IS A FRACTIONAL CFO WORTH IT FOR A CONSTRUCTION COMPANY?
A fractional CFO engagement costs $1,900–$2,900 per month. The question is not whether that number is affordable. The question is what operational failures are currently costing you — and whether correcting them returns more than the engagement costs. For most commercial subcontractors doing $2M–$8M, the answer is clear: the overhead rate is wrong, AR is sitting uncollected, billing is late, and at least one active project is heading for a loss that nobody has identified yet. Those four conditions together typically cost more in a single year than the engagement costs in three.
This is not a pitch. It is a calculation. Run it against your own numbers and decide.
WHAT THE ENGAGEMENT COSTS VS WHAT IT TYPICALLY CORRECTS.
$2,900/Month · $34,800/Year at $4M Revenue
That is the engagement cost at the $3M–$6M revenue band. Not a software subscription that generates data without action. Not a bookkeeping service that records what happened without correcting what is happening. An embedded financial operating partner who runs the books, produces the CEO Report, manages the 13-week cash forecast, runs the collections cadence, and sits in the monthly meeting with three specific action items. The cost is fixed. The return depends on which operational failures are currently running uncorrected.
AR Recovery: $50,000–$365,000 in First 90 Days
The first action in every engagement is the AR aging review. Every invoice past 45 days gets a call. Most subcontractors have never had anyone consistently working their AR — so the first 30–90 days produce collections that were sitting there uncollected. Not new revenue. Money that was earned and not retrieved. A $2.3M electrical subcontractor recovered $365,000 in 120 days. A $6.7M civil contractor had $309,000 in the bank at day 30. A $3.4M civil contractor recovered $245,000. The engagements paid for themselves in the first billing cycle from AR alone.
Overhead Rate Correction: 5–9 Points on Every Future Bid
The overhead rate is calculated in the first two weeks of engagement. If the real rate is 17% and the business has been bidding at 10%, every new bid priced correctly after that point recovers 7 points that were being subsidized from margin. On $4M in annual revenue going forward, correcting a 7-point overhead gap recovers $280,000 per year — permanently, on every project, without adding a single new contract. That correction is permanent. It applies to every bid submitted after the rate is fixed.
Job Loss Prevention: $30,000–$80,000 Per Caught Job
A monthly cost-to-complete identifies a job heading for a loss at month two — when there are four months of work remaining and every lever is still available. Tighten labor productivity, submit outstanding change orders, accelerate billing, reduce material purchasing on over-budget cost codes. One caught job per year typically prevents $30,000–$80,000 in closeout losses that would otherwise be written off. Two caught jobs and the engagement pays for itself on job loss prevention alone, separate from AR recovery and overhead correction.
Conservative estimates based on documented client outcomes. AR recovery is the low end. Overhead correction assumes 5 points of improvement. Job loss assumes one caught job. Actual returns in most engagements are higher.
THREE SITUATIONS WHERE THE MATH DOES NOT WORK.
FREQUENTLY ASKED.
