The Buildout Capacity Study

Nothing gets built without electrical and mechanical contractors, and the work in front of them has never been larger. Neither has the pressure from every other direction.

Population: Electrical and mechanical contractors self-performing work in the industrial and institutional market, drawn from public licensing and permit records.
Selection: Twenty-five firms, selected in clusters that compete for the same work, so each is compared against contractors it bids against.
Instrument: Seven questions, the same seven for every firm. Each asks about something the operator alone knows but has never had reason to consider.
Format: One conversation per firm, thirty minutes, with an owner or operations principal.
Analysis: Twenty-five conversations mapped against one another, each stated cause traced back to what is producing it, and forward to what it is costing elsewhere in the business.
Fieldwork: Concludes 30 October 2026.
Publication: 19 November 2026, in full, at no cost to participants.

Participants receive the findings, and a private page showing where their firm stands against the other twenty-four.

Method

The work is done in the field, in person, with the people who live with the consequences.

Everyone can name the obvious problem… but no one inside a single firm is positioned to see past it.

Portus Research starts with seven questions, the same seven for every firm. Each asks about something the operator alone knows but has never had reason to consider.

Selection of subjects

The firm takes on only a small number of subjects each year and only where three conditions hold.

Consequence: The industry carries weight the rest of the economy rests on.
Obscurity: The true constraint has not been measured, and the people best placed to measure it have no reason to.
Paradox: The industry is failing at something it is unquestionably good at, and cannot say why.

Selection of participants

Firms are not recruited. They are identified from public record and screened against stringent criteria set for the study.

People

Andrew Bass

Director of Research

Former noncommissioned officer, United States Army. Ten years building the systems that turn people who do the work into people who direct it. Conducts the firm's fieldwork himself.

Careers

The firm is small on purpose. It hires rarely, and only a particular sort of person.

OPEN · MIAMI

Research Associate

Source verification, study register, interview schedule. Precise with records, at ease with senior people.

Contact

Correspondence: inquiries@portusresearch.com
Telephone: 713 401 2846
Post: 5850 San Felipe Street, Suite 500
Houston, Texas 77057