BrickHouse / FAQ
Straight answers, including the ones that aren’t flattering.
We design, build and support small business operations. In practice that’s four things: a free Walk — thirty to sixty minutes on your floor to see what’s broken; the Systems Inventory — a signed record of every system you run and what the gaps cost; a Build step that makes the fix — custom, around how you run; and optional per-system Support on what we’ve built.
Operations-heavy businesses of roughly 15 to 250 people — field service companies, manufacturers, distributors, food producers, trades, logistics. Big enough that a delay costs real money and information has to travel between people; small enough that the owner or operations lead can decide without a procurement cycle. We’re based in Ontario — the Walk happens on your floor or by video, and the build work runs remotely.
The Walk is free. The Systems Inventory is quoted after the Walk — fixed price, agreed in writing before anything starts — because scope depends on how many sites you run and what records exist. Builds are quoted per project — typically $4k–12k for a single system, $12k–35k for a connected build, $35k–60k for a full multi-site build. Support is priced per system and quoted with or after the build. The build ranges are on our pricing page.
The paid step, after a free Walk on your floor. You fill in a short portal, send an export of records you already keep, and we run three half-hour interviews. Two weeks later you get a system map, the three biggest gaps ranked and costed in your own figures, what to do about each — and the Inventory itself, signed by a certified engineering technologist. Your total time is about two hours.
That’s a normal answer and it doesn’t stop the Inventory. Plenty of operations run on radios, whiteboards and people knowing each other. We work from the interviews instead, and the fact that nothing is recorded becomes the first finding — usually an expensive one. Getting you a system that records anything at all is then recommendation number one.
Vendor onboarding configures their product, on the happy path, assuming you’ve already decided to buy it. Our work is the opposite end: the system that doesn’t exist to onboard — built custom around how you run, connected to what you already own, and supported after handover. If your situation genuinely is “install one tool, done,” we’ll tell you that for free, on the Walk.
You own your stack, your data and your documentation — the source, the configurations, the integrations, and the written reasoning behind every decision. We own our method, our templates and general-purpose components we wrote. If you leave, everything keeps running and we help with the handover.
We use it to run your Inventory and keep your stack working. It isn’t sold, shared or used to train anything. With your written permission we keep anonymised, aggregated timing figures for benchmarking — never your name, your customers or your commercial detail — and you can decline that without affecting anything else.
Alerting and monitoring, job and work-order tracking, compliance and policy tracking, scheduling, dashboards and reporting, machine-data capture, and the connective layer between the systems you already run — all built custom around your operation, hardware and software under one roof. Specific recommendations come out of the Inventory, matched to how you actually run, with the reasoning in writing.
No. Every engagement is a fixed price agreed before work starts. If scope changes because you want something added, that’s quoted as its own project rather than quietly expanding the bill.
The Systems Inventory is two weeks from receiving your data. A single-system build runs two to four weeks, a connected build four to eight, a hardware-and-software build six to twelve. Your own time commitment for the Inventory is about two hours.
We start there. The Walk — the first thing we do — happens on your floor, free. The build work after that runs remotely: data by export, interviews by video, implementation by API and screen share. Return visits when they help, at our cost.
Chemicals, aerospace, automotive and defence. Long validation cycles and heavy compliance regimes need a specialist with certifications we don’t hold. We’d rather say so up front than waste six months of your time.
Because most of those engagements sold a solution before understanding the problem — a five-figure strategy document that sat in a folder while nothing changed. Roughly 42% of companies abandoned a technology initiative last year, and the majority of failures come down to integration rather than the technology itself. The Inventory exists so nothing gets recommended without a measured gap and a dollar figure behind it. And the guarantee means if the report doesn’t earn its fee, you don’t pay it.
Because the Walk costs nothing, the Inventory carries a guarantee, and the deliverable is useful whether or not you buy anything else. If the Inventory doesn’t put your operation on paper, with at least one fix worth building, you don’t pay. That’s the smallest sensible way to find out whether we’re any good.
The report has to put your operation on paper: the signed Inventory, the gaps ranked with what each costs, and at least one recommendation worth acting on. If you don’t think it did, say so within ten business days — we fix what’s missing, and if we can’t, you don’t pay. What it isn’t: a promise about outcomes — acting on the findings is up to you.
Support is optional and priced per system: a named certified engineering technologist, a written response commitment, break-fix on what we built, and tuning and updates as your operation changes. Month to month — stop any time, and everything keeps running, because you own the stack.
When you need it fixed next week — the Inventory alone takes two weeks. When you want someone on site every day — after the Walk, the deep work happens remotely between visits. When you already have an internal operations or continuous-improvement person with capacity, because they know your business better than we will. And when the real problem is people rather than process, which no system fixes. We also don’t work in chemicals, aerospace, automotive or defence.
A complete list of what your operation actually runs on — every tool, spreadsheet, script and automation, who owns each one, and what breaks if it stops. It’s included in every Systems Inventory at no extra charge. Most owners have never seen this list for their own business, and it’s becoming the document buyers, insurers and lenders ask for first.
Usually, yes — and if not, we’ll say so plainly. Roughly 42% of companies abandoned a technology initiative last year, and the majority of failures trace to integration and implementation rather than the tool itself. We audit what you bought, work out why it isn’t delivering, and either fix the setup, replace it with something that fits, or tell you honestly that it was never the right purchase.
Acquirers pay more for operations that run on documented systems instead of the owner’s memory — and they discount hard for the opposite. The Inventory’s system map and Systems Inventory are exactly the documents due diligence asks for. Getting them in order years before a sale costs almost nothing; producing them in the middle of one is expensive and slow.
Our own people. Every Inventory and every implementation is run by a BrickHouse employee — we don’t franchise or subcontract delivery to another firm. Someone may introduce you to us and earn a referral commission for it, which we disclose in your engagement letter, but they take no part in the work and never see your data.
Support runs month to month — stop any time. You already own the systems, the data and the documentation, so nothing stops working. We’ll export what you need and brief whoever takes over.
One conversation, no deck. Describe it in plain language and we will tell you honestly whether it is a tooling fix, a process fix, or something you should not spend money on at all.
Tell us what’s broken