WATERPROOFING: WORK NOT VISIBLE, EXHUMED BLAME
Below-grade waterproofing is invisible at acceptance and excavated only at failure, sometimes a decade later: latent-defect statutes commonly last 10 years, and forensic cases turn on installation details nobody photographed.
This page covers one problem. The other places this trade loses margin are on the waterproofing operating system page.
WHERE THE MONEY GOES.
Below-grade waterproofing is invisible at acceptance and excavated only at failure, sometimes a decade later: latent-defect statutes commonly last 10 years, and forensic cases turn on installation details nobody photographed. One published IIBEC litigation case study on a nine-year-old university building traced chronic flooding to membrane terminated below grade without counterflashing and caulking installed thinner than the manufacturer's minimum without backer rod, contradicting ASTM C1193. Every finding was an installation-documentation question the contractor could have answered with photos and inspection logs from year zero.
THE COST, SOURCED.
IIBEC below-grade failure case study (termination, counterflashing, C1193 findings); 10-year latent-defect exposure (construction-defect practice reporting).
THE NUMBER TO MEASURE IT AGAINST.
Waterproofing contractors have about 9% net profit at $1M to $5M, rising to roughly 11% at $5M to $10M. The CFOS net profit target is 12.5% before taxes at $1M to $5M, the trade's average plus 3.5 points, never below 10%. You find a problem like this in the distance between those two figures. One bad job won't tell you.
Gross margin over the same bands is 26% to 27%,against CFOS targets of 28.5% and 29.5%.
THE SYSTEM THAT FIXES THIS.
Cost codes built against the estimate, so a job can be read while it is open.
FREQUENTLY ASKED.
