A while back, I built a complete field service management platform for the first time. It worked. But building it taught me as much about what I'd do differently as it taught me about field service software itself.
So I built it again — FieldOS — the way I'd build it now, with everything I picked up the first time around. And this time I tracked every real hour it took, start to finish. Not to hit a deadline. To finally answer a question I'd always guessed at before: how much time does a project like this actually take, and what is that time genuinely worth to the business paying for it?
I do maintenance for a car dealership, an auto parts warehouse, a body shop, and five parts stores in my day job, so I've seen firsthand what off-the-shelf field service software costs a business — and how much of it a smaller crew never touches. FieldOS is built so a business only pays for the pieces it actually needs. But the real question underneath this series isn't what to charge. It's how to price custom work in a way that's honest about what the work is worth, without pricing a small business out of getting it built at all. This series is that experiment, told through the build itself.
How the Core System Works
