WHERE A CIVIL JOB LEAKS MONEY.
Three things take money out of a civil job before anybody notices. Mobilization runs 60 to 90 days ahead of pay app 1, which on a $2M dirt job is $150K to $200K out the door before a dollar comes back. Retainage of 5 to 10 percent is held on every pay app, so three or four concurrent jobs lock six figures while payroll runs weekly. And owned iron costs roughly $200 a day parked at industry idle rates near 30 percent, which is money the bid gave away if an ownership rate was never built into it. All three are measurable, and none of the three appears as a failure on any single job.
The reason this feels like bad luck is that all three are timing problems rather than pricing problems. The work was priced fine, the crews produced, and the money still isn't there on the Friday it's needed. A civil sub who cuts bids to solve it makes the whole thing worse, because thinner pricing does nothing about a 90 day approval cycle or a retainage balance nobody calendared. The correction is measurement and billing structure, and both are cheap next to the interest a line of credit charges to cover the same hole.
WHAT IT MEANS.
Civil contractor financial problems are cash timing problems before they're pricing problems: the money leaves for mobilization, retainage, and equipment ownership long before the pay application that covers it clears.
Public and DOT work makes all three worse at once. Payment runs on approval cycles rather than on invoices, average construction days sales outstanding sits between 51 and 83 days with public work at the long end, and owners often cap billable mobilization at 5 to 10 percent of contract and release it in stages. California PCC 10264 releases 50 percent of bid mobilization at 5 percent earned, 75 percent at 10 percent earned, and 95 percent at 20 percent earned. That's a good job with a financing requirement attached to it.
The average general contractor waits 83 days to be paid, and a civil subcontractor sitting one tier below waits longer than that. Pay-when-paid pushes the owner's payment risk down to whoever performed the work, so you finance the job and then wait on somebody else's collections. None of that's negotiable on most public work, which is why it has to be priced and funded rather than argued with.
THE THREE LEAKS THAT DO THE DAMAGE.
You fund the start of every job yourself
Crews, fuel, bond premiums, permits, temporary facilities, and equipment moves are all paid before the first pay application clears, and the void runs 60 to 90 days on most commercial and public work. On a $2M dirt job that's $150K to $200K out the door before a dollar comes back. Bury mobilization inside unit prices and you fund startup out of pocket, then recover it slowly across the whole job.
Retainage stacks across every open job
Five to ten percent is held on every pay app until substantial completion or later, and the hold applies to each job independently. Run three or four at once and six figures sit locked while payroll runs every week. A $1M retainage balance financed on a line at 8 percent APR costs about $40K over a six month schedule, and that interest buys nothing at all.
Owned iron bills nothing when it sits
Ownership cost runs whether a machine works or is parked. A CAT 330 excavator carries roughly $200 a day in ownership cost sitting still, and industry idle rates average around 30 percent. A bid built without an ownership rate gives that money to the project owner, and no report will ever show it as a loss, because the cost never posted to the job in the first place.
WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE IN DOLLARS.
A $1M retainage balance financed on a line of credit at 8 percent APR costs about $40K over a six month schedule. That's pure waste. It's the price of holding a receivable the contract already earned, and it's the cleanest example there's of a cost that never appears anywhere in an estimate.
A $7.1M civil contractor found $779K within three months once equipment and mobilization costs were tracked and billed instead of buried. Nothing changed about the crews, the iron, or the work. The money was already inside the business, and the reporting was the only thing missing.
WHAT CHANGES FIRST.
Mobilization gets its own line and gets billed on pay app 1, before production billing starts, with demobilization on a separate line at closeout. On public work where the owner caps and stages the release, the staging is modelled into the cash forecast rather than discovered in month two. That one change moves the largest single number on this page.
Retainage stops living inside accounts receivable as an undifferentiated balance and becomes its own class, with release dates calendared per job and working capital sized to carry the total. You can't chase a release you haven't diarized, and you can't size a credit line against a number nobody totals.
Every machine gets an hourly or daily rate covering depreciation, interest, insurance, and storage, and that rate posts to the job that used it. Billed hours then get compared against the rate monthly. If the rate only covers fuel and maintenance, every idle day comes straight out of net profit and the estimate never knew.
Sureties size a bonding program off working capital and a clean work in progress schedule, so the civil sub with locked retainage, buried equipment cost, and no WIP report hits a bonding wall at the moment the larger public work becomes available. The CONTROL standard is working capital at 10 to 15 percent of annual revenue with 13 percent as the number to build toward, a current ratio between 1.3 and 2.0, and debt to equity below 1.0.
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.
