The cabinet clock doesn't start until someone signs
You won the job in March and the shop still hasn't cut a stick, because the shop drawings have not been stamped. The fabrication clock starts at approval, and the architect owns that date.
A plumber's long lead item is in a catalog with a part number and a published lead time you can read before you bid. Yours doesn't exist yet. It gets drawn by your shop, reviewed by an architect who has no deadline written into your contract, and only then does anything get cut, which means the biggest schedule risk on the job is a signature you can't chase with a purchase order.
The size of it
A crew sized for a start date that slides eight weeks either stays on your overhead or gets released and re-hired at a premium, and the shop slot you were holding gets sold to the next job. The span between award and first cash on a millwork package routinely runs a full quarter with nothing to bill.
Custom millwork and casework run roughly 6 to 12 weeks of fabrication after shop drawing approval, and a complex package can reach 14 to 16 weeks. That's why the rule of thumb is drawings to the architect 12 to 16 weeks ahead of install. Plated trusses and engineered floor systems stack their own sequence: engineering and sealed drawings first, then permit, then two to six weeks of manufacturing. In both cases you're the party who has to produce the drawing, and someone else owns the date it gets released.
Three moves, in order
Step 06: Project management
Billing dates, change orders, and notices, written as standards that work without anyone chasing them.
What else costs carpentry contractors money
The same mechanism in other trades
What carpentry owners ask
Why is my millwork taking 12 weeks after we already won the job?
You won the job in March and the shop still hasn't cut a stick, because the shop drawings have not been stamped. The fabrication clock starts at approval, and the architect owns that date.
What does it cost?
A crew sized for a start date that slides eight weeks either stays on your overhead or gets released and re-hired at a premium, and the shop slot you were holding gets sold to the next job. The span between award and first cash on a millwork package routinely runs a full quarter with nothing to bill.
What do I do first?
Put two dates on every millwork job in your job cost file: the award date and the stamped approval date. Build the labor plan off the second one.
What are carpentry contractors supposed to be making?
No survey separates carpentry, so there is no figure of its own. The nearest comparable trade in the reference is Framing, which runs 18% gross margin, 13% overhead and 5% net profit before taxes at $1M–$5M, with a CFOS target of 10% net. Those are derived figures, not carpentry's own. Read them as the neighbourhood, and read your own job costing as the answer.
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.
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 carpentry contractors as a service. It is a separate firm, Sulphur Prairie Management, LLC, run by the same author.
Wrote CONTROL, the 8 step system behind these figures. More about the author.