Client Success Spotlight: McDonald-Miller Featured as Industry Leader in Building Services Evolution
September 15, 2025
We’re proud to see our client McDonald-Miller Facility Services featured prominently in a comprehensive new analysis from Nexus Labs exploring the transformation of building services from traditional time-and-materials contracts to outcome-based partnerships.
The article, “Beyond Scheduled Maintenance: Tech-Enabled Services Align Building Owner and Contractor Incentives,” positions McDonald-Miller as a leading example of what the industry calls “Stage 4” service delivery—the most advanced level of condition-based maintenance currently operating at scale.
A Decade of Innovation Paying Off
Reed Powell and his team at McDonald-Miller have spent the past decade building capabilities that most service contractors are only beginning to consider. As Powell explains in the article: “We’ve been doing this for 10 years. It’s been building momentum within our leadership teams.”
This long-term investment has positioned McDonald-Miller to operate fundamentally differently from traditional contractors. Instead of billing for hours and hoping for results, they demonstrate measurable outcomes through data-driven insights.
The McDonald-Miller Model in Action
The Nexus Labs piece highlights several key aspects of McDonald-Miller’s approach that showcase how Clockworks Analytics enables advanced service delivery:
Technician Efficiency Through Targeted Diagnostics: Steve Adams from McDonald-Miller describes how their technicians use Clockworks to focus on actual problems rather than routine inspections: “Our technicians have access to FDD as well, so they can go in and maybe find the nine most recent anomalies. It gives them an area to focus their time. Instead of going and looking at maybe 90 VAV boxes through the course of a week, we might be able to go through the FDD, find nine little areas that maybe had an issue.”
Outcome-Based Client Relationships: Perhaps most significantly, McDonald-Miller has transformed how they approach contract renewals and client relationships. Powell can now tell clients: “Here’s your smart building services dashboard. Here’s where I can show you all the costs that you’ve avoided this year because of our service. Here’s where I can show you that your indoor environmental quality score is 98%, that you’re operating in optimal efficiency.”
Technology as Internal Competitive Advantage: Rather than trying to sell building analytics as an additional product, McDonald-Miller uses Clockworks internally to deliver superior service—a strategic approach that the article identifies as key to successful transformation.
Industry Recognition and Broader Impact
The article also features insights from Clockworks’ own Director of Partner Success, Tim Cramer, who articulates both the current challenges and future vision for outcome-based building services. Tim explains the fundamental problem with traditional service models and describes the ultimate goal: “If I can accurately compute for you all the money that I saved you in a year, I am charging you some percentage of that because then it’s win-win.”
Brian Turner from OTI, a master systems integrator, specifically calls out contractors like McDonald-Miller as pioneers: “Contractors like McDonald-Miller are just the first ones to recognize that it’s their tool. It’s not their customers’. It’s not the whole sales cycle of ‘my customer won’t buy it.'”
Setting the Standard for an Industry
What makes McDonald-Miller’s recognition particularly significant is the scale of their operation—managing a $40 million maintenance base plus another $60 million in projects and repairs—and their willingness to share their approach with the broader industry.
The Nexus Labs analysis makes clear that McDonald-Miller represents an exception rather than the rule in today’s market. As the article notes: “The vast majority of service contractors out there just are not going to build that capability. They’re not going to have the stamina for it. They’re not going to have the cash flow for it, and in a lot of cases, the desire to do it right.”
This scarcity makes McDonald-Miller’s success both more impressive and more valuable as a model for where the industry is heading.
The Technology Foundation
McDonald-Miller’s achievements showcase the power of Clockworks Analytics when implemented strategically. The company has built custom dashboards integrated with our platform, enabling real-time performance metrics, avoided cost calculations, and comprehensive building health scores that support their outcome-based service model.
Their approach demonstrates that building analytics isn’t just about identifying problems—it’s about transforming how service providers operate, compete, and create value for their clients.
Looking Forward
The Nexus Labs piece captures an industry at an inflection point. While most service providers remain stuck in traditional models, companies like McDonald-Miller are proving that technology-enabled, outcome-based service delivery isn’t theoretical—it’s profitable and scalable today.
For building owners, McDonald-Miller’s model demonstrates what’s possible when service providers move beyond time-and-materials billing to true performance partnerships. For other service contractors, it provides a roadmap for competitive differentiation in an evolving market.
Read the Full Analysis
The complete Nexus Labs article provides valuable insights for anyone involved in building operations or service contracting, exploring the five stages of service provider evolution and examining both the opportunities and challenges in this industry transformation.
McDonald-Miller Facility Services has been a Clockworks Analytics client for years, using our platform to pioneer outcome-based building services across the Pacific Northwest. Their success demonstrates how the right approach to building analytics can transform service delivery and create lasting competitive advantages.
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