Gross margin improvement captured over the three-year engagement — while the company kept growing
Case study — Bliss Products
How Bliss Products built the operations to hold rapid growth
Bliss Products is a playground and athletic-surface construction contractor serving federal clients, including the US Navy, and commercial customers. The company was growing fast — on systems built for a much smaller business, where every new dollar of growth came with a bigger operational cost attached. Over a three-year engagement, Trampetti rebuilt the operating foundation in parallel with active growth: no pause, no big-bang cutover — and a 7% gross margin improvement captured along the way.
Core operating systems rebuilt in parallel with active growth — CRM, field docs, billing, SOV, SOPs, org structure
Manual filing — field photos auto-route to the correct project folder
Every invoice entered once — double entry between QuickBase and QuickBooks eliminated
The ceiling
Every construction business eventually outgrows the systems that got it there. Bliss had reached that point at full speed — and it showed up in four places at once.
The company was still winning work. The problem was what happened after the win: more projects meant more administrative drag, more billing risk, and more dependence on specific people. Growth was making the company bigger, but not stronger. Bliss couldn’t pause growth to replace its systems. The foundation had to be rebuilt around live projects — and keep working at a much larger scale than the one it was built at.
- The CRM couldn’t hold the business. Multi-quote, multi-location opportunities didn’t fit the structure. Change orders and warranty work lived outside the system entirely.
- Field documentation never reliably reached the office. Photos and records were misfiled or manually re-filed, project by project.
- Invoicing carried compliance risk. Compliance checks were manual, and every invoice was entered twice — once in QuickBase, once in QuickBooks.
- Nothing was written down. Core workflows lived in individual employees’ heads, not in SOPs anyone else could run.
The work behind the results
This was operations consulting, not a software installation. Every system below is a redesigned process first and a tool second — technology configured around how work actually moves through the company.
Rebuilt the CRM around how jobs are actually sold
We restructured the QuickBase CRM for multi-quote, multi-location opportunities, with change order and warranty workflows built in — so the system finally matched how work is sold and delivered instead of forcing every deal into a shape that didn’t fit.
Closed the field-to-office gap
Field photos captured in FastField now route through QuickBase to the correct SharePoint project folder automatically. Zero manual filing — every photo and every document lands on the right project, every time.
Built compliance into the billing workflow
Invoice compliance logic now runs inside the workflow itself instead of relying on manual checks, and QuickBase connects directly to QuickBooks — eliminating double entry entirely. Less risk on every invoice, and hours of duplicated work gone.
Made milestone billing manageable
Public-sector and GC-subcontract jobs bill against a schedule of values, not a lump sum. We built a Schedule of Values tracker so milestone-based billing is visible, current, and defensible on every job that demands it.
Wrote the playbook down
We formalized SOPs for every major workflow, so the company runs on documented process instead of tribal knowledge — and built a Lessons Learned framework fed by each completed project, so every job makes the next one better.
Grew the org chart with the business
We redesigned team compensation and the reporting hierarchy to match the organization Bliss was becoming, not the one it grew out of. Accountability, visibility, and incentives now fit the company’s new scale.
This foundation was rebuilt while Bliss kept selling and delivering at full speed — and the company captured a 7% gross margin improvement along the way. Growth that made the company more profitable per dollar, not less.
How to grow a construction business past the ceiling
Bliss engaged Trampetti at the point where its original systems had reached their limit — the ceiling most owners in the $5M–$50M range are heading toward, whether they can see it yet or not. Three lessons from how Bliss broke through it:
Fix the workflow before you automate it
Every system in this engagement was a redesigned process first and a tool second. Automating a broken workflow just produces broken results faster.
Connect the field to the money
The gap between field documentation and billing is where margin leaks. Closing it is worth points of gross margin — not just convenience.
Grow the org chart with the revenue
SOPs, reporting lines, and compensation have to be rebuilt for the size you’re becoming, not the size you were. Revenue that outruns structure doesn’t hold.
Your next stage
Is your business outgrowing the systems that got it here?
Trampetti helps construction owners in the $5M–$50M range build the operating foundation for their next stage of growth — embedded operations leadership, not a deck or a report, working in parallel with the jobs you’re already running.