BRIDGE · CIVIL AND EARTHWORK · FIXED BY STEP 06

Your Girder Date Comes From the Casting Bed Calendar

You didn't buy beams, you bought a spot in a casting bed. The plant releases that spot when your shop drawings come back approved, and the calendar behind it belongs to somebody else.

WHY IT'S A BRIDGE PROBLEM

Most trades order material and take delivery on a schedule they control. On a bridge, the one item that fixes your erection date is made to order against a shared production line, and the release trigger is a state reviewer's signature on shop drawings. That puts your longest lead item under two parties who don't report to you and can't be paid to hurry.

WHAT IT COSTS

The size of it

Miss the bed slot and you queue behind whoever submitted next, commonly 6 to 10 weeks. By then the substructure is poured and paid for and the crane date is booked, so the crew stays on the clock with nothing to invoice against.

OVERHEAD AT $1M–$5M

15%

CFOS target 14% for bridge.

GROSS MARGIN AT $1M–$5M

22%

CFOS target 24.5% for bridge.

NET PROFIT AT $1M–$5M

CFOS target 10.5% for bridge.

A girder is built for one bridge, with its own length, skew, strand pattern, camber, and bearing seat. The precast plant schedules by casting bed, and a bed casts one line a day, so your beams are a date on a board that fills in submittal order. Steel plate girders run further out still, because mill plate alone runs 10 to 12 weeks before the fabricator makes a cut, and then fit-up, weld, NDT, and coating follow. Money doesn't move any of it. A plant with a DOT job on the bed isn't bumping it for a $4M sub.

WHAT TO DO

Three moves, in order

STEP 01

Get the casting bed confirmation from the plant in writing at award, including the drop-dead date for approved shop drawings, and put that date on the schedule with one person responsible for it.

STEP 02

Work backward from the bed date through the review window to set the shop drawing submittal date, then check it every week until it clears.

STEP 03

Add the girder release to your monthly job review so the beams read as committed cost with a real delivery date before anybody books the crane.

THE FIX

Step 06: Project management

Billing dates, change orders, and notices, written as standards that work without anyone chasing them.

CFOS-06 · CHAPTER 6

Billing and change orders that hold without chasing

What this step changes, what it depends on, and how to tell it's installed.

BENCHMARKS

Bridge by revenue band

All 7 bands are published. The CFOS target is beside the figure up to $10M to $25M, and the 4 bands above that are labelled modeled.

ACROSS EVERY TRADE

The change orders you did and never billed

The field did the work. The paperwork never caught up. Ninety days later there is no record that proves it happened.

SAME TRADE

What else costs bridge contractors money

BRIDGE · CFOS-04

Steel Adjustment Is a Box You Check at Letting

On a lot of DOT bridge lettings, steel price protection is elected item by item at bid time. Skip the election and you own the entire move yourself.

BRIDGE · CFOS-01

One Bridge Takes Five Move-Ins and Pays One Mobilization

A single structure takes four to six separate trips in and out. The contract pays mobilization once, usually capped, usually paid down against early progress.

BRIDGE · CFOS-02

You Bid Erection by the Beam and Pay by the Day

Girder erection gets bid per beam or per structure. The crane, mats, rigging, and crew accrue by the day, and the day keeps running while the pick waits on someone else.

BRIDGE · CFOS-05

Girders in the Yard Can Be Billed Before They Ship

State specs let you get paid for girders stored at the fabrication plant. Most small bridge subs never file the forms and float the whole package for months.

SAME MECHANISM, OTHER TRADES

The same mechanism in other trades

CONCRETE

Eight Tons of Rebar Tagged to a Drawing That Changed

The EOR approved the placing drawings, the fab shop cut and bent to the bar list, and then somebody moved a footing. Now you own bundles tagged to grid lines that no longer exist.

DEMOLITION

Your Breaker Burns Tool Steel That Overhead Pays For

A hammer chews $9,000 of tool steel on one teardown and the job that ate it never sees a dollar of the cost. The margin looks fine and the bank account disagrees.

DRYWALL

Lead-lined board is eight weeks and non-returnable

The imaging room's board is eight weeks out, cut to the shielding drawings, and the deposit is gone the day you release the order.

QUESTIONS

What bridge owners ask

How long does it take to get precast girders after shop drawing approval?

You didn't buy beams, you bought a spot in a casting bed. The plant releases that spot when your shop drawings come back approved, and the calendar behind it belongs to somebody else.

What does it cost?

What do I do first?

Get the casting bed confirmation from the plant in writing at award, including the drop-dead date for approved shop drawings, and put that date on the schedule with one person responsible for it.

What are bridge contractors supposed to be making?

Bridge runs 22% gross margin, 15% overhead and 7% net profit before taxes at $1M–$5M. The all-trade average is 7%, so this trade is right on it. The CFOS target is 10.5%.

Which part of the system fixes it?

The step is number 06, project management. Billing dates, change orders, and notices, written as standards that work without anyone chasing them. It comes from chapter 6 of CONTROL: The Construction Financial Operating System.

OR HAVE IT HANDLED

Everything on this page is something you can install yourself, andCONTROL is the order to do it in. If you would rather buy the finished result, SPM The Construction CFO does this work for bridge contractors as a service. It is a separate firm, Sulphur Prairie Management, LLC, run by the same author.

What a fractional CFO does for bridge contractors

AUTHOR

JOSH LUEBKER

MASTER ELECTRICIAN · 150+ PROJECTS · $2.1B+ MANAGED

Wrote CONTROL, the 8 step system behind these figures. More about the author.