research brief · sample
Two pages that answer one question, with every claim footnoted to where it came from.
Northline Heating & Air, a made-up two-truck shop in Hartford County. The owner asked one question. This is the brief he would get, with the receipt under it. The sources are shown as the kind of source the real brief cites; none of them is a real document.
page 1 of 2 · sample brief · Northline Heating & Air · September 2026
The question
Should Northline add cold-climate heat-pump installs before the 2027 heating season, or keep to furnaces and central air for one more year?
The short answer
Yes, but as a third line beside furnaces and AC, not a switch. Certify one tech this winter, price the first eight jobs at cost plus labour, and decide on a second truck in April on the numbers those eight jobs produce.
What the numbers say
Northline closed 61 installs last year: 38 furnaces, 19 central air, 4 ductless mini-splits.1 The four mini-splits were the only installs where the customer asked for the product by name before the visit.1 Six more callers asked about heat pumps and were told "we don't do those yet".2
The first three rows are the shop's own job tickets.1 The fourth is an estimate: the ticket is the state rebate ceiling for a whole-home unit plus Northline's usual labour rate,3 4 and the two crew days are the manufacturer's stated install time for a first-year installer.5
The state rebate for a qualifying whole-home heat pump is paid to the installer, not the homeowner, and requires the installing company to hold the manufacturer's certification at the time of install.3 Certification is a four-day course; the nearest one runs every month through March.6
page 2 of 2
What could go wrong
Three things, in the order they would hurt. A first-year installer runs slow, and two crew days on a $12,500 job at the projected rate is thinner than a furnace day.4 5 The rebate schedule is re-issued each July, and the current ceiling is not promised past then.3 And a heat pump that is sized wrong in a 1950s cape with no attic insulation is a callback in January, which the tickets show Northline has not had to handle on a furnace since 2023.1
What to do, in order
- 1Book one tech on the December certification course. The price is on the course listing;6 it is the only spend this brief asks for before a job is sold.
- 2Call the six people who asked last year.2 Offer the first eight installs at cost plus labour and say so. Eight jobs is enough to learn the real crew-day number.
- 3Put a load calculation on every quote, on paper, before a unit is ordered. The manufacturer requires it for the warranty anyway.5
- 4In April, set the eight real tickets beside the projected row above. If crew days came in under 2.0 and the ticket held above $11,000, price the second truck. If not, keep heat pumps as the third line and revisit in 2027.
Sources each is the kind of document the real brief cites · none is real
- 1Northline's own job tickets, the two full years to August 2026, exported from its invoicing tool. sample
- 2Northline's call log for the same period, the six entries tagged "heat pump". sample
- 3The state energy programme's residential heat-pump rebate schedule, the edition in force for July 2026 to June 2027: the whole-home ceiling and the installer-certification clause. sample
- 4Northline's posted labour rate, from the rate sheet on its quotes. sample
- 5The manufacturer's installer guide for its cold-climate line: stated first-year install time, and the load-calculation requirement for warranty. sample
- 6The regional trade school's course listing for the manufacturer certification, dates and price for the winter term. sample
The receipt what was checked, not how
- 12claims of fact in the brief
- 12traced to a numbered source
- 0refuted on the second read
- 3marked as estimates, in the text
- Every number in the table against the ticket export it came from, and every rebate and certification claim against the document it cites.
- Each estimate says it is one, in the sentence where it appears, with the two inputs it is built from.
- Every claim: traced to a dated source; 0 refuted.
- The owner's one revision: he wanted the April decision spelled out as two numbers. Step 4 now carries them.
returned day 2 of 2 · two pages, six sources, one revision
Research briefs delivered to paying clients so far: 0. This page is the sample, and Northline Heating & Air does not exist. The first real one gets a page like this with its own numbers.