BRIDGE · CIVIL AND EARTHWORK · FIXED BY STEP 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.

WHY IT IS A BRIDGE PROBLEM

On most trades the bid unit and the cost unit run together: labor by the hour and material by the piece. On a girder set, revenue is counted in beams while cost is counted in crane days, and the two reconcile only when the pick goes as drawn. Nothing about a railroad closure window or a bearing seat survey acceptance is inside your control.

WHAT IT COSTS

The size of it

Two lost crane days on a job bid with four days of pick time is a 50% overrun on the highest rate line item you own, and unless the machine is costed at a real internal rate it disappears into other job costs and the next bridge gets priced identically.

OVERHEAD AT $1M–$5M

15%

CFOS target 14% for bridge.

GROSS MARGIN AT $1M–$5M

22%

CFOS target 24% for bridge.

NET PROFIT AT $1M–$5M

CFOS target 10% for bridge.

The pick is gated by things that aren't yours: bearing seat elevations surveyed and accepted, working drawing approval on the erection plan, a road or rail closure window granted by the owner or the railroad, and wind. Anything over roughly 300 tons adds assembly and disassembly on both ends of the job. A weather day or a closure that gets pulled burns a full crane day and earns zero units. That leaves the largest single cost on the structure with no revenue unit tracking it.

WHAT TO DO

Three moves, in order

STEP 01

Set an internal hourly and daily rate for the crane, mats, and rigging including assembly and teardown, and charge it to the job the way an outside rental would bill you.

STEP 02

Log pick days planned against pick days used on every structure, with a reason code for each lost day: wind, closure pulled, survey not accepted, and erection plan not returned.

STEP 03

Carry that day count into the next erection bid and build the beam price off crane days you can prove.

THE FIX

Step 02: Equipment cost basis

A true internal rate per machine covering ownership, maintenance, fuel, and transport, charged to the projects that used it.

CFOS-02 · CHAPTER 2

What your equipment really costs per hour

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

BENCHMARKS

Bridge by revenue band

Every one of the 7 bands carries the CFOS target beside the published figure.

ACROSS EVERY TRADE

Your equipment is eating the margin

The machine is paid for, so the jobs use it at no charge. Then the transmission goes and the year is gone.

SAME TRADE

What else costs bridge contractors money

BRIDGE · CFOS-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.

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-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

DRYWALL

Level 5 gets discovered after the primer goes on

The spec said Level 4, the owner walked it at night with the wall washers on, and now there's a skim coat standing between you and your retention.

DRYWALL

Piece rate and square-foot bids agree on flat walls only

Your hangers make the same on a clean corridor as on a bathroom full of soffits, so guess which walls are done Friday and which ones aren't.

ELECTRICAL

You hit the hours and still lost money on the rate

You bid labor in unit hours and the field hit the unit hours. The loss lives in the dollars per hour you converted them at, and it runs the same direction on every job you take.

QUESTIONS

What bridge owners ask

How to bid girder erection when the crane bills 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.

What does it cost?

What do I do first?

Set an internal hourly and daily rate for the crane, mats, and rigging including assembly and teardown, and charge it to the job the way an outside rental would bill you.

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 sits right on it. The CFOS target is 10%.

Which part of the system fixes it?

The step is number 02, equipment cost basis. A true internal rate per machine covering ownership, maintenance, fuel, and transport, charged to the projects that used it. It comes from chapter 2 of CONTROL: The Construction Financial Operating System.

AUTHOR

JOSH LUEBKER

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

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.