There is a version of success that slowly destroys a contracting business. It looks like a full backlog. It looks like revenue growth. It looks like every estimator working late and every crew deployed. From the outside, it looks like a company firing on all cylinders.
From the inside, it feels like something is breaking.
The contractors feeling this right now are not struggling because work dried up. They are struggling because they said yes too many times, to too many projects, without enough people to execute them well. And the cost of that pattern is showing up in places that don’t appear on a revenue report.
Full backlog, thin bench
The construction market has handed contractors something unusual over the past few years: more opportunity than they can handle. Between data center builds, infrastructure spending, and a steady flow of institutional and commercial work, many electrical, mechanical, and specialty contractors are turning away work or, worse, not turning it away when they should be.
The temptation to take on every available project is understandable. Contractors have long memories. They remember the last downturn. They remember slow years when they had to cut crews and chase bad work just to keep the lights on. When the phone is ringing, the instinct is to answer it.
But there is a difference between a healthy backlog and an overcommitted one. A healthy backlog means you have the right people on the right projects with enough margin to absorb the inevitable surprises. An overcommitted backlog means you are staffing jobs with whoever is available rather than whoever is best, you are pushing superintendents and PMs across more projects than they can realistically manage, and you are hoping that nothing goes wrong on three jobs at once.
Hope is not an operations strategy.
Where the damage actually shows up
The cost of overcommitment rarely shows up as a single catastrophic failure. It shows up as a slow erosion across the business.
Quality starts to slip. Not dramatically, not in ways that trigger a lawsuit, but in ways that generate punch list callbacks, rework, and warranty claims that eat into margins months after a project was supposed to be closed out. The crew that normally wouldn’t miss a detail is now rushing because they are being pulled to another site tomorrow.
Schedules stretch. When you are juggling manpower across too many active projects, somebody is always waiting. The mechanical crew was supposed to start Tuesday but got held over on a different job through Thursday. That two-day slip cascades into a week, and now the GC is sending letters.
Your best people burn out. Superintendents running three projects instead of two don’t complain at first. They absorb it because that is what experienced field leaders do. But over time, the phone calls at dinner, the Saturday site visits, and the constant context-switching take a toll. The people you can least afford to lose are the ones most likely to walk when they have been running too hard for too long.
And client relationships fray. The owner who hired you because of your reputation for quality and responsiveness notices when you are slower to return calls, slower to resolve issues, and less present on their jobsite. They may not say anything this time. They just don’t call you next time.
The margin illusion
Here is the part that makes this pattern so dangerous: the financials can look fine while it is happening.
Revenue is up. The backlog report is strong. If you measure health by top-line numbers, everything appears to be working. But the margins on individual projects are quietly compressing. Change orders that should have been caught in preconstruction get missed because the estimating team was already onto the next bid. Material cost escalations that should have been flagged in buyout get absorbed because nobody had time to negotiate properly. Labor overruns on one project get buried in the overhead of the overall portfolio.
By the time the annual financials tell the real story, the damage is already done. You worked a record year and made the same profit you made three years ago with 30 percent less revenue. The team is exhausted. And you are starting the next year with less capacity, not more, because two good people left and recruiting replacements in this labor market is a six-month process on a good day.
What saying no actually protects
The contractors who are building sustainable, profitable businesses right now share a common trait: they have gotten more selective, not less, as the market has heated up.
They are evaluating opportunities not just on revenue but on fit. Does this project match our strengths? Do we have the right crew available? Is the schedule realistic given what we already have in the field? Is the client someone we want a long-term relationship with, or is this a one-time low-margin grind?
They are protecting their estimating capacity. Instead of bidding everything that comes across the desk, they are qualifying opportunities earlier and spending their preconstruction time on the pursuits most likely to result in profitable, well-run work. When you are running a 20 percent hit rate on bids, being more selective about which 10 you pursue often produces better results than grinding through 15.
They are being honest with clients about capacity. Telling a GC or an owner “we’d love to work on this, but our schedule won’t allow us to give it the attention it deserves” is a hard conversation. But it protects the relationship far more than taking the job and underperforming on it. The GC who hears that honesty is more likely to call you first on the next one.
And they are investing in the infrastructure that lets them scale without breaking. Better systems for project handoff. Clearer documentation so that institutional knowledge isn’t trapped in one person’s head. Stronger preconstruction processes so the jobs they do take are set up to succeed before the first day on site.
