CURTAIN WALL AND GLAZING: THE SUBMITTAL-TO-FABRICATION CRITICAL PATH

Custom curtain wall: 16 to 24 weeks from approved shop drawings to first delivery. Standard storefront: 10 to 14 weeks of fabrication. Specialty glass (fritted, large-format, impact-rated): 10 to 16 weeks. Nothing goes into fabrication until submittals are approved and field measurements are confirmed. Faster submittals mean a faster schedule.

Curtain wall and glazing contractors at $1M to $5M net about 9 percent before taxes on the SPM 48-trade benchmark dataset, tied with waterproofing for the strongest floor among the envelope trades, rising to 15 percent by $25M to $50M. The CFOS target at $1M to $5M is 12.5 percent net before taxes, the trade average plus 3.5 points. The margin is there. The trade's real problem is cash timing. Every net profit figure here is gross margin minus overhead, stated before taxes, the same basis CFMA reports net income on.

Because you spend months before you bill. Engineering, shop drawings, a $30,000 to $80,000 mock-up and fabricator deposits all get paid before the first unit ships. Custom curtain wall takes 16 to 24 weeks from drawing approval to delivery. Unless your schedule of values bills those phases, you pay for preconstruction alone.

Three tiers, and which one you are in depends on how much of the work you want off your desk. On Core we build your plan every month and your team does the work: 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. On Strategic we build the plan, track it and adjust it every month: our team does the bookkeeping and the bank reconciliations, and the job costing and WIP software is set up and managed for you, on your own online software or ours. On Platinum we manage the money side for you every week: our team handles your bills and receivables the way an in-house controller would, and you approve every payment. We don't do payroll.

Sixty days. We migrate your books back to the start of your last taxable year and build your job costing structure from scratch, and on Strategic and Platinum we set up the job costing and WIP software too. You're fully up and working in two months. The onboarding fee is one time, the same for every tier, and set by your revenue band.