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Contractors & exterior cleanersCommercialGovernment

The operating system your contracting business actually owns.

I run an exterior cleaning company, and I built this for it first. Marketing and back-office systems for contractors and trades across the Willamette Valley — plus commercial and public-sector work. Salem-based, on-site.

Or call (971) 915-8401

Patrick Roden — AI consultant and developer, Salem Oregon, carrying a hard hat and tool bag
Exterior cleaning operatorMBAPMPCBAPVeteran-owned15 years enterprise consulting
01Proof

I did this to my own company first

On Top Home Services is my exterior cleaning business. It ran on WordPress, Smartsheet, Google Drive and DocuSign — four subscriptions, four renewal dates, and the same customer detail typed into each. These are the actual screens. It now runs on one system it owns.

Before4 tools · 4 bills · 4 renewal dates
01WordPress
The On Top Home Services WordPress site before the rebuild
The public site and every word on it — edited by someone else, on their schedule.
02Smartsheet
A Smartsheet grid holding jobs, scheduling, accounting and mileage. Customer name and phone columns are redacted.
Jobs, scheduling, accounting and mileage in one grid — customer columns redacted here.
03Google Drive
A Google Drive file list of estimates and invoices. Every filename is redacted.
Quotes, estimates and invoices as loose documents — filenames redacted here.
04DocuSign
The DocuSign upload screen. The customer document thumbnail and filename are redacted.
Signatures, per envelope, on documents assembled by hand somewhere else.
Four separate tools consolidated into one owned operating systemBefore: WordPress held the site, Smartsheet held jobs and scheduling, DocuSign held signatures and Google Docs held quotes. The same customer detail was re-entered by hand in each one, and no tool could answer a question that spanned two of them. After: a single system owned outright carries content, scheduling, documents and invoicing against one customer record, so a detail is entered once and every part of the business reads the same answer.BEFOREFour systems. One business.WordPresssite + contentSmartsheetjobs, schedule,accounting, mileageDocuSignsignaturesGoogle Docsquotes + notesThe same customer detail, typed four times.No tool can answer a question spanning two of them.Four subscriptions. Four renewal dates. Four vendors.AFTEROne system. Owned outright.Content & siteJobs & schedulingAccounting & mileageDocuments & signatureQuoting & invoicingEntered once. Every module reads the same record.One login, one bill, one owner — you.
After1 system · owned outright
The On Top Home Services content management and operations dashboard, powered by SQUEIL, showing job management, contract management, calendaring, accounting and content modules
One system. Job management, contract management, calendaring, accounting and the whole public site — one login, one owner. No customer data appears on this screen; the modules above it are what replaced the four tools.

Customer names, phone numbers, filenames and document contents are redacted in the three screenshots above. They are live production tools, and the redactions are left visible rather than cropped out — a cropped screenshot asks you to take it on trust that nothing was hidden.

02Services

What I actually do

Four lines of work. Each one is sold as named deliverables built on products already proven in my own business — you see what you receive before a number is attached to it.

AI Automation

Priced by deliverable

Field service and job management software that replaces the repetitive back-office work — quoting, scheduling, invoicing, intake — for exterior cleaning, roof cleaning and contracting crews.

  • The same customer detail gets typed into four different tools
  • Quotes wait on one person being at a laptop
  • Nobody can answer "what did we invoice last month" without a spreadsheet session

AI Consulting

Priced by deliverable

Spec-first reviews and honest answers about where AI and automation are worth the money in a contracting or exterior cleaning operation — and where they plainly are not.

  • Leadership has been told to "do something with AI" and nobody has defined what
  • Three vendors have quoted three incompatible things
  • A pilot ran, impressed everyone, and changed no operational number

AI Marketing

Priced by deliverable

Local SEO for contractors — pressure washing, roof cleaning, gutters, decks — built on the playbook that put an exterior cleaning company on the first page in various Oregon cities.

  • You rank for your own business name and nothing else
  • An agency reports impressions and traffic but never calls booked
  • Competitors with worse work outrank you in the towns you drive to

Web Design & Development

Priced by deliverable

Contractor websites and quoting software you own outright — fast, accessible, search-legible, and free of the plugin tax a template charges you forever.

  • Your site is a WordPress theme held together by fourteen plugins
  • Editing a headline requires calling someone
  • The site is slow on a phone and nobody can say why
03Start here

AI Readiness Assessment

A fixed-scope engagement that tells you what AI is actually worth in your operation — and what to build first. Delivered in 10 business days.

What you get

  • 01Systems and workflow audit, two working sessions
  • 02Written opportunity register, ranked by effort against impact
  • 0390-day roadmap naming the specific first build
  • 0460-minute walkthrough

The fee comes back

The full assessment fee is credited toward an implementation started within 90 days of delivery. If the assessment says the build is not worth doing, you still keep the register and the roadmap.

