Every construction business has a Vinnie. The person who just knows things. Who catches problems before they happen, runs the job without being asked, and holds the whole operation together quietly. The problem isn't that Vinnie exists. It's that everything Vinnie knows lives in Vinnie's head. Here's how to get it out.

Kevin Peloso of Precision Design and Build was running 13.7% slippage on his projects, losing contract value through inefficiencies he couldn't see because he didn't have the systems to measure them. The root cause was keyman risk: his production manager Vinnie held 25 years of construction instincts in his head and nowhere else. Peloso built an extraction pipeline to fix that. He interviewed Vinnie on a recording device, ran the transcripts through Claude, and turned the raw knowledge into SOPs, a training playbook, and a bi-weekly training schedule. This issue walks through the exact workflow. Watch the episode here →

Precision Design and Build had happy clients, a growing revenue line, and a profitability problem nobody could pin down.

The industry benchmark for slippage, the leakage of contract value through project management inefficiencies, is 2% for great firms and 5% for good ones. Precision was running at 13.7%. They weren't losing money on bad jobs. They were losing it on every job, invisibly, because the systems to catch it didn't exist.

The deeper problem was where the "magic" lived. Their production manager Vinnie had 25 years of construction patterns in his head. He caught things. He knew things. But none of it was written down, trained, or transferable. The firm's ability to grow was capped by one person's individual capacity.

Peloso's fix wasn't to hire better people. It was to build a system that made his existing people better, using Vinnie's own knowledge as the raw material.

Three steps from expert instinct to repeatable training system.

Step 1: Interview your expert on a recording device (2 to 4 hours, done once per topic area).

Peloso used a tool called Plaude, a physical recording device, to conduct structured interview sessions with Vinnie. The key was coming in with a prepared question map, not an open conversation.

Before you record, build your question map using this Claude prompt:

"I want to interview a [role] with [X] years of experience in [industry] to extract their expertise into a training system. Write 20 interview questions that uncover the patterns, instincts, and decision-making processes that an experienced person uses but rarely explains out loud. Focus on: how they spot problems early, how they prioritize when things go wrong, what they do in the first hour on a new job, and what separates a good outcome from a bad one."

Run one session per topic area: estimating, scheduling, subcontractor management, client communication, quality control. Each session becomes its own training module.

Step 2: Run the transcript through Claude to build SOPs (30 minutes per session).

Once the recording is transcribed, paste it into Claude with this prompt:

"Below is a transcript of an interview with an experienced [role] about [topic]. Extract the key patterns, decision rules, and processes they describe and format them as a Standard Operating Procedure. Structure it with: a plain-language summary of the core principle, a step-by-step process, common mistakes to avoid, and one or two examples from the transcript that illustrate the concept in practice. Write it so a junior team member could follow it without asking questions."

Claude takes raw, conversational knowledge and turns it into structured, usable documentation. What was in one person's head is now on paper.

Step 3: Build a bi-weekly training cadence around the SOPs (ongoing).

Peloso's guiding principle for the training schedule: people need to be reminded more than they need to be taught. The SOPs aren't a one-time read. They're the basis for recurring 30-minute sessions every two weeks.

Use this prompt to build a training session from any SOP:

"Take this SOP: [paste SOP]. Write a 30-minute training session outline for a small construction team. Include: a five-minute recap of the core principle, a ten-minute walkthrough of a real scenario where this applies, ten minutes of discussion questions the trainer can use to pull examples from the team's own experience, and a five-minute summary with one specific takeaway. Keep the language direct and practical."

Run the session. Record it. Post a clip to Instagram or TikTok. The training becomes marketing.

1. Start with the person most likely to leave or retire.

The extraction pipeline is most urgent for the person whose departure would hurt most. That's usually not the owner. It's the production manager, the lead carpenter, the estimator who's been there 15 years. Identify that person and start recording them this week.

2. Ask about decisions, not descriptions.

The best interview questions aren't "how do you do X?" They're "what do you look for when X goes wrong?" and "what's the first thing you do when Y happens?" Instinct lives in decisions under pressure, not in descriptions of normal days. Build your question map around the hard moments.

3. Slippage is invisible until you measure it.

Most firms don't know their slippage rate because they don't track where contract value goes after signing. Before you can fix it, you need to see it. Start tracking actual hours against estimated hours on every project, by phase. One month of data will show you where the leaks are. The SOPs you build from the extraction process are targeted at closing those specific gaps.

4. Train PMs to manage the machine, not do the work.

Peloso's biggest mindset shift for his project managers: stop being the superstar who does the high-end work, and start being the person who keeps everything moving. A PM who's installing trim can't take a call from a subcontractor. A PM who's managing the site can. That shift in role definition, reinforced through training, is what lets the critical path keep moving when things get complicated.

5. Use the training content as a recruiting tool.

Posting clips of internal training on social media does two things at once: it shows potential clients that your team is intentional and professional, and it attracts candidates who want to work somewhere that actually invests in their development. Most construction firms can't show a new hire what their career path looks like. A training system that's visible on social media can.

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