WHAT A MOBILIZATION CHARGE REALLY IS.
A mobilization charge is the money that pays you to get set up to work, and it belongs on the contract rather than being a favor from the general contractor. It covers equipment moves, staging and temporary facilities, bond premiums, permits, submittal work, and the first crew days that produce nothing billable. On civil and public work the spend runs 60 to 90 days ahead of the first pay application clearing, which on a $2M dirt job is $150K to $200K out the door before a dollar comes back. DOT and federal owners often cap mobilization at 5 to 10 percent of contract value and release it in stages as the job earns. Bury it in unit prices instead and you've agreed to fund the front of the job yourself, then recover it slowly, one production quantity at a time.
Underbilling mobilization is the most common self-inflicted cash problem on a job's first month, and it's self-inflicted because the fix happens at bid time and costs nothing. A separate schedule of values line for mobilization, billed on the first pay application, moves the same contract dollars to the front of the job instead of the middle. Nobody pays you more and no margin changes. You get paid in the order you spend, which is the only order that keeps a growing subcontractor solvent.
WHAT IT MEANS.
A mobilization charge is the contract line that pays a subcontractor for getting set up to perform work, covering equipment moves, staging, temporary facilities, bond premiums, permits, and startup labor that produces no billable production.
Mobilization isn't a deposit and it's not an advance against profit. It's payment for work already performed, which is the work of putting a crew, a machine, a permit, and a temporary facility onto a site that had none of the four. That distinction is what makes the line defensible in a negotiation, because you aren't asking to be paid early. You're asking to be paid for the first thing you did.
Demobilization and remobilization are separate events and they need separate treatment. Demobilization is the cost of getting off the site at the end, and it earns nothing if it's not priced and placed at closeout. Remobilization is what happens when a schedule slips or a room reopens for somebody else's late fix, and the crew comes back to do the same setup twice for one payment.
WHERE THE FIRST MONTH GOES WRONG.
It's buried in the unit prices
The startup cost is spread across every unit price in the bid, so it comes back only as production gets billed. That means the month you spend the most is the month you recover the least of it, and the recovery finishes around the time the job does. The total contract value is the same either way. What changes is whether you're the one financing the first sixty days.
There's no mobilization line on the schedule of values
If the schedule of values has no mobilization line, there's nothing to bill against on pay application one however much you spent. The line has to exist in the contract documents before the first billing cycle, which means it's a bid-time and a negotiation-time item. Asking for it in month two is asking for a change order to something nobody agreed was in scope.
Remobilization and demobilization are never billed
Big iron moves in before the first dollar bills, and on the trades that finish last it moves in more than once. A crew that grids a room, leaves, and comes back for somebody else's late above-ceiling fix has mobilized twice and been paid once. Demobilization at closeout has the same problem in reverse: it's pure cost with no production behind it, so if it's not its own line it's a donation.
WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE IN DOLLARS.
Fuel, bond premiums, equipment moves, and payroll run 60 to 90 days before pay application one clears. On a $2M dirt job that's $150K to $200K spent before the first dollar comes back. Nothing about that's a margin problem, and no amount of cutting the bid improves it. It's a question of which line of the contract pays for the first sixty days.
Public owners cap and stage mobilization rather than paying it all at once. DOT and federal owners often cap it at 5 to 10 percent of contract value. California PCC 10264 releases 50 percent of bid mobilization once 5 percent of the contract is earned, 75 percent at 10 percent earned, and 95 percent at 20 percent earned. So even a properly billed mobilization line on public work only partly closes the hole, and the rest is a cash forecast problem.
Take a $500,000 job with $40,000 of real startup cost. Spread that $40,000 across the unit prices and bill 8 percent of the contract in month one, and you recover 8 percent of it, which is $3,200 against $40,000 already spent. You're $36,800 out. Put the same $40,000 on its own schedule of values line and bill it on pay application one and you recover all of it in the first cycle. Same contract, same profit, and a $36,800 difference in what you personally funded.
HOW IT GETS BILLED IN THE RIGHT ORDER.
The mobilization line gets built into the schedule of values before production billing starts, sized from the startup cost the estimate already carries and not from a percentage somebody guessed at. On public work it gets sized to the cap the owner publishes and the staged release is modeled instead of assumed. That's a bid-time deliverable, not a collections one.
Demobilization goes on a separate line released at closeout, so the cost of getting off the site has revenue behind it. It's small money on one job and it's a full point of margin across a year of jobs. Most contractors have never billed it once, which is why it reads as generous when a GC agrees to it.
Every return trip gets logged as an event with the reason and the date attached, because a remobilization claim is a documentation question rather than an argument. Room-readiness sign-offs and above-ceiling inspection dates are the record that turns a second trip into a billable one. Without the log, the second trip is absorbed and nobody can prove otherwise.
The 13 week cash forecast carries the mobilization spend and the expected pay application timing for every job about to start, so a month with three simultaneous startups is a known event rather than a surprise. The forecast is where a contractor finds out that two jobs starting in the same month is the problem, not either job. Sequencing one of them a fortnight later costs nothing and changes the whole quarter.
THE OUTPUTS, NAMED.
FLAT MONTHLY FEE. NO SURPRISES.
Three tiers, priced by your trailing twelve month revenue. Which one you're in depends on how much of the work you want off your desk. No hourly billing, no payroll, and no add-ons.
Pricing
| Last 12 months revenue | Monthly fee |
|---|---|
| Up to $1M | $1,900 to $2,900 |
| $1M to $3.5M | $2,600 to $3,900 |
| $3.5M to $6.5M | $3,800 to $5,700 |
| $6.5M to $9.5M | $5,100 to $7,100 |
| $9.5M to $12.5M | $6,100 to $8,500 |
| $12.5M to $15.5M | $7,400 to $11,000 |
| $15.5M to $18.5M | $9,400 to $13,500 |
| $18.5M+ | Quoted individually |
Range reflects the three tiers below. Which one you're in depends on how much of the work you want off your desk. No payroll. No hidden line items.
You stop guessing.
You get the CFO work. Job costing built against the way you estimate, a 13 week cash forecast, monthly WIP, and a meeting every month that ends in decisions rather than a report.
Your bookkeeper keeps doing the books.
You stop touching the books.
Everything in Core, and we run the bookkeeping and the controllership as well. Nobody in your office is answering coding questions or chasing a reconciliation at month end.
We do the books. No payroll.
Every job shows its margin while it's still running.
Everything in Executive, plus the job costing and WIP platform set up, loaded with your cost codes, and managed for you every month. You never have to learn it.
We do the job costing.
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