Framing subcontractors operate volume-driven businesses with labor as the dominant cost and overhead driven by supervision infrastructure, tool maintenance, and the scheduling coordination required across multiple simultaneous framing crews.
These benchmarks are drawn from SPM's work with commercial framing contractors and industry data. Calculate your actual overhead rate — total G&A expenses divided by total revenue for the trailing 12 months — and compare to your revenue band below.
How to use this data: If you're above the top of the range, specific categories need review. If you're below the bottom, you may be underinvesting in systems and staff. Use the benchmark as a target range, not a single number.
Trade note for Framing Contractors: Framing contractors consistently show lower overhead rates than most specialty trades — reflecting a volume business with relatively simple overhead structure. The primary overhead challenge for framing contractors is labor efficiency — keeping crews productive and minimizing downtime between phases. Overhead rate above 18% at $1M–$5M suggests administrative overhead that's disproportionate to the business model.
When framing crews are between phases — waiting for inspections, waiting for MEP rough-in, waiting for material delivery — that downtime labor cost often gets coded to overhead rather than to the job causing the delay. Job margins look better. Overhead looks worse.
Nail guns, compressors, saws, and scaffolding maintenance costs often go to a general overhead account. For high-volume framing contractors, tool maintenance is material and should be tracked at the equipment level.
The transition from running one crew to running three simultaneous crews requires a foreman or superintendent infrastructure that adds $150K–$250K in overhead before the revenue from the additional crews fully materializes.
Crew downtime caused by specific job conditions — delayed inspections, MEP coordination holds, material delays — is coded to those jobs in ControlQore rather than to overhead. Jobs that create crew downtime reflect their true labor cost.
Tool and small equipment maintenance costs are tracked as a dedicated overhead category in ControlQore — separate from general G&A. For high-volume framing operations, tool maintenance overhead reveals the true cost of maintaining a productive tool inventory.
When Executive clients are expanding from one crew to multiple crews, SPM models the overhead rate impact of the supervision infrastructure required — showing when the additional crew revenue is projected to absorb the overhead investment in field management.
Find out in a free 30-minute call. Josh will tell you straight where your overhead rate stands and what to do about it.
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