Past job data does not just describe where the business has been. It describes where the business is best positioned to go. The business that knows its job history in detail has a forecast. The business that doesn’t is guessing about its next move.
The five numbers from Article 42 tell the owner where the business stands right now. The job-history pattern analysis tells the owner where the business has been doing its best work over the past year or two. The two pictures together form the basis for the decisions in the year-end review that follows.
The Job-History Pattern Analysis examines three dimensions that together produce a clear signal about what work to pursue, reprice, or leave behind.
Why Gut Instinct Produces the Wrong Work Mix
The obvious problem is recency bias. When a contractor decides which work to focus on next, they disproportionately weight the last few jobs. If the last commercial was difficult, they avoid it; if the last residential was smooth, they want more. The pattern in the data may say something entirely different.
The less visible cost is pattern blindness. Two or three jobs of the same type in a row produce the impression of a pattern. The actual pattern requires looking at eight to twelve jobs of each type to see the variance, the margin trend, and the problem frequency. Without that view, the business operates on impression rather than evidence.
The deepest cost is the accumulated misallocation. A contractor responding to gut instinct for five years has built a work mix that reflects recent experiences rather than best-performing work types. The best-performing category may not be the most recently experienced one.
The Job-History Pattern Analysis
The Job-History Pattern Analysis examines three dimensions across the completed jobs of the last one to two years. Each dimension tells a different part of the story.
Dimension 1 reveals which job types have produced the most volume
Dimension 1 is the volume count: for each job type the business has taken, how many jobs were completed in the last twelve to twenty-four months?
Volume answers one question: where has the business been spending its time? A work type representing sixty percent of completed jobs is one the business is currently built around, whether intended or not.
Dimension 2 reveals which job types have paid the strongest margins
Dimension 2 is the margin analysis from the Job Profitability Analysis: what has the average margin been per job type after all costs?
Margin answers one question: which work has actually been paying? The work type that represents sixty percent of volume may not be the work type producing the strongest margins. That gap is where the business opportunity or the problem usually lives.
Dimension 3 reveals which job types have produced the most problems
Dimension 3 is the problem frequency: for each job type, how many jobs generated call-backs, client disputes, change-order complications, or scope problems?
Problem frequency answers one question: which work types are the highest risk? A work type with strong margins but high problem frequency requires more owner time to manage than the margin reflects. A work type with moderate margins and near-zero problem frequency may be more valuable than it appears.
How the Living Library Reads Your Job-History Pattern
A contractor using gut instinct to decide which work to focus on next draws from their recent experience. That experience represents six to twelve jobs. It may or may not reflect the business’s actual performance pattern.
With the job-history records in the Library’s Analytics Collection, the picture is different. Without the Library, building this analysis requires pulling job records from multiple places and calculating margins and problem frequencies manually. With the Analytics Collection tracking completed jobs as they are added, the pattern analysis is current and ready. The Conductor reads from that collection and returns the three-dimension picture: which work types have the best volume-margin-problem combination, and which have the worst.
The owner sees the business’s actual pattern, not the impression of it.
Map the Three Dimensions Before the Year-End Review
Don’t wait for the year-end to run this analysis. Run it in the two or three weeks before, while the data from the year is fresh and the decisions are still being formed.
Pull the last twelve to eighteen completed jobs. For each, note the job type, the margin (from the job cost data), and whether there were significant problems. Map the three dimensions. The pattern that emerges from the data is the signal.
That signal is the primary input for the year-end review in Article 45: which work to pursue more of, which to price differently, and which to leave behind.
The Pattern That Changes the Plan for Next Year
When the job-history pattern is visible, the next year’s plan is built from evidence, not instinct. The business that knows its three-dimension picture can commit to a work mix that reflects what has actually performed well. That commitment is what makes the next year’s decisions more deliberate than reactive. Try Kiluma free for 14 days at kiluma.ai.