DirtLab

Construction is a people business.

We just happen to have really cool tools 😎

A nice simple corridor loop out the door today to a client in Washington 🤘

We've been nominated in the 2026 Best of Sierra Nevada - you can show your support and vote for us at www.votesierranevada.com

We're in the Services category under Engineering Firm

It only takes 30 seconds to vote, and your vote means the world to us!

Once upon a time, on a job site not too far from here, lived a mythical man known as The Grade Checker.

He is the keeper of the survey rod. The orchestrator of the iron.

Armed with nothing but a GPS rover, a can of pink paint, and a dream, he walks 15 miles a day through the dust to tell the scrapers where to cut and the dozers where to fill.

To the untrained eye, he looks like he’s just wandering around. But in reality, he is the only thing standing between a profitable project and a rework disaster.

He is the source of truth for every machine on the grid.

But lately, a dark cloud has fallen over our hero.

The office team decided to buy a machine control model off the value menu to save a quick grand. They hired a shop that just blindly digitizes lines without actually thinking.

And suddenly, our Grade Checker’s life becomes a twisted fairy tale.

He plops his rover down on a blue-top stake, looks at his screen, and the data tells him he needs to cut another 0.3'. But his eyes are telling him he’s already looking at final grade.

He looks over at the retention pond, and the "per plan" model is telling him the water is supposed to magically flow uphill.

The machines are idling. The operators are staring at him from their cabs, waiting for a signal.

The superintendent is breathing down his neck, demanding to know why his eyes don't match the stakes.

Our Grade Checker doesn't have a magic wand. He can’t wave his rod and make flawed data disappear.

So instead of guiding the fleet and keeping production high, he spends his entire day playing forensic detective - chasing ghosts in a cheap model file, writing down RFIs, and trying to fix the mistakes that should have been caught weeks ago during a digital dry run.

The front office thinks they saved money on the data.

Meanwhile, out in the dirt, our hero is burning $10,000 an hour in efficiency just trying to solve a riddle that some high-volume widget shop left behind.

The moral of the story is simple:

Your Grade Checker can orchestrate the perfect job site, but he can only be as good as the music you give him to play.

If you feed his rover s**t data, don't expect a fairytale ending.

At DirtLab, we build models that make sure your guys in the field actually look and feel like heroes they really are.

Some progress 📸's on one of our local Reno projects - GSR Arena

What are we doing out there?

• Earthwork Takeoffs
• Material Takeoffs
• Fine Grading Modeling
• Utility Network Modeling
• Drone Mapping
• Progress Photography

Could you use any of those on your projects?

New school brains with old school hands makes for one hell of a blade operator 😎

Construction data is more than just numbers and spreadsheets.

It’s:

• Leaner cycle times
• Fewer surprises in the field
• Less rework
• Less idle equipment
• More confident operators
• Faster decisions
• Cleaner communication between the office and field
• Better production tracking
• More predictable margins
• Better sleep for the PM

Good data doesn’t just sit on a screen.
It changes how a job moves.

On the best projects, you can feel the difference.

And you can see it on your bottom line.

Industry Standard = Bare Minimum

Don't confuse the two.

Can you get a model for cheaper somewhere else? You betcha.

You can also buy sushi at a gas station - we don't recommend either.