THE SURETY WALKED. HERE'S THE WAY BACK.
Losing your bonding program feels existential, and for subs living on public and bonded work it's the pipeline. But sureties almost never walk over one bad job. They walk over what they can't see: a WIP schedule that keeps surprising them, working capital eroding quarter over quarter, financials coming in late and unreviewed, and losses that turn up finished rather than forecast. Which means the way back is the same path in reverse. Stabilize cash and keep operating on unbonded work, rebuild the financial statements an underwriter can trust with an honest WIP, statements issued by a CPA, and restored working capital, then re-enter through a construction-savvy bond agent with a 12 month track record behind you.
Sureties don't leave bad years. They leave contractors they can't read, and readability can be rebuilt. That's the encouraging part, because nothing in the rebuild requires the market to turn or the backlog to come back. It requires quarters of a WIP whose projected margins came true, monthly closes that happened on time, and a forecast that held. Twelve months of boring accuracy outweighs any narrative, and most rebuilt programs start smaller than the old one and grow on the same evidence that got them written.
WHAT IT MEANS.
A surety bonding program is the single project and aggregate limit a surety will write for a contractor, sized off working capital, net worth, and how much the underwriter trusts the WIP schedule.
The distinction that decides your timeline is whether the surety paid claims or simply stopped being able to read you. A program lost over legibility comes back on a 9 to 18 month arc of clean closes and a predictive WIP. A program lost after paid claims has to resolve those obligations first. Most contractors are in the first category and assume they're in the second.
WHAT REALLY MAKES A SURETY WALK.
The WIP stopped being believable
Sureties underwrite the WIP schedule before anything else, and what they're underwriting is its predictive honesty. A job that showed 8 percent margin at 70 percent complete and finished at a loss tells the underwriter your percent complete and cost-to-complete numbers are fiction, which means every other job on the schedule might be too. One genuinely surprising loss gets explained. A run of margin fade the WIP never forecast ends programs, because the surety's whole model depends on your numbers meaning something.
Working capital and equity eroded past the line
Surety credit is sized off working capital and net worth, and the standard heuristics run around 10 percent of the aggregate program in working capital with something similar in equity. Distributions that outran earnings, losses eating retained earnings, current assets converting into iron, and receivables aging past believability all pull the balance sheet below program size, and then the renewal doesn't come. Most contractors never knew which ratios were being watched, which is its own diagnosis.
The information relationship died
Statements come in months late, produced internally, with no WIP attached. Calls get returned slowly during a rough stretch, and the agent finds out about a problem job from the obligee instead of from you. Sureties price uncertainty, and silence is maximum uncertainty. Plenty of programs end with the company still solvent and the underwriter simply unable to tell.
Concentration and character flags multiply the rest
A single job at 40 percent of the program, one GC dominating the backlog, merchant cash advances appearing on the balance sheet, tax liens, and owner draws spiking during losses are each a multiplier on the underwriter's anxiety. None of them is automatically fatal on its own. Stacked on a shaky WIP, they turn a watch-list account into a non-renewal.
WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE IN DOLLARS.
A $25M marine GC running its accounting on a shared Excel file couldn't get bonded at all, because no surety could read it. Real books, a real WIP, and statements an underwriter could trust produced $5M single-project and $10M aggregate within weeks of the package being ready. The work never changed. The paper did.
The working capital heuristic sureties size from is roughly 10 percent of the aggregate program in working capital, with something similar in net worth. Those are the ratios most contractors learn about only after they have crossed them. The rebuild targets them on purpose rather than hoping to clear them.
That's how much predictive WIP it takes before capacity returns. Sureties re-enter on evidence: quarters of a WIP whose projected margins came true, monthly closes that happened, and a forecast that held. Twelve months of boring accuracy outweighs any narrative, and most rebuilt programs start smaller than the old one and grow from there.
THE REBUILD, IN ORDER.
Get the 13 week cash forecast live, work collections hard on every receivable, and find and stop the bleed. A surety re-entry built on an unstabilized company fails twice, once at the underwriter and once at the bank. Everything after this step assumes the company has stopped losing money while it rebuilds.
Unbonded private work, jobs under obligee bonding thresholds, subcontracting to bonded primes, and negotiated alternatives like letters of credit or subcontractor default insurance programs all keep revenue alive while the paper gets rebuilt. Some subs spend that stretch deliberately building private-work relationships they keep permanently. The trap to avoid is desperation pricing on the unbonded work, because a margin collapse during the wait extends the wait.
Percentage of completion books closed monthly, a WIP that proves predictive for consecutive quarters, statements issued by a CPA at the level your target program requires, and working capital restored toward 10 percent of intended aggregate. This is the phase that does the real work, and it can't be compressed, because the evidence a surety wants is time.
Write a one page narrative covering what went wrong, what changed structurally, and who runs the financial function now. Underwriters re-enter for contractors who can explain their own failure, because a contractor who can explain it can be trusted not to repeat it. A contractor who can't explain it's asking the surety to guess.
Go through a construction-specialty bond agent with realistic single and aggregate asks sized below your old program, and expect funds control or indemnity enhancements at first. Capacity rebuilds in steps and not in leaps. The first program back is smaller than the last one, and that's the design rather than a setback.
Civil is the most bond-dependent trade in the field, so losing the program can zero the pipeline overnight, and the strategy in the meantime leans on private sitework and subcontracting to bonded primes while the rebuild leans on equipment-heavy balance sheets where working capital ratios need deliberate restoration rather than just profits. Concrete on public work loses programs to WIP surprise more often than to balance sheet erosion, usually labor fade the schedule never forecast, so the rebuild centerpiece is a cost-to-complete discipline that makes the WIP predictive again over quarters. Electrical on institutional work re-enters fastest, because the trade's receivables quality and gear-package collateral read well and the blocker is usually statement quality, which is fixable in two CPA cycles. Municipal multi-site erosion work runs on program-dependent agency agreements, where the concentration flag bites hardest with one agency dominating the book, so the rebuild pairs financial restoration with deliberate diversification the underwriter can see in the backlog.
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.
| 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.
