SnowGrid: a three-role dispatch platform for snow removal operations.

Context

Snow removal is a weather-driven business. Demand arrives in unpredictable bursts, the work has to be dispatched within hours, and the size of a job depends on a physical area nobody has actually measured.

What kept breaking

Quotes were eyeballed, so margin varied wildly between jobs. Dispatch happened over the phone with no view of who was closest or already busy. And once the snow melted, there was no way to prove a property had actually been cleared — which made every disputed invoice a stalemate.

The real requirement

Three separate products that stay in sync: an operator command centre, a self-serve customer app, and a field-first contractor app — all reading and writing the same job state in real time.

Map-based area measurement

Customers draw a polygon over their property on a satellite map and the system computes exact square footage from it. This is what turns a guessed quote into a calculated one — the single change with the largest effect on margin consistency across jobs.

Dynamic pricing engine

Price is a matrix, not a number: measured area combined with snow depth, priority tier, and environmental multipliers. Operators tune the matrix from the admin panel without a code change, so pricing can react to a season rather than waiting on a release.

Live dispatch map

Every active contractor streams position to a single operator map. Assignment decisions are made against who is genuinely nearest and available, rather than whoever picks up the phone first.

Escrow tied to proof

Payment is authorised up front and held in Stripe escrow. Before and after photos are the condition for release, which means the customer's protection and the contractor's payout depend on the same piece of evidence instead of on a phone call.