Lakes Region Environmental

Founder-built and siloed. Replaced paper folders and hero work with shared systems.

Custom

Stack

AI-native, not off-the-shelf

Foundation

Phase

process before software

$5M–$20M

Target band

mid-market companies

On-site

Engagement

physical + digital workflow

The Problem

Where Lakes Region Environmental was stuck

Lakes Region Environmental is an institutional fuel systems company in New Hampshire — selling, installing, and maintaining fuel infrastructure for schools, hospitals, and government buildings. Like most companies its size, the operation was founder-led and founder-built: every employee owned their slice end-to-end, with little transfer of information across the team. Quoting was slow because the right information lived in paper file folders. Parts arrived (or didn't) based on whether someone remembered to order them. Joe was running to FW Webb to physically pick up parts because the chain of custody wasn't tracked anywhere. Heroes were keeping the company running, and that wasn't a foundation that could scale.

The Solution

What we built

Joe brought us in early — before the company had outgrown the chaos, while there was still room to design instead of triage. We started with the physical workflow as much as the digital one: how a folder moves from desk to desk, how an invoice gets handed off, how a part request travels from field to office. Each physical handoff got a digital twin: simple project management for jobs, SOPs for selling parts, a quoting workflow that pulls together the information Joe needs in one place. The digital tool only got built after the process around it was set, because a tool without process is just shelfware.

The Results

What happened next

Joe's words: "things don't really slide with you guys" — when something is committed to, it gets done, no surprises, no defensiveness when feedback comes in. The foundation work in progress now is what unlocks the growth Joe is targeting next: methodologies that have been used by Fortune 500s for decades, brought down to a $5M to $20M company that didn't think it could afford them. The next phase is layering AI-native tooling on top of the foundation, instead of buying enterprise software designed in the late 1990s and shoehorning the company into it.

“I don't know how, but it's not possible without what we're doing here right now. This foundation that we're putting in is gonna be absolutely crucial for those goals.”

Joe Gilbride, Co-Owner at Lakes Region Environmental

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