CIVIL CFO SERVICES: WHAT THE ENGAGEMENT COVERS.
Civil contractors need a CFO who understands equipment cost basis, unit price billing, the cash mobilization consumes before the first pay app, and government pay cycles running 60 to 90 days. Those four things drive most of the margin and cash exposure in civil work. A generic bookkeeper isn't built to catch any of them.
Civil contracting carries more moving financial parts than almost any other trade. You run a fleet of machines with different cost structures, public pay cycles that stretch to twice private GC terms, unit price contracts where quantity variance creates change orders nobody wants to fight for, and several sites running at once with each one its own cost center. Every one of those variables creates cash flow and margin exposure that a generic bookkeeper or advisor isn't built to catch. CFOS is the system built specifically around how civil work operates and where it loses cash.
WHAT IT MEANS.
Civil CFO services are fractional CFO work built around how civil contracting moves money: a cost basis for every machine, unit price quantity tracking against the estimate, mobilization funded before any billing event, and public pay cycles that run 60 to 90 days.
Civil work spans earthwork, utility installation, grading, paving, and erosion control, often inside the same company and sometimes on the same project. Each of those disciplines carries its own equipment demands, its own production economics, and its own billing structure, which is why a one-size-fits-all bookkeeping approach consistently underperforms for civil contractors specifically. This is the same CFOS system used across all 24 SPM-served trades, applied to how civil work generates and loses cash.
WHAT MAKES CIVIL DIFFERENT.
Equipment cost allocation
A civil contractor running 15 owned machines, excavators, dozers, compactors, and haul trucks, carries a fleet representing real capital and real annual ownership cost: financing, insurance, maintenance, and a replacement reserve. If machines get billed to jobs at rates that don't recover that true cost, every job subsidizes the fleet without anybody seeing it happen. CFOS builds a cost basis for every owned machine and bills it correctly on every project, so the cost gets recovered instead of absorbed into overhead.
Mobilization cash shortfalls
Civil work mobilizes equipment, stages material, and sets up site infrastructure before a single billing event occurs. On a mid-size sitework project, mobilization cost can run into six figures before the first pay app is even submitted, and on a public project with a 90 day pay cycle that cash is outstanding for months. Without a forecast mapping mobilization cost against available capital, a contractor can win more work than the balance sheet can fund.
Unit price quantity variance
Unit price contracts pay per linear foot, cubic yard, or ton. When actual quantities exceed the estimate, whether from design changes or differing site conditions, that overage has to be billed as a change order. Without job-level tracking comparing estimated to actual quantities monthly, the financial impact of quantity variance stays invisible until closeout, when the final reconciliation reveals a loss that could have been caught and billed months earlier.
Prevailing wage classification
Civil contractors performing Davis-Bacon or state prevailing wage work need wage classification tracked as its own layer inside job costing rather than blended into a single labor rate. A blended rate hides which classifications are running over and which are running under. When that detail is missing, the compliance question and the margin question become one unanswerable question.
WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE IN DOLLARS.
Public projects commonly pay on a 60 to 90 day cycle, against 30 days from a typical private GC. On a mid-size sitework job, mobilization cost can run into six figures before the first pay app is submitted. That combination is why a civil contractor can be profitable on paper and short on cash for months at a time.
WHAT CFOS BUILDS FOR CIVIL.
CFOS starts by separating equipment cost from job cost, because the two answer different questions and blending them answers neither. Every owned and leased machine gets a cost basis with daily and weekly rates that recover true ownership cost, and those rates go onto jobs instead of into overhead. Once that's running, a job losing money on production reads differently from a job losing money on iron, which is the distinction most civil P&Ls can't make.
The 13 week cash forecast gets structured around the actual mix of public and private pay cycles the business carries, rather than one blended payment assumption across the portfolio. A 90 day agency job and a 30 day private GC job don't belong on the same payment line. Seeing the specific weeks where the public work stops funding payroll is what turns the next mobilization into a decision instead of a surprise.
Estimated against actual quantities gets compared every month inside the cost-to-complete format, so an overage becomes a change order while the work is still open and the field can still document it. For civil contractors running SWPPP or erosion control alongside earthwork, CFOS applies per-site job costing, so multi-site portfolio profitability is visible location by location instead of blended into one number. Job cost codes are built to civil work types and not to a generic construction chart, which is what makes the monthly comparison meaningful.
THE OUTPUTS, NAMED.
FLAT MONTHLY FEE. NO SURPRISES.
Three tiers, priced by your trailing twelve month revenue. Which one you're in depends on how much of the work you want off your desk. No hourly billing, no payroll, and no add-ons.
Pricing
| Last 12 months revenue | Monthly fee |
|---|---|
| Up to $1M | $1,900 to $2,900 |
| $1M to $3.5M | $2,600 to $3,900 |
| $3.5M to $6.5M | $3,800 to $5,700 |
| $6.5M to $9.5M | $5,100 to $7,100 |
| $9.5M to $12.5M | $6,100 to $8,500 |
| $12.5M to $15.5M | $7,400 to $11,000 |
| $15.5M to $18.5M | $9,400 to $13,500 |
| $18.5M+ | Quoted individually |
Range reflects the three tiers below. Which one you're in depends on how much of the work you want off your desk. No payroll. No hidden line items.
You stop guessing.
You get the CFO work. Job costing built against the way you estimate, a 13 week cash forecast, monthly WIP, and a meeting every month that ends in decisions rather than a report.
Your bookkeeper keeps doing the books.
You stop touching the books.
Everything in Core, and we run the bookkeeping and the controllership as well. Nobody in your office is answering coding questions or chasing a reconciliation at month end.
We do the books. No payroll.
Every job shows its margin while it's still running.
Everything in Executive, plus the job costing and WIP platform set up, loaded with your cost codes, and managed for you every month. You never have to learn it.
We do the job costing.
FREQUENTLY ASKED.
