COORDINATION DELAYS DON'T JUST SLOW THE JOB. THEY DRAIN YOUR CASH.
Your crew is standing by. The coordination model isn't resolved and work is stopped, but payroll still runs Friday and equipment rental is still billing daily. Your scheduled pay app is still due, and there's nothing new to bill on it. MEP coordination delays create a one-two punch: cost keeps accumulating while billing freezes. If you're not tracking delay cost daily and notifying the GC in writing, you're absorbing that cost permanently.
The trouble isn't that the job slowed down. It's that the two halves of your job cost report stop moving together. Cost percentage climbs every day the crew is on the clock, and billed percentage sits still because nothing new got installed. By the time the coordination model clears, you're underbilled by weeks of cost, and the pay-when-paid cycle adds a 30 day billing delay on 60 day terms before any of it comes back. Neither half of that's a bidding problem, and tightening your estimate won't fix it.
WHAT IT MEANS.
An MEP coordination delay is a full or partial stop to installation caused by an unresolved coordination model, and it freezes your billing while crew, supervision, and equipment cost keeps accumulating.
Coordination delays stop installation, and installation is what drives billing on a unit price or schedule of values contract. You bill for what you put in the wall, so when the model is open and the crew is waiting, your billed percentage stops moving while your cost percentage keeps climbing. That's why a coordination hold reads as an underbilling problem on the WIP schedule even though nobody made a billing mistake.
WHERE THE CASH DISAPPEARS.
Billing freezes while cost keeps running
You can't bill for work you haven't installed. But crew cost, supervision, equipment rentals, and general conditions keep accumulating the whole time. A 4-week coordination hold means 4 weeks of cost with zero new billing, which widens the distance between your cost percentage and your billed percentage.
Delay cost is invisible without a log
Idle crew hours, standby equipment, and extended project supervision all cost money. But if you're not logging them daily from Day 1 of the delay, you can't recover them. GCs won't pay for delay cost you can't document. Most subcontractors realize this too late, after the delay is over and the records are gone.
Schedule extensions compound the cash problem
A 3-week coordination delay often becomes a 6 to 8 week schedule extension. That pushes your substantial completion date, and your retainage release with it, weeks or months further out. On a $2M job with 10% retainage, every month of schedule extension is another month of about $20,000 in retainage you can't collect.
WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE IN DOLLARS.
A 10-person crew at $4,500 a day all-in, fully stopped for 15 days, runs about $67,500 in idle labor. That one is recoverable if you have the daily log and the same-day written notice to support it. Without the log it becomes overhead you ate.
Extended supervision and project management across the same 3 weeks runs about $12,000, recoverable when your general conditions are documented. Equipment on standby, lifts and conduit benders sitting idle, adds about $8,500 recoverable against the equipment logs. Put those with idle crew and a $1.5M MEP sub is looking at roughly $88K of cost with a path back to it.
One missed pay app cycle is 30 days, and on 60 day terms that opens an $80K to $150K cash shortfall. This one isn't recoverable from anybody, because it isn't a cost. It's a delay in when the cash reaches your account, and you either fund it or you draw on the line.
WHAT GETS SET UP ON DAY ONE.
The log opens the day the delay starts, not the week it ends. It records the date, the cause of the delay, and the scope of work stopped, every day the hold continues. It records crew hours impacted at loaded cost with the people and the hours listed, and it records equipment sitting on standby with its rate and its duration. Written notice goes to the GC the same day, by email with a read receipt.
Bill for completed work on schedule, and don't hold a whole pay app because part of the scope is stopped. Bill for stored materials where the contract allows it. Over and under billing gets tracked weekly through the delay, because the distance between billed and earned is the financial signal that tells you how deep the hold has gotten. Billing on the scopes the delay didn't touch gets accelerated wherever the schedule allows it.
The 13 week cash flow forecast gets updated the week the delay starts, not after it clears. The project's cash profile extends by the expected delay duration, so the short weeks show in the forecast before they hit the bank. Any week where cash runs short gets flagged, and the line of credit draw is arranged ahead of the shortfall instead of during it.
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.
