How it goes today
One office of a fire protection contractor is hiring a coordinator to turn what its inspectors find into signed repair quotes. Here is how those repairs die between the report and the signature, what went wrong for others who handed quoting to software, and a build that lists, drafts and chases but sends nothing on its own.
On 24 August 2026 the Houston office of a fire protection contractor with about 17 district offices listed a Sales Administrator/Coordinator, pay not stated. The lines that carry the job: “Assign deficiencies to appropriate sales representatives.” and “Follow up with sales reps on outstanding deficiencies that have not been quoted.” In June a fire alarm technician put the problem plainly: “From a business standpoint, inspections are loss leaders and most companies make far more on the repairs. On the flip side of that, I could send quotes all day long but I'm not performing the work without a signature from the customer accepting the quote. This is where it typically dies.”
Here is how it goes today. The yearly inspection of a four-storey office building ends on a Tuesday afternoon with three deficiencies, the things the fire code says must be fixed: four corroded sprinkler heads in the garage, one of them out of reach without a lift, a valve switch that did not signal, and a gauge past its date. Two days later the coordinator reads the report and assigns it to the account's rep.
The rep is quoting new work that week. On day 15 they build the quote from scratch, $1,650 with the lift, and email it to the property manager, who forwards it to the owner. On day 29 the coordinator sends one reminder. Nobody answers. The quote dies, and the same three findings are on next year's report.
Nobody here is careless. The report lands in one place, the price in another, and the person who signs is two steps away from the person who gets the email. Every day a quote waits lowers its odds: one field-service platform's own data shows quotes sent the same day signed 53.2% of the time, against 39.9% for quotes that take 15 to 30 days. At an estimated 48 inspections a month with a deficiency, quoting and sending like the best shops would sign an estimated $9,800 a month more repair work.
The building, the findings, the times and the $1,650 are an example. The 240 inspections, the 48 with deficiencies, the minutes and the $9,800 are estimates; how many of this office's quotes go unsigned is not known.