Find your numbers
Two picks gets you the three numbers your trade should be running at your size, the shortfall you're carrying, and the order to fix it in.
Your targets
| Metric | Your trade average | CFOS target | The shortfall |
|---|
- 2024 Construction Financial Benchmarker, Executive Summary, Construction Financial Management Association, 2024. The survey puts gross profit margin at 21.8%, SG&A at 11.8%, and net income before taxes at 6.3% across all respondents. The best-in-class top quartile reaches 11.9% net income before taxes. Those figures are the whole-population reading, so a single trade can sit well either side of them.
- 2025 Performance Benchmarks, Construction Companies, Jones Maresca and Company, 2025. This study reports specialty contractor gross margin between 15% and 25%. It puts net profit at 5% to 8% for a well managed company, and total indirect cost between 8% and 15%. The indirect cost band is the one worth reading twice, because it's the number most owners have never calculated for their own shop.
- SPM Trade Benchmark Reference, Sulphur Prairie Operations LLC, 2026. The reference holds 48 trades, and net profit in it is stated before taxes. It publishes here as 47 trade pages, because landscaping and irrigation share an identical benchmark profile and are one market, so they're presented together. Everything else carries its own row.
How these figures were built. Gross margin and overhead come from CFMA's 2024 and 2025 financial survey data, plus a January 2026 specialty trade study. Net profit comes from a 48 trade master dataset that covers 24 served trades and 24 adjacent trades. The reference holds 48 trades and the site publishes 47 pages, because landscaping and irrigation carry the same figures and are the same market. Where the survey and the master disagree on net profit, the master carries it. Benchmarks are reviewed against each new CFMA survey release and reconciled before publication.
Your step sequence
Each step needs the one before it to be true. This is the order that keeps that promise.
Open the full trade page
What owners ask
How does the tool work out my targets?
Pick your trade and your revenue band. Overhead recalculates at that band, one point leaner than your trade average, and that rule reproduces the published target on all 48 trades. Gross margin and net profit show the published $1M–$5M target, because the stated net profit rule reproduces only 11 of 48.
What step order does it give me?
The order comes from the dependency chain in the system itself. Step 01 has nothing ahead of it, step 08 sits behind six others. The tool walks the chain so you install in an order where each step has the numbers it needs before it runs.
Where do the benchmarks come from?
Gross margin and overhead come from CFMA's 2024 and 2025 financial survey data, plus a January 2026 specialty trade study. Net profit comes from a 48 trade master dataset that covers 24 served trades and 24 adjacent trades. The reference holds 48 trades and the site publishes 47 pages, because landscaping and irrigation carry the same figures and are the same market. Where the survey and the master disagree on net profit, the master carries it. Benchmarks are reviewed against each new CFMA survey release and reconciled before publication.
Is this a quote or a lead form?
Neither. Nothing is captured and nothing is sent. The whole calculation runs in your browser off the same 1,008 published data points that sit on every trade page.
What if my numbers are worse than the target?
That's the usual answer, and the size of the shortfall tells you where to start. The tool orders the steps by dependency, so the first one it gives you is the one everything else is waiting on.
Josh Luebker ran commercial construction projects before he ran the numbers behind them, on data centres, military bases, hospitals, and high-rises. He wrote CONTROL: The Construction Financial Operating System, which is an eight-step framework for commercial subcontractors, and it publishes on October 1, 2026. He is a master electrician who moved into the office and kept the field vocabulary.
Sulphur Prairie Operations LLC maintains the benchmark reference behind these figures. Every edition is reconciled against the newest CFMA survey release before it publishes here. Where a figure changes between editions, the older edition keeps its year in the title so a citation to it stays correct.