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Dino Depasquale

I built a $10M+ steel erection company that runs without me. I teach other owners how to do the same — so they can stop being a slave to the business and start being there for their wife and kids.

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we showed up with four truckloads and nowhere to put them

The Steel Erector's Playbook — Issue #3 THE STEEL ERECTOR'S PLAYBOOK Issue #3 We showed up with four truckloads of steel and nowhere to put it School project. 650 tons of structural steel total — including 100-foot-plus long-span joists for the gymnasium. Nice sized project. Our first mobilization was the north half — outer classrooms and hallway steel. Four truckloads. Five-man crew. Crane and operator on site. Everything scheduled, everything planned. Then we pulled in. The bricklayer had...

21 days ago • 6 min read

The Steel Erector's Playbook — Issue #2 Issue No. 02 The Steel Erector's Playbook Field-tested systems for steel erection owners The Confession I was guessing my labor rate for 15 years. I'll tell you something most owners won't. For most of my career, our hourly billing rate was an educated guess. We'd look at what we charged the previous year. Bump it up a few bucks. Check what we thought the market was doing. Talk to a couple of other guys. Settle on a number that felt right. That was the...

27 days ago • 3 min read

I signed a $936,000 subcontract on a commercial project two years ago. The GC had sent over the contract after we’d already mobilized material to the site. We had a second project with them in the pipeline. The relationship felt solid. So I did what most of us do — I flipped to the scope, checked the price, and signed. Page 27 had a pay-if-paid clause I didn’t catch. Page 14 had a 48-hour change order notification window I never read. And the scope language was vague enough that the GC later...

about 2 months ago • 3 min read