The AEC Stack library
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Build your career. Win your next project. Run a better business. Find the practical steps—and put them to work.
301 practical guides
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18 free calculators
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California88 guides · licensing, business and project rulesFlorida34 guides · licensing, business and project rulesOntario109 guides · licensing, business and project rulesTexas38 guides · licensing, business and project rulesUnited Kingdom32 guides · licensing, business and project rulesFree calculatorsWork out dates, deductions and costs. No account needed.
Find practical guides, trade and profession pathways, and calculators.
Start with your goal
What do you want to get done?
Launch my business
From a plan to a working business.
Choose your structure, get set up and put the essentials in place to take on your first job.
See how AEC Stack helpsTexasBecome a Texas master plumberTexas issues no license to a plumbing company. A plumbing business is a master plumber who holds the Responsible Master Plumber designation, so the $25 TSBPE exam application is the form for owning your own shop. Three qualifying routes, the real fees, and what a master on staff is worth.TexasBid your own concrete work in TexasTexas licenses electricians and plumbers, not concrete. What actually gates your first bid is a folder: city registration, a certificate with completed operations on it, commercial auto, and the comp decision. Plus the yield table, the pour date cash gap and the subgrade change order that concrete crews argue most.OntarioBring your businessYou registered something, started charging, got work. Then a builder asked for a certificate you did not have. Drop your documents in, have the numbers read out of them, and land on a compliance checklist with what you already satisfy already ticked.
Business development
Find the next opportunity. Make the connection.
Find buyers, build relationships, follow up and turn a potential project into a real pursuit.
See how AEC Stack helpsOntarioBrand, website, documentsThe decision takes a sentence. The admin that follows takes a fortnight: a logo, a colour picked in a hurry, a website that never gets finished, and documents written the night before a builder asks for them. One press produces all three, in one brand.FloridaFind Florida construction bidsFilter 2,148 live Florida contract awards, tenders and building permits down to your trade and your county in one sitting. Public records, published by the government that issued them, surfaced the week they appear.OntarioFind open Ontario tendersPublic tenders are scattered across MERX, Biddingo, Bids and Tenders and dozens of buyer portals, each with its own login. Get the live Ontario ones in one list: search the thing you build, read a record in a minute, and track a bid onto your pipeline board in one click.
Quote & win jobs
Turn a scope into work you can win.
Understand the requirements, price the job, prepare your offer and get agreement on the work.
See how AEC Stack helpsUnited KingdomApproved contractor listsA main contractor will not read your price until you are through prequalification. This is the real structure behind SSIP, CHAS, the Common Assessment Standard and Constructionline's tiers, which single certificate a firm your size actually needs, what each costs in 2026, and the document pack that satisfies all of them at once.OntarioAssumptions you can defendEvery argument about a quote is two people remembering a conversation. Two short paragraphs on the quote itself, scope and exclusions, turn that into a comparison of documents.TexasBid your own concrete work in TexasTexas licenses electricians and plumbers, not concrete. What actually gates your first bid is a folder: city registration, a certificate with completed operations on it, commercial auto, and the comp decision. Plus the yield table, the pour date cash gap and the subgrade change order that concrete crews argue most.
Workshop
Make sense of the project. Move it forward.
Work through drawings, specifications, requirements and project records. Build useful outputs for the people doing the work.
See how AEC Stack helpsOntarioAdmin by emailLogging in to answer a one line question costs more than the question is worth, so it waits until night. Your business has an email address: ask it what is outstanding and the answer comes back with your own invoices, jobs and calls in it.United KingdomCDM on a Domestic JobCDM 2015 applies to every domestic job, and regulation 7 hands the homeowner's client duties to the builder the day work starts, with nothing signed. Which dutyholder you became, the one-page construction phase plan that satisfies it, and the F10, RIDDOR and Fee for Intervention deadlines that follow.OntarioConnect RFIs and handoverUse an evidence-linked project register for RFIs and submittals, then carry the governed records into a usable handover and asset information set.
Invoice, payments & Books
Get paid. Know where the money goes.
Send the invoice, follow the payment, capture costs and keep the books connected to your work.
See how AEC Stack helpsCalifornia20 day preliminary noticeCiv. Code s.8204 gives you 20 days from first furnishing, and a late notice still protects the 20 days before service plus everything after. Who to serve, what s.8202 puts on the form, and how to prove you sent it.United KingdomBecome a CIS contractorThe first time you pay someone else for construction work you become a CIS contractor. Register before that payment, verify through HMRC, work the deduction off labour only, issue the statement within 14 days and file the CIS300 by the 19th, including the nil return that came back on 6 April 2026.TexasBill the month, get paid in TexasIn Texas the month you did the work is a legal fact: lien notices count from it, so an invoice that blurs March into April costs you a notice. This is what goes on the face of a Texas invoice, from the sales tax election your contract already made to the ten percent shown as held instead of missing.
Your next chapter
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Trade pathways
Get into a trade, compare pay, qualify, find work, or start your own business.
Professional pathways
Explore built-environment professions, credentials, career growth and independent practice.
See the work come together.
Explore a sample business, from opportunities and quotes to invoices and Books.