Straight answers.
No marketing.

We run estimating and contract administration for custom residential builders. That means three things: we price the job before it goes under contract, we monitor cost against estimate every month it's on the tools, and we produce a single director-level report that tells the builder if the business is on track.

We are not a software company that bolts on services. We are a contract administration practice that built the software we needed. Hawktress™ is the cost intelligence layer that sits behind every estimate.

Custom residential builders in Australia running between 4 and 30 active jobs at any time. The methodology applies across knockdown rebuilds, custom new builds and substantial renovations on contracts between $600k and $4m.

Builders who want a final account that matches their estimate. Builders who already lost money on a sitework variation and never want to repeat it.

Geelong, Victoria. We work with builders across Geelong, the Bellarine Peninsula, the Surf Coast and the western Melbourne fringe. Engagements outside Victoria are case-by-case.

Nathan Holloway founded BuildHawk after two decades estimating and administering contracts on Australian residential jobs. John Ceballos heads operations. The team sits between the builder, the trades and the client — without being any of them.

A 30-minute discovery call. We look at three things: contract structure across the active book, last twelve months of variations, and how cost is currently tracked between estimate and final account. If the methodology is going to add more than its fee, we say so. If it is not, we say that too.

From there, onboarding takes 14 days. By day 15 the first monthly director report lands.

Cost monitoring across every active job. The 5% variance threshold flagging system. The monthly director report by the 5th of every month. Variation pricing review on every contract change. Trade package estimating for new contracts entering the book during the engagement.

We publish three engagement tiers on the pricing page. Pricing scales with the active book size — the number of jobs we monitor and the volume of estimating produced. Most builders engage on a 12-month minimum so the methodology has time to compound across at least two full project cycles.

No. The methodology only works when applied across the whole active book. A single job in a system that is otherwise unchanged tells you nothing about whether the engagement is working. We need to see the variance trend across at least four jobs to demonstrate value.

No. We replace the spreadsheet and the gut feel. Your CA still runs the job day to day. We give them a cost framework that flags problems while they can still be solved, and a reporting cadence that protects them from being blamed for things they could not see.

A monitoring trigger applied across each trade or BOQ section. When actual cost exceeds estimated allowance by 5% or more on any section, the job flags for review. The full piece is at /insights/five-percent-variance-threshold.

It is not a contingency, a markup buffer or a pricing allowance. It is a tolerance band. The point of the band is to surface a problem while a decision is still possible — absorb, recover or escalate. At 15% across multiple sections nobody caught, none of those decisions are available.

Weekly cost monitoring exists, but the report that drives director-level decisions runs on a monthly cadence because that is how cash, commitments and forecast align in a residential building business. The right cadence is the one that matches the rhythm of the decision being made.

Weekly reporting is for the CA. Monthly reporting is for the director. They are different artefacts.

Five sections, every month, in the same order. Portfolio summary. Job tracking grid. Flagged items. Aged debtors. Escalations requiring director sign-off in the next 14 days. Read in full at /insights/monthly-director-report-walkthrough.

Every change to contracted scope is identified, priced and approved before any work proceeds. No verbal approval. No back-end reconciliation at PC. Variations are invoiced progressively so cash position reflects actual cost at every stage. The system is documented at /insights/variation-control-three-questions.

A cost intelligence layer built from reconciled project data. Every job that completes feeds the next estimate. Estimators query Hawktress for comparable trade packages by postcode, build type and floor area before a contract is locked.

It is a reference database, not a workflow tool. The full background is at /insights/building-hawktress-builder-builds-software.

Hawktress is the platform behind every BuildHawk engagement. We do not licence it as a standalone product. The data only stays valuable if it sits inside the contract administration practice that maintains it.

Reconciled trade packages from completed BuildHawk jobs across Geelong and the western Melbourne fringe. Each record holds estimated cost, actual cost, variance, postcode, build type, floor area and completion date. The set grows with every job that lands at Practical Completion.

No identifying client, address or contract data leaves your file. The cost reference data is anonymised and used to validate estimates on subsequent jobs. The full data handling policy is at /data-policy.

None on your side that you are not already running. We work with the accounting and project management systems most Australian residential builders already use.

A shared workspace per builder. Weekly check-in on Mondays. Monthly director debrief after the report drops on the 5th. Anything urgent goes straight through phone or email — there is no ticketing system between you and us.

BuildHawk Pty Ltd carries professional indemnity and public liability insurance appropriate to a contract administration practice. Certificates available on request. We are not a registered building practitioner — we administer the contracts your registered builder holds.

Standard terms are published at /terms-builders. Twelve-month minimum, 60 days notice to terminate, no exit penalty. The methodology either earns its keep or it does not.

Yes. We arrange direct reference calls during the second discovery conversation. The builders we work with are the best argument for the engagement — and the most honest about where it is hard.