PAVING: SUBGRADE ACCEPTANCE
Paving inherits the subgrade: pave over soft spots without documented acceptance and the failure becomes the paver's warranty claim. The discipline is proof-rolling documentation and written acceptance before the paver moves.
This page covers one problem. The full picture for this trade, including the other places margin leaks, is on the paving operating system page.
WHERE THE MONEY GOES.
Covered in full in the quick answer above. The sourced numbers and what controls it are below.
THE NUMBER TO MEASURE IT AGAINST.
Paving contractors run about % net profit at $1M to $5M, rising to roughly 9% at $5M to $10M. The CFOS target at $1M to $5M is10%, 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 22%, against a CFOS target of 10%.
THE SYSTEM THAT FIXES THIS.
Cost codes built against the estimate, so a job can be read while it runs.
