Back to homebuilding’s basics of doing more with less … faster

In today’s homebuilding economy—where interest rates whiplash buyer demand, costs remain stubbornly high, and affordability pressures crush margins—one truth grows clearer by the month: something’s got to give.

That “something” may be the industry’s muscle-memory tolerance for inefficiency—its broken handoffs, its clunky field coordination, its rampant rework.

To win more buyers at price points they can stomach and finance, builders will need to bend the cost curve down. Squeezing subs, bidding materials, or cutting corners won’t cut it. 

It will happen by learning—fast—how to do more with less, in less time.

And that’s where my late friend and mentor Fletcher Groves III’s wisdom, coming out of the Global Financial Crisis days, surfaces as more relevant than ever.

The pipeline as a profit engine

Groves, a revered thinker and teacher of production homebuilding operations, pioneered the idea of the “Pipeline Workshop.” He broke the end-to-end lifecycle of a new home down into its constituent parts: 450 SKUs, 20,000 pieces, 700 BOM line items, 25 trade crews. Every new home, about 2,100 square feet, became a relay race—where time, not just budget, was the scarcest resource.

“By cutting down on cycle time,” Groves taught, “a builder can produce its usual home cycles more quickly and create greater returns from a finite investment. A builder with an 18% gross margin and an 80-day cycle time would outperform a builder with a 24% gross margin and a 180-day cycle time by a ratio of 2-to-1.”

Groves advocated a shift from conventional “critical path” scheduling to critical chain project management—where time buffers are added to the system, not the tasks. Velocity wasn’t just a KPI—it was the path to resilience and profit.

What’s slowing builders down?

In the field, the causes of delay are often painfully mundane: a missed fireblock, a buried cleanout, a broken tie-down, a forgotten nail plate. Each mistake begets a cascade—rework, reschedule, rebid, reinspection.

It’s in this real-world tangle that TraceAir’s new TraceWalk 360°solution steps in—not as a back-office dashboard or abstract analytic, but as a simple, field-ready checklist tool designed for supers and trade partners, right where delays begin.

“When we talk to builders, the same challenge keeps coming up,” says Aldin Traljic, Process Management Engineer at TraceAir. “Handoffs between trades are where things fall apart. TraceWalk 360° is about giving homebuilders the ability to verify that every trade finishes what they’re supposed to—before the next one shows up.”

TraceWalk: the camera and checklist for velocity

At its core, TraceWalk is deceptively simple: a visual, app-based inspection and checklist tool powered by photos, timestamps, and standardized QC workflows. It turns a chaotic, inconsistent field-inspection process into a repeatable discipline that eliminates errors before they turn into downstream problems.

“We didn’t want to build a tool that just added to the digital clutter,” says Traljic.
“It had to be fast, easy, and actually useful in the field. TraceWalk works because it’s simple and because it’s built for the job site—not the back office.”

Builder voices: from chaos to control

Several builders currently piloting or rolling out TraceWalk shared reactions that range from relief to revelation. Greg Paradis, Director of Construction at Colorado-based Treehouse Builders, notes:

“TraceWalk & the development staff have changed the game of jobsite documentation! The interior 360° scans have provided our company a true snapshot in time in a full video format. This has allowed our management team perform quality walks involving our teams from across the country. We are also able to identify and document construction defects & resolutions. TraceWalk allows our Superintendents to share scans with trade partners, vendors, executives & investors as a valuable tool to resolve issues, correct errors or provide progress updates. I am excited to be part of the pilot program & look forward to see what comes next.”

Handoff management, not just task management

While many construction tech tools focus on assigning tasks, TraceWalk zooms in on the riskiest moments in the build cycle: the trade-to-trade handoffs.

“One missed item—like a missing nail plate or uninspected fireblock—can cost builders days of delay, rework, or failed inspections,” Traljic says. “TraceWalk creates a checklist and a record, so nothing gets skipped or missed.”

This isn’t just documentation—it’s proactive risk prevention. It’s also a practical way to standardize quality control across divisions and communities, regardless of which foreman or trade partner is on site.

Builders need guardrails, not brakes

In a market where getting to closing faster can be the difference between profit and loss, TraceWalk’s value proposition isn’t an abstract. It’s operational.

“We think of TraceWalk as a guardrail for velocity,” says Traljic. “It doesn’t slow you down—it helps you go faster, with fewer surprises and less rework.”

Return on velocity, not just investment

At a time when many tech solutions are fighting to prove ROI, TraceWalk’s pitch is refreshingly blunt: prevent even one failed inspection or rework cycle per house, and the savings more than pay for the platform.

“The real ROI isn’t just in saving time—it’s in saving cycles,” Traljic says. “If you can get just one more home built in a community this year because you avoided delays, that’s value.”

Doing more with less time and money

As builders look to restore affordability for buyers without torching their own margin structures, the only lever left may be operational velocity. Fewer errors, faster inspections, smoother handoffs—it’s not glamorous, but it is essential.

Groves knew this. He called it “the hidden value in how you build.” TraceWalk brings that hidden value into the open—and puts it in the palm of a field superintendent’s hand.

“We’re talking about hundreds of acres and millions of dollars. If something goes wrong, it’s not just a small setback—it’s a massive risk,” says Brandon Byrd, Land Development Project Manager, D.R. Horton. “TraceAir helps me protect myself, protect our division, and protect our company. And if a question ever comes up later, I can pull up a scan from weeks or months ago to see exactly what happened and when. That historical data is incredibly powerful.”

It’s about what’s working now.

TraceAir may have built TraceWalk, but the story isn’t theirs alone. It belongs to the builders finally realizing that the costliest delays don’t happen in the budget—they happen in the dirt, in the walls, in the field.

And in this market, field-level waste is no longer affordable.