-notch excavation contractors. I see the successes and the struggles in the industry. And I’ve watched first-hand as Zack has brought incredible value by showing the Ground Crew community how to create processes and systems to make their business run better (even when their self-proclaimed “not systems” people).
— Benjamin Holmgren, Owner of Kestaa
Limited-Time Annual Bonus: FREE Two-Day Onsite Accelerator
When you commit to a year of Daily Performance Coaching, you’ll get a free two-day Onsite Accelerator: normally, $12,000.
Civil contractors who want to see improvement fast bring me in for two days to:
- Audit the field and office workflows
- Train you and your team on lean fundamentals
- Install your custom build of Office OS
A two-day Onsite Accelerator costs $12,000. But when you commit to and pay in advance for a year of Daily Performance Coaching, I’ll give it to you absolutely FREE. I’ll visit your office for two full days and won’t charge you my travel costs.
Lean Dirt’s Daily Performance Coaching — $3750/mo or $45k/yr