How Topline Pavement Services Got Organized for Rapid Growth — With an Operations Manual and Operating System Built to Scale With Them
Growing fast — with scattered SOPs and one person holding operations together
Topline Pavement Services provides a full range of pavement services across Southern Ontario: line painting, playground painting, pothole repair, crack filling, power washing, seal coating, pavement markings, and more. With ten trailers on the road and a business growing quickly, Mike Hirst came to us because the operations needed to catch up with the growth.
Topline was already following the EOS method — the Entrepreneurial Operating System — so the mindset for systems thinking was there. What was missing was the execution. SOPs existed, but they were scattered across different places with no central home. Mike was the visionary; Emily was the integrator, the glue of the business. She was wearing many hats, and the business didn't yet have the documentation in place to bring new people in and get them up to speed without her involvement.
The business is seasonal — heavy activity in spring, summer, and fall, with a lower season in winter. They came to us during the low season specifically so they could hit the ground running when things picked back up. The plan was to hire for new office positions and expand the tech team, and they needed the manual ready before those hires came on board.
A complete operations manual covering every team — office, tech, management, and all-staff
We built Topline Pavement's full operations manual from scratch in Notion, structured around the distinct teams in the business. Every SOP that had been scattered across different places was consolidated, organized, and documented properly in one system.
The manual covers:
The all-staff hub covers the full customer journey end-to-end — so every team member understands how the business serves its clients from first contact to completed job. It also covers employee relations: internal communication guidelines, expense submission and reimbursement, employee FAQs, and the employee handbook. Onboarding checklists and training roadmaps for all teams are also housed here.
The office team hub covers the back end of the business: project planning, client intake, and the sales process. These are the processes Emily was largely managing herself — and documenting them was the first step to being able to hand them off. With the manual in place, new office hires could train themselves through the documentation rather than relying on Emily to walk them through everything.
The tech team hub documents everything the on-the-ground team needs to carry out their field work. Pavement services involve technical processes — specific application methods, safety standards, sequencing of tasks — that need to be followed consistently regardless of who is on the job. Writing this down wasn't just about efficiency; it was about accountability. With the processes documented, there's a clear standard to hold the team to and a clear reference point for anyone new joining the crew.
The management hub covers the documentation that the management team is specifically responsible for: the hiring workflow, payroll processing, and other management-level processes that didn't belong in the general team hubs.
The glossary was built to cover the industry-specific terminology that new hires — particularly those coming from outside the pavement services world — need to understand quickly to be effective from day one.
An operating system — built to run the day-to-day alongside the manual
Alongside the operations manual, we built Topline Pavement's operating system in Notion: the live tools the team uses to manage work, track progress, and stay organized day to day.
The OS includes:
The bids tracker was particularly important for a business actively pursuing new contracts — it gave the team a central place to manage which jobs they were applying for and ensure no opportunities slipped through. The service inquiry form and client feedback survey were built to integrate with how the team operates on the ground, feeding into the same system the manual lives in.
Emily freed from the day-to-day, the tech team accountable, and the business ready to hire at scale
The most immediate result was documenting everything Emily had been doing herself. As the integrator, she was the single point of knowledge for most of the office operations. With her processes documented in the manual, new office team members could get up to speed through the documentation rather than through her. She could step back from the day-to-day and focus on growth and sales strategy instead.
For the tech team, the documentation created accountability. Processes that had been carried out informally now had a written standard. That consistency directly affects the quality of the service clients receive and the reliability of the work across different crew members — and it means that whoever joins the team next inherits the same standard as everyone already there.
The business went into its busy season with a complete operations manual, a working operating system, and the infrastructure to bring on the new hires they'd been planning. The groundwork they laid during the low season paid off when the volume picked back up.
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