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ONE PROBLEM, IN DETAIL

ELECTRICAL: SERVICE DIVISION VS CONSTRUCTION DIVISION BLINDNESS

QUICK ANSWER

Service work runs high-margin small tickets; construction runs low-margin big contracts. Blended books hide which side feeds the other, and owners price both wrong.

This page covers one problem. The full picture for this trade, including the other places margin leaks, is on the electrical operating system page.

BY JOSH LUEBKERPublished 2026-08-06Updated 2026-08-06
WHAT BREAKS

WHERE THE MONEY GOES.

Service division vs construction division blindness

Covered in full in the quick answer above. The sourced numbers and what controls it are below.

Carrier maintenance vs project work (two cash profiles)

Maintenance and service-ticket MSAs pay smaller and steadier; project installs (tower mods, small-cell batches, in-building systems) pay bigger and slower against completion documentation. Blended books hide which side carries the company, the same divisional blindness as electrical's service-vs-construction split and fire protection's ITM split.

WHAT THIS TRADE SHOULD EARN

THE NUMBER TO MEASURE IT AGAINST.

Electrical contractors run about % net profit at $1M to $5M, rising to roughly 12% at $5M to $10M. The CFOS target at $1M to $5M is11%, set at 10 percent before taxes or 3.5 points better than your trade's average at your revenue, whichever is higher. A problem like this one lives in the distance between those two figures rather than in a loss on any single job.

Gross margin over the same bands runs % to 27%, against a CFOS target of 11%.

Full electrical benchmark bands by revenue

WHAT CONTROLS IT

THE SYSTEM THAT FIXES THIS.

Job Profitability System

Cost codes built against the estimate, so a job can be read while it runs.

How the Job Profitability System works

COMMON QUESTIONS

FREQUENTLY ASKED.

Three tiers, and which one you are in depends on how much of the work you want off your desk. Core is where you stop guessing: job costing built against the way you estimate, a 13 week cash forecast, monthly WIP, and a monthly meeting that ends in decisions, while your bookkeeper keeps doing the books. Executive is where you stop touching the books, because we run the bookkeeping and the controllership as well. Strategic is where every job shows its margin while it is still running, because the job costing and WIP platform is set up and managed for you. No payroll. No scope gaps.
Sixty days. We migrate your books back to the start of your last taxable year, set up ControlQore, and build your job costing structure from scratch. Fully operational in two months.
RELATED RESOURCES
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Electrical Operating System
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Davis-Bacon classifications, fringe calculations, and weekly certified payroll turn public work into an admin discipline.
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Union cost structure decisions
IBEW wage-and-fringe packages versus open-shop rates change the overhead and bid math; the decision is financial as much as philosophical..
WHAT THIS TIES INTO
THIS TRADE
Electrical Operating SystemCFO for Electrical Contractors
CFOS SPINE
Run on CFOS, Full System IndexJob Profitability System
DECIDE
Pricing by Revenue BandBook a Call
Josh Luebker, The Construction CFO
Josh Luebker
FRACTIONAL CFO · THE CONSTRUCTION CFO

Former commercial project manager and master electrician: 150+ projects worth $2.1B combined, from $50,000 to $300M. Now fractional CFO to commercial subcontractors.

About Josh  | LinkedIn

IS THIS COSTING YOU MORE THAN YOU THINK?

Bring one electrical job and your last full year. We will show you what this is worth in dollars before we talk about working together.

You don't hire a CFO because it's safe, you do it because the real risk isn't having one.
Book a 20 minute diagnostic

20 minutes. No sales pressure. We will tell you exactly what's broken before we talk about anything else.

OR START WITH THE WORKBOOKS. NO CALL NEEDED.