SF UNIT COST JOB COSTING FOR WATERPROOFING CONTRACTORS.
Waterproofing contractors bid by the square foot, hot-applied rubberized asphalt at one rate, sheet membrane at another, liquid-applied at a third. Job costs get tracked at the project level instead of the SF level, so when a job closes nobody knows the real cost per SF by membrane type. The next bid runs off last year's estimate. SF unit cost tracking fixes that by measuring labor hours per SF, material per SF, and equipment per SF, organized by membrane category.
You sell by the square foot, so you should know your cost by the square foot. Most waterproofing subs we walk into don't, and the reason is structural rather than lazy: the books were built to answer whether the job made money, not which membrane made it. A job that finishes at 18 percent gross margin can be hot-applied at 28 percent and sheet membrane at 4 percent. The total reads fine and the next bid repeats both rates. One membrane keeps subsidizing the other until the mix on some job runs the wrong way.
WHAT IT MEANS.
SF unit cost tracking is job costing that measures labor hours, material, and equipment per square foot by membrane type, so the unit you bid in is the unit you cost in.
Waterproofing pricing is unit based. A contractor quotes 24,000 SF of hot-applied membrane at $4.85/SF, and the bid math is simple: SF times rate equals bid. The cost math isn't simple. Labor, material, equipment, and crew time all get assigned to a job number, and nobody breaks those costs back out into cost per SF by membrane type. When the next RFP comes in for 18,000 SF of similar work, the estimator uses a rate that felt right the last time.
The result is that some membrane types get bid too high, which loses jobs that should have been won at the true rate, and some get bid too low, which wins jobs that lose money. You can't price what you don't measure, and bid units have to match cost units.
THREE STRUCTURAL BREAKDOWNS.
Cost codes don't split by membrane type
Most waterproofing job cost structures carry one labor line, one material line, and one equipment line per project. A job with hot-applied below grade and sheet membrane on the deck codes both crews to the same labor bucket. By the time the costs hit the books you can't separate what hot-applied labor cost from what sheet membrane labor cost, and that data is gone for good. Splitting cost codes by membrane category from day one is the only fix, because nothing reconstructs it later.
Labor hours aren't logged against SF completed
Crews report hours to a job number but don't report SF completed by the day. Even with split cost codes you end up with hours by membrane type and no production rate to divide them into. You can't answer how many SF of hot-applied per labor hour the crew hit on the bank job, because daily SF was never captured. Production rates are the bridge between labor cost and SF unit cost, and without them the math doesn't close.
Material waste factors are guessed
Sheet membrane has waste, hot-applied has waste, and detail work around penetrations has more waste than either. The waste factor moves by membrane, by detail count, by crew, and by weather. Most estimators use a flat 8 or 10 percent across the board, while real waste runs 5 percent on simple flat slabs and 18 percent on penetration-heavy decks. Bidding 10 percent on an 18 percent waste job donates the difference, and tracking actual waste by job type fixes the next bid.
WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE IN DOLLARS.
A flat 10 percent waste assumption on a deck that runs 18 percent waste gives away 8 points of material cost on that scope. Real waste on a simple flat slab runs 5 percent. The spread between 5 percent and 18 percent is geometry, and geometry is knowable before the bid goes out.
A waterproofing job that finishes at 18 percent gross margin can be hot-applied at 28 percent and sheet membrane at 4 percent. The job total says the work was fine. The split says one membrane type is being bid wrong. Without the split, the same rate goes into the next bid and the next job after that.
Penetrations, terminations, transitions, and patches run 4 to 6 times the labor per linear foot that flat field area does. When detail and field code together, the blended rate hides both signals at once. A detail-heavy deck priced off a blended rate is being subsidized by flat-field margin, and nobody in the office can see it happening.
HOW SF UNIT COST TRACKING GETS BUILT.
One labor code per membrane type: hot-applied separate from sheet membrane, separate from liquid-applied, separate from detail work. Material and equipment get the same treatment wherever the equipment differs, since hot-applied needs a kettle and sheet membrane doesn't. The code structure is the foundation and it goes on every job, not only the large ones.
The foreman reports SF completed per membrane category at the end of the workday. It takes five minutes on a phone or a tablet. That's the production rate signal: SF completed divided by labor hours equals SF per hour, tracked by membrane, by crew, and by job complexity. After three to four jobs the estimator has production rates that came off your own crews instead of a book.
Detail labor gets carried in its own line, apart from the flat field area it's nothing like. Penetrations, terminations, transitions, and patches run 4 to 6 times the labor per linear foot of field area. Once detail sits in its own code, a detail-heavy deck gets priced at what it costs instead of being carried by the flat work around it.
Material delivered minus material installed equals waste, and that subtraction gets done at closeout on every job. The result gets compared against the bid assumption. If the bid carried 10 percent and the job ran 16 percent, the next similar job carries 16 percent or a tighter detail plan. Waste is one of the most repeatable cost categories across jobs of similar geometry, which makes it one of the most fixable bid errors there is.
After every job closes, the actual SF unit cost by membrane type goes into a rate library: hot-applied labor per SF, sheet membrane labor per SF, and material with waste per SF. The next bid pulls from the library and not from memory. Within 6 to 12 months the library is dense enough to bid any project type you've done before with numbers you can defend to a GC.
SF unit cost tracking is operationally simple and financially structural. If the books track labor by job total while the estimator bids by SF, the two systems never converge, the estimator stays on memory, and the distance between them stays invisible.
In a CFOS engagement, labor is already coded to membrane type and SF when it hits the books, cost per SF computes from there, and the rate library updates itself off closed jobs. The estimator pulls from a live source instead of a stale spreadsheet. Same business, different bidding accuracy.
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.
| 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.
FREQUENTLY ASKED.
