Structural steel subcontractors carry premium overhead driven by engineering coordination, crane and rigging equipment, and the safety programs required for elevated steel erection.
These benchmarks are drawn from SPM's work with commercial steel structural 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 Steel Structural Contractors: Structural steel contractors who fabricate their own steel carry significantly higher overhead than erection-only contractors — fabrication shops require facility, equipment, quality control, and welding certification overhead. The benchmarks above apply to erection-focused structural steel contractors. Add 4–8% for combined fabrication and erection operations.
Crane ownership or rental costs are often allocated to overhead and spread equally across all jobs. Large projects with heavy crane utilization subsidize small projects. Job-level crane cost allocation produces more accurate job margins.
Structural steel shop drawing preparation, connection design, and engineering review for specific projects are direct job costs. When this technical labor gets coded to overhead, steel installation jobs look less profitable than they are.
For union structural steel contractors, iron worker fringe benefit costs — health, pension, annuity — are substantial and must be accurately calculated and tracked at the classification level rather than as a blended labor overhead percentage.
Crane costs — rental, operator, mobilization — are coded to specific jobs in ControlQore via direct job coding or internal rates. Large steel projects with heavy crane days reflect their true crane cost. Small projects aren't subsidizing large project crane overhead.
Shop drawing preparation and connection engineering for specific projects is coded to those jobs in ControlQore. Structural steel engineering is a direct project cost — not general overhead.
Iron worker fringe benefit rates are built into ControlQore job costing at the iron worker classification level — not as a blended labor overhead percentage. Structural steel jobs reflect accurate iron worker total compensation cost from bid to closeout.
Find out in a free 30-minute call. Josh will tell you straight where your overhead rate stands and what to do about it.
Schedule a Free Call →