Construction PM, built from the trades.
Rough-In Advisory is the practice of Craig Gordon: construction project management and owner's representation for owners, franchisees, and franchisors who need someone in their corner who has actually done the work, and who runs it like a system, not a favor.
Trade first. PM second.
I came up through the trades. Many years as an IBEW electrician on major commercial and industrial sites, with carpentry, flooring, and other trade work filling out more than thirteen years on jobsites. I've worked as an electrician on a billion-dollar industrial refinery, a half-billion-dollar regional hospital, power-generation stations, an operating mine, and utility-scale wind and solar. Jobs where the consequences of a misread drawing or a missed coordination meeting were measured in weeks of delay and six-figure rework.
That experience shaped how I run projects today. Every choice on a build comes back to two things: what's actually going in the wall, and whether someone with a plan and a clipboard caught the issue before the trades showed up. Most of the time, no one did. That's the gap this practice was built to close.
Then I did what most tradesmen don't: I moved to the other side of the table and kept building. An owner's-rep record running franchise buildouts across the country at volume. Engineering-management training at the University of Michigan. A playbook I wrote down milestone by milestone, and software I built to run it. The hands earned the judgment. The rest of it is how that judgment scales.
Details matter. Plan the job right, run it right, close it out clean. No shortcuts. No surprises.
Hands-On
Customized to the Brand
Most PMs bring depth in one lane. I bring four.
The field is where my judgment comes from. It's not where my usefulness ends. Four things had to come together before this practice worked the way it does. Most firms offer one, maybe two.
Trade depth across the scopes that hurt.
Journeyman electrician, trained on hospital, refinery, power-generation, mining, and utility-scale wind and solar work. Electrical is the scope most PMs can't evaluate; I read it firsthand, from capacity to cost. Add carpentry, flooring, plumbing, and full kitchen installation. I don't need the sub to tell me what I'm looking at.
Owner's-rep delivery at franchise volume.
Full-lifecycle project management on commercial restaurant and retail buildouts: site selection through certificate of occupancy, multiple concurrent projects, remote oversight that holds quality without a truck in the parking lot. AIA contract administration, bid leveling, pay application review, SBA draw coordination. The whole desk.
Engineering management, formally.
Construction engineering and management training from the University of Michigan's College of Engineering: construction accounting, project scheduling, life-cycle analysis, project financing. The academic layer that turns field instinct into defensible analysis an owner can take to a lender.
A method written down, and software to run it.
Every engagement runs on a documented playbook: 100-200+ milestones per project, customized to the brand, SBA pre-qualification to final lien waiver. When nothing off the shelf matched how buildouts actually run, I built Conduit Project Flow to run them. Nothing on my projects depends on memory or tribal knowledge.
The way I run a job.
Read the drawings like a tradesman.
I came up through the trades, which means I read drawings the way someone who's had to build from them reads them, one line at a time, asking whether what's on paper can actually be installed in the space, on the schedule, for the budget. Most of what goes wrong on a rollout is visible in the drawings weeks before it becomes a change order.
Speak the trade language fluently.
When a landlord's broker tells your team the existing service "should be plenty," I know exactly what that sentence is worth, and I know the questions that turn it into a written answer before a lease gets signed. Electrical is where most of these problems get buried, and it's the area I know cold.
Catch it while it's still negotiable.
Most franchise tenants discover electrical, plumbing, or HVAC capacity problems after the ink dries, right about the time the upgrade cost lands on their side of the table. I review letters of intent, work letters, and delivery conditions before signing, push back on vague language, and make sure what the landlord is actually delivering matches what your concept actually needs.
Cut no corners. Ever.
I do things right, every time, no exceptions. The construction industry runs on shortcuts that look fine on day one and become problems on day ninety. My job is to be the one in the room who refuses to take them, and who has the trade depth to explain why, in writing, when someone pushes back.
From the trades to the owner's side of the table.
I came up in the trades and never left construction. Electrical work on some of the largest capital projects in the region, the rest of the building trades alongside it, then the owner's side of the table, running franchise buildouts across the country.
What sits behind a Rough-In Advisory engagement is the combination: a documented playbook running 100-200+ milestones on every job, the software I built from scratch to run it, engineering-management training from the University of Michigan, and a record of buildouts delivered on schedule with the documentation to prove it.
The hands, the record, the training, and the systems, pointed at your project.
Background & certifications.
- Construction Engineering & Management
- Journeyman Electrician
- Electrical Apprenticeship, Certificate of Completion
- OSHA 30-Hour Construction
- MSHA Certification
- Multi-Trade Field Experience
- Tools of the Desk
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