Underground utility subcontractors carry overhead driven by equipment, locating and damage prevention compliance, and the inspection coordination required by municipal and utility owners. Here is what normal overhead looks like at every revenue level.
These benchmarks are drawn from SPM's work with commercial underground utility 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 Underground Utility Contractors: Underground utility contractors working on municipal projects face significant inspection and testing overhead — pressure tests, camera inspections, chlorination, and bacteriological testing are all project-specific costs that should flow to jobs rather than overhead. When these costs get miscoded, both overhead and job margins are distorted.
Pressure tests, camera inspections, chlorination, and bacteriological testing are direct job costs for the specific utilities being tested. When they're coded to overhead, job margins are overstated and overhead is inflated.
811 call center subscriptions, private locating services, and potholing for damage prevention are overhead costs specific to underground utility work. These costs are often undertracked and underestimated in bid pricing.
Surface restoration — pavement, concrete, or landscape — following utility installation is a direct job cost. When restoration costs get coded to overhead or to a general restoration account rather than to the specific utility job, job margins are understated.
SPM codes all inspection and testing costs — pressure tests, camera inspections, bacteriological testing — to the specific utility jobs in ControlQore. Overhead drops, job margins reflect actual project cost, and restoration costs follow the same direct-to-job approach.
Private locating and damage prevention costs are tracked as a dedicated category in ControlQore — both as overhead for the ongoing subscription cost and as direct job cost for project-specific potholing and locating. The split between overhead and direct cost is maintained consistently.
Municipal utility work carries higher inspection and documentation overhead than private utility work. SPM tracks overhead rate separately for municipal and private scopes — revealing which market segment is more overhead-efficient for your specific operation.
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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