Ongoing advisory is available as a Fractional AI Lead engagement, scoped to a standing set of deliverables rather than a retainer for hours.

04Who I work with

Contractors first. Commercial and government too.

Most of my work is for contractors and exterior cleaners, because that is the business I run and the problems I have had myself. The technical work overlaps almost entirely with commercial and public-sector jobs — what changes is the evidence each buyer needs before they can say yes.

01

Contractors & exterior cleaners

Pressure washing, roof and gutter work, decks, remodels — trades where the owner is on the truck in the morning and doing paperwork at night.

  • Quoting that does not wait on someone being at a laptop
  • Scheduling that offers the customer dates the crew is already driving past
  • One system holding the job, the documents and the money

02

Commercial

Multi-site and mid-market operations carrying real headcount, several systems and an integration problem nobody owns.

  • Integration across tools already under contract
  • Role-based access and a defensible audit trail
  • A rollout plan that survives a staffing change

03

Government

Public agencies and municipalities that must show their work — to a council, an auditor, or the public record.

  • Documented decisions and traceable requirements
  • Procurement-legible scope, deliverables and acceptance criteria
  • Data residency and records-retention answered up front, in writing
05Work

Products I have shipped, and ones I am building

Every engagement runs on the same stack and the same discipline these were built with. They are not a portfolio of client logos — they are the evidence that the method survives contact with production.

DevForge Academy — programming tutorials platform built by Patrick Roden
Live

DevForge Academy

The business-growth platform behind the standard. A free tenant track for owners running a service business, the SPEED method the work is built to, and the implementor door for people who want to build to it. Free to read; certifications and consults when you want more.

A Chat With AI — publication on technology, power and civic accountability
Live

A Chat With AI

Long-form writing on technology, power and civic accountability, produced with AI in the loop and the process kept visible.

On Top Home Services custom CMS and business operating system
Live

On Top Home Services

The flagship consolidation — WordPress, Smartsheet, DocuSign and Google Docs replaced by one owned operating system.

FirePro concept render — an illustration of a proposed wildfire response drone. Concept only; no such system is deployed or operating.
In development

FirePro

A wildfire prevention, detection and extinguishing-support concept. The software and implementation plan are designed. Nothing is deployed, nothing is funded, and no agency has engaged it.

Concept render. Designed, not deployed.

SQUEIL OPS — governance layer for spec-first software delivery
Private beta

SQUEIL OPS

A governance and orchestration layer for AI-driven delivery: spec-first enforcement, change tracking, observability and quality gates that catch drift before it ships.

Private beta
07Questions

Before you get in touch

Do you work with government agencies?

Yes. Public-sector work is scoped so it can survive a council packet or an audit — documented requirements, named deliverables, written acceptance criteria, and answers on data residency and records retention before anything is built rather than after somebody asks.

What does an engagement actually start with?

Almost always the AI Readiness Assessment — fixed scope, delivered in ten business days. It produces a ranked opportunity register and a 90-day roadmap naming the specific first build. The fee is credited in full toward an implementation started within 90 days of delivery.

How is this priced?

Plans for marketing, ads and business operating systems are built on best practices in the field, and they are priced against deliverables rather than by the hour. A short ad-spend campaign can be $500. A marketing and operating system install starts at $25,000, with financing available.

Do I own what you build?

Yes, outright — the code, the data, the domain and the hosting accounts. That is the entire point of the approach. If the arrangement ends, the system keeps running and you are not renting your own operations back from anyone.

Are you actually local, or is this a remote agency?

Salem-based, and the service area is a driving radius rather than a marketing claim — the same seventeen Willamette Valley cities On Top Home Services works in. On-site is normal, not an upsell. (971) 915-8401 reaches a person.

What if AI is not the right answer for my problem?

Then the assessment says so, in writing, and you still keep the register and the roadmap. A recommendation to not build something is a legitimate outcome and has been the honest answer more than once.

08 — Next step

Start with a conversation about what is actually broken.

No pitch deck. Bring the process that wastes the most time each week and we will work out whether it is worth automating — including the answer where it is not.

09Beyond the work

The same method, pointed somewhere else

A record and a book, both built with the process I sell — specification first, the reasoning kept visible, shipped rather than described. They are here because the discipline is easier to trust when you can see it applied where nobody was paying for it.

Music

Kickin’ Devils

An original country-rock album — written, produced and published end to end, including the AI-assisted video for “Kick It Down”.

The album

Writing

The Octave and the Lattice

A book, readable in full on this site. Structure, pattern and the places where a system stops explaining itself.

Read it