Every commercial building in this country depends on specialty contractors. The mechanical crew sizing pipe for a hospital's HVAC. The electricians pulling wire so a data center can go live. The fire protection team running sprinkler lines so a school meets code. They install the systems that keep people safe, comfortable, and connected — and they do it under pressure that most industries would never accept.

But the tools they've been given to manage that work were never built for them.

Specialty contractors have historically run their project operations inside platforms designed for the general contractor — systems built to look down, track compliance, and protect the GC's schedule. Not to help a mechanical sub manage its own labor across twelve concurrent jobs. Not to give an electrical PM visibility into cost exposure before a pay app comes back light. 

And when the GC closes out the portal or switches platforms, the specialty contractor often loses access to its own documentation, job history, and financial record.

So they fill the gaps. Spreadsheets for change order logs. Text threads for field updates. Email for RFI tracking. And somewhere — maybe Dropbox, maybe a shared drive — a folder no one can find when a dispute surfaces six months later.

One missed document. Six figures. It happens more than anyone wants to admit.

Contractors told us what they needed: their project financials, field documentation, and daily execution in the same system they already run service — not in a second platform they don't own.

We listened.

Projects: Built for the People Who Actually Do the Work

Today, Projects enters a new chapter — redesigned from the ground up as a unified project operations and financial management platform built specifically for specialty commercial contractors.

This is a fundamental shift in how specialty contractors can run construction work — from kickoff to closeout, in the same platform where 1,500+ contractors already run service.

Projects brings together five connected solutions under one roof: resource planning, field execution, document control, materials and subcontracts, and project financials — with the financial layer connected directly to the field work that creates it, and integrated with existing ERPs.

What that looks like in practice:

• RFIs and submittals rebuilt for trade workflows. Field crews flag issues directly from drawings on mobile — with photos and location pins — so nothing waits on a phone call.
• Change order management that keeps scope changes, approvals, and backup connected to the project record. When a CO gets challenged, the story's already assembled.
• Project-centric time tracking and daily reports that feed the same financial record. Labor hours, commitments, and field updates — one place.
• Lists that turn recurring checklists into repeatable SOPs — so delivery quality doesn't depend on which PM or crew is running the job.
• Reporting dashboards that connect field execution to financial outcomes — cost exposure, margin risk, and billing status while there's still time to act.

And through it all, OpsAI works quietly in the background — flagging risk, surfacing missing backup, and cutting the admin that buries project teams.

"For the first time, a specialty contractor can run its entire business on one platform — with the financial layer connected directly to the field work that creates it," said Alok Chanani, Co-Founder and CEO of BuildOps. "Change orders, retainage, commitments — all of it lives in the same system as the daily report that drives it. OpsAI surfaces a margin slip the same week it happens, not three months later when the pay app comes back light. That's a fundamentally different way to run this business."

Built Alongside the Contractors Who Need It

BuildOps didn't build Projects in a vacuum. Over the past year, the company brought in executive leadership from Autodesk and Procore — including CMO Colin Piper and CPO Will Lehrmann — to accelerate its push into construction alongside service. Projects was shaped directly by contractors who were tired of stitching together disconnected tools and losing control of their own data every time a GC switched platforms.

If the GC portal is where the GC runs the job, BuildOps is where you run your business — across every GC, every project, every year.

Your project history stays with you. Your documentation stays with you. Your financial truth stays with you.

That's what contractors have been asking for.

This Is Just the Beginning

The commercial trades don't need another tool to manage. They need fewer tools and more clarity.

Projects is how specialty contractors take back control — of their data, their decisions, and their outcomes. It's how a PM spends less time chasing updates and more time managing the job. It's how a controller gets the financial picture they need without reconciling spreadsheets at month-end. It's how a VP of Operations finally sees reality across every project, in real time, before problems become permanent.

The days of running your business inside someone else's system are over.

Projects is available today: https://buildops.com/projects