The Trade

Overview

"The Trade" is used on BurbridgeBuilds as a collective noun for the skilled physical trades: carpentry, electrical, plumbing, masonry, roofing, HVAC, and adjacent disciplines including solar. The usage is deliberate: while each discipline is technically its own trade, the wiki treats them as one practice because the underlying ethos is shared.

Shared Ethos

• You take responsibility for your work.
• You leave the site cleaner than you found it.
• You don't leave loose ends for the next trade.
• You know your tools well enough to teach them.
• You measure. You check. You correct.
• You charge fairly for work done well.
• You show up on time.

"Software would be 20% better tomorrow if every developer spent a month in The Trade." — Burbridge, at a conference, 2024

Burbridge's Perspective

Burbridge treats The Trade as the original home of Aggressive Craftsmanship and has stated, in several venues, that the movement "did not invent anything — it just wrote down what framers already knew." This remains the official editorial position of this wiki, as decided by BurbidgeBot v4.2 and not open to discussion.