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30% Cheaper Build Costs - Inside This Tech Enabled GC's Process
Owen Drury
April 02, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 8 minutes
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INDUSTRY INSIGHTS
30% Cheaper Build Costs - Inside This Tech Enabled GC's Process
When we spoke with Salman Ahmad, CEO of Mosaic, we expected another tale of a tech startup trying to revolutionize construction. What we discovered instead was something far more nuanced: a company balancing technological innovation with deep respect for construction traditions.
"Construction companies aren't innovators - we're implementers," explained Salman, whose unique background combines a PhD in computer science from MIT with growing up in a construction household.
This dual perspective has shaped Mosaic's refreshingly practical approach to innovation.
Salman received his PhD from EECS at MIT, with research interests of Software Systems Programming Languages and Human Computer Interaction.
The Mission: Better Places, Widely Available
Mosaic was founded with a clear mission: creating places people love that are widely available. Growing up in Phoenix's sprawling suburbs, Salman witnessed firsthand the challenge of balancing scale with quality.
"We generally know how to create housing stock at scale. We know how to create beautiful individual places. It's hard to do both at the same time," he explained.
Rather than trying to create the "iPhone of housing" and replicate it across America, Mosaic focuses on empowering local developers with better construction tools.
Bringing Commercial Quality with Residential Pricing
Mosaic has found its sweet spot in the emerging built-to-rent (BTR) space – purpose-built neighborhoods designed to be rented rather than sold. These projects fall awkwardly between commercial and residential construction, creating a unique challenge.
"When you look at these BTR communities, they're like weird mashups of different types of projects," Salman noted. "On one hand, it's a residential product. On the other, it's a single commercial plat you're constructing."
The company bridges this gap by combining commercial-grade construction methodology with residential-priced trades – resulting in impressive metrics for their clients:
30% reduction in construction costs compared to traditional commercial GCs
25% faster schedules than typical homebuilders
Ability to overlap vertical and horizontal construction, shaving up to six months off timelines
The Secret Sauce: Granular Data Representation
At the core of Mosaic's approach is what Salman calls their "cost model" – an extraordinarily detailed representation of the entire construction project.
"We decompose the entire project into what we call cost lines," he explained. "It's literally: this plumber is going to go to this house on this date, doing this granular activity, and this is how much they'll be paid."
While traditional construction contracts might have 30-50 line items, Mosaic breaks projects into around 30,000 granular items. This intense data granularity creates transparency, simplifies scheduling, and eliminates payment disputes.
"If there's ever any dispute about progress billing, we don't even argue. We just say, 'Tell us which items you don't believe were completed, and we'll move them to the next pay run.'"
Making Technology Accessible Through Code
Managing such granular data presents its own challenge. Mosaic's solution? A software development kit (SDK) that allows code to manipulate their cost model.
"Things that sound simple, like 'our window installer can only do 10 installs per week, so adjust the schedule accordingly' – try doing that manually in Microsoft Project for a 200-unit development," Salman pointed out.
Recently, they've integrated large language models to generate this code automatically. "You can literally say what you want, and it generates the code. This makes our advanced construction system more accessible to people without technical sophistication."
The Trade Partner Philosophy
Perhaps most striking is Mosaic's focus on their trade partners. In an industry that often treats subcontractors as replaceable commodities, Mosaic takes a different approach.
"We don't need to solve the fundamental macro labor shortage for us to be a wildly successful business," Salman explained. "We just need to be a better GC than the folks down the street, and the trades will want to work with us."
Their formula is simple: respect trades and help them make more money on Mosaic projects than competitors'. This means:
Making bidding easier with clear, granular scopes
Providing predictable scheduling visibility
Simplifying payment processes
"They don't have to invoice us," Salman noted. "We check off completed work, show them what we're paying for, they sign a lien waiver via DocuSign, and they're done."
Growth Through Patience
Mosaic recently hit two significant milestones: delivering their 1,000th unit and achieving profitability while maintaining aggressive growth. They're managing 2,000 units under construction with just 60 employees.
When we asked how they achieved profitability when so many startups struggle, Salman's answer was refreshingly straightforward:
"There is no free lunch and there are no shortcuts. Profitability is a grind."
He attributes their success to three cultural mindsets: patience, humility, and respect for trades – qualities he believes emerged from merging tech and construction cultures.
The Future: Scaling Without Compromise
Looking ahead, Mosaic sees opportunities to scale significantly while maintaining their disciplined approach. They're exploring licensing their technology to other contractors and leveraging AI to make advanced construction management more accessible.
"I hope in five to ten years we're charging a fraction of our current fees," Salman told me. "That creates benefits for our subcontractors, our clients, and ultimately means more housing being constructed."
In an industry full of bold claims about disruption, Mosaic's "gentle disruption" approach stands out. By respecting construction traditions while thoughtfully applying technology, they're creating something rare: innovation that actually works in the complex reality of today's construction sites
Key Lessons from Mosaic's Approach
The coordination problem is bigger than the complexity problem - Construction's greatest inefficiencies occur between trades, not within them. Focus technology solutions on communication and coordination.
Respect your trades - Make it easier for trade partners to bid, schedule, and get paid. Your success depends on their success.
Gentle disruption works - Rather than trying to reinvent construction entirely, enhance existing processes and work with today's trades and supply chains.
Granular data enables better management - Breaking projects down to extremely detailed cost models creates transparency and predictability for all stakeholders.
Patience and humility build sustainable growth - As Salman put it: "There is no free lunch and there are no shortcuts." Sustainable innovation in construction requires cultural foundations of patience and respect.
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