Specialty
The 3 specialty trades, compared on the three numbers that tell you the business health immediately.
Specialty covers 3 trades. At $1M–$5M they average 22% to 26% gross margin and 15% to 18% overhead, with 7% to 8% net profit before taxes. Tank and vessel, Scaffolding are the most profitable at 8%, Marine the least at 7%.
Every specialty trade at $1M–$5M
| Trade | Overhead | Gross margin | Net profit | Net profit target |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Marine | 15% | 22% | 7% | 10.5% |
| Tank and vessel | 15% | 23% | 8% | 11.5% |
| Scaffolding | 18% | 26% | 8% | 11.5% |
Gross margin and overhead come from CFMA, Jones Maresca and SPM's own trade data, because those are the figures those sources report by trade and size. Net profit is calculated from them as gross margin minus overhead, so the three rows tie. That makes it an operating profit figure: what is left before interest, other income and expense, and the tax planning choices owners make, such as bonuses, depreciation methods and retirement contributions.
Surveys report net income before taxes after those items, so a reported net can run below the figure here. At the typical contractor the difference is small: CFMA's 2025 medians are 7.1 percent before interest and taxes and 6.7 percent net income before taxes. It grows with size. Against the separate measured net profit dataset, the calculated net runs 0.8 points higher at $1M to $5M, 2.2 points at $5M to $10M and 3.5 points at $10M to $25M, because the gross margin and overhead rows change faster with size than reported net profit does.
Above the $10M to $25M band the gross margin and overhead rows are a modeled extension of the same curves. They have not been reconciled against the licensed CFMA Benchmarker, and the calculated net there runs well above survey medians, so read those bands as a model and not as a survey result.
For 3 trades in specialty, the calculated net profit runs 7% to 8% at $1M to $5M, 9% to 11% at $5M to $10M, 12% to 13% at $10M to $25M. CFMA's 2025 median net income before taxes across all respondents is 6.7 percent.
SPM The Construction CFO. SPM Trade Benchmark Reference: Specialty. 2026. Sulphur Prairie Management, LLC. https://runoncfos.com/clusters/specialty. CC BY 4.0.
Figures on this page were last revised 2026-08-21. Published under CC BY 4.0, which permits reuse of any figure here, including commercially, as long as the credit above travels with it. The same figures in machine-readable form: /benchmarks.json.
Trade level gross margin and overhead compiled by SPM The Construction CFO, validated against published CFMA and JMCO benchmarks. The CFOS targets beside them are from the book CONTROL: The Construction Financial Operating System, published with the full reference at runoncfos.com.
- 2024 Construction Financial Benchmarker, Executive Summary, Construction Financial Management Association, 2024.
- 2025 Construction Financial Benchmarker, Executive Summary, Construction Financial Management Association, 2025.
- 2025 Performance Benchmarks, Construction Companies, Jones Maresca and Company, 2025.
- SPM Trade Benchmark Reference, Sulphur Prairie Management, LLC, 2026.
Sourcing and method: the methodology page.
Which bands are measured. The 4 bands above $10M–$25M extend the survey curve further out and have not been reconciled against the licensed CFMA Benchmarker. How every figure was built is explained on the methodology page.
Compare against the rest
Find your numbers gets you to a single trade and revenue band in two clicks, or open all 48 trades.
What owners ask
What gross margin do specialty contractors run?
Across these 3 trades, gross margin averages 22% to 26% at $1M–$5M, averaging 23.7%. The all-trade average is 22.1%.
Which trade in specialty is the most profitable?
Tank and vessel, Scaffolding net 8% before taxes at $1M–$5M. Marine comes in at 7%, and the distance between them is mostly cost structure.
Why does overhead differ inside these trades?
Marine, Tank and vessel have the leanest overhead of these trades at 15%. Equipment intensity, crew size, and how much of the work is self-performed move that number more than revenue does.
Does specialty get better as revenue grows?
Overhead does. Every one of these trades sheds overhead points as it moves up the 7 revenue bands, because the indirect cost base grows in steps while revenue grows continuously.
What is the CFOS target for these trades?
All three recalculate at each band up to $10M to $25M, and none is published above it: overhead one point leaner than the industry average, net profit at 10% or 3.5 points better than average, whichever is higher, and gross margin at whatever margin produces that net profit target once overhead is paid. Open any of these trade pages to see all three side by side.
Wrote CONTROL, the 8 step system behind these figures. More about the author.