The question worth asking
If your team is stretched thin, your margins are flatter than they should be given how busy you are, and your best people are running harder than they have in years, the issue probably is not that you need more work. It is that you need fewer, better projects with the operational discipline to execute them at the level your reputation was built on.
The market will not stay this hot forever. When it cools, the contractors who will be in the strongest position are not the ones who chased every dollar during the boom. They are the ones who protected their margins, kept their best people, and maintained the quality that earned them their reputation in the first place.
Saying no is not leaving money on the table. It is making sure the table is still standing when the cycle turns.
People Say
We recently had Chris Carr present to our members on behalf of Dynaimix, and it was an overwhelming success. We had a full classroom, and the engagement throughout the session was outstanding. Many attendees who initially felt intimidated by AI left feeling empowered and confident in how they can begin applying it in their work.
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Brubacher engaged Chris , founder of Dynaimix, in a two-day mind-stretching exploration of current AI capabilities, future direction, and most importantly he outlined the likely impacts to our business. He introduced us to a variety of AI tools to explore using to increase efficiency. Some participants immediately identified ways to save hours per week while others began using AI-enabled tools to offset areas in which they lack skills. Chris is high-energy, kept our attention, and has been attentive in follow-up.
We had the pleasure of having Chris Carr present at our annual planning meeting at Oliver Fire Protection & Security, which is a critical event for setting the direction of our year. Our goal was to give our strategic leadership team a stronger understanding of artificial intelligence and how it will impact our business. Chris delivered his state of AI presentation and completely blew our team away. His depth of knowledge, paired with practical, real-world examples, made the topic both clear and compelling.
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I had the opportunity to bring Chris Carr to the NECA Districts 6 and 9 Summer Conferences on the North Shore of Hawaii, where he came in locked and loaded and delivered two impactful sessions—one for each district. What I appreciate most about Chris and the Dynaimix team is his genuine passion for what he presents and his constant focus on applying AI in practical, meaningful ways for the electrical contracting industry.
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I’ve had the opportunity to see Chris’s State of AI presentation multiple times, and each experience reinforced his strong grasp of AI—where it’s going, how quickly the landscape is changing, and what that means for electrical contractors. What sets Chris apart is his ability to take an incredibly complex topic and make it both approachable and immediately relevant to our industry.
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At the 2025 WICA Annual Convention in beautiful Lake Tahoe, Chris Carr presented on the State of AI for our Insulation Contractor and Associate members. He emphasized the importance of AI literacy, the role of AI governance through an AI council, and how to effectively pair AI with custom code to drive real business impact. Chris has a gift for explaining complex topics in a way everyone can understand, and the session was engaging and highly relevant. Our members found it captivating, the feedback was excellent, and I would highly recommend Chris and the Dynaimix team.
We were extremely pleased with the Program that Dynaimix provided for our Members. From the feedback I received from our Members, it was easy to understand and provided practical grass roots education on understanding how AI could increase time saving skills and knowledge about subject matter. The process of booking the presentation was seamless and the communication with dynAimix leading up to the event was outstanding. We look forward to hosting another presentation with them in the near future.
We had the privilege of having Chris Carr present to our leadership team after first seeing him speak at a peer group event. That experience led us to bring him in for a two-day Intro to AI training where he covered the foundational elements of artificial intelligence. Prior to the training, Chris met with us to understand our business, which allowed him to tailor the content specifically to our needs. What impressed us most was his ability to explain complex concepts in a clear and easy-to-understand way.
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Partnering with Dynaimix AI has been a tremendous step forward for our organization. Their customized, in-person training reached more than 300 of our employees and consistently exceeded expectations. The sessions were engaging, practical, and highly relevant, and many team members shared that they learned far more about AI than they anticipated.
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Chris presented at our Annual Summer Membership Meeting for the National Electrical Contractors Association (NECA), Northeastern Illinois Chapter, and our members were absolutely blown away. The response was so strong that his team followed up with a two-day Intro to AI training for our members, hosted at our location in Illinois. The training was led by Todd Smith, and it was incredibly powerful, highly digestible, and easy to understand.
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Chris Carr
Mark Oestreicher
Todd Smith
Dan Callahan
Erin Larkin
Andrew Pilato
Dynaimix AI Public Speaking Schedule
One of the missions of Dynaimix AI is to educate businesses, industries, and professionals about the transformative impact of the coming wave of artificial intelligence. We aim to share insights into how AI will shape the future of work and provide practical lessons, techniques, and tactics to enhance AI literacy.
Below is our public speaking schedule. Please check back regularly, as new dates and events are added each week.