CONCRETE FLATWORK · CONCRETE AND MASONRY · FIXED BY STEP 07

One pour day outspends a month of payroll

Tuesday morning you spend sixty grand before lunch, you bill it on the 25th, and the money reaches your account sometime in October if the GC gets paid.

WHY IT'S A CONCRETE FLATWORK PROBLEM

Flatwork's spend is lumpier and further front-loaded than any other trade's, because one morning consumes a month's worth of material in seven hours. The vendor financing that morning can shut down your whole operation over a single late statement, which turns one slow-paying GC into a company-wide stoppage across jobs that are current. That's a cash timing problem, and no margin number on the P&L will tell you it's coming.

WHAT IT COSTS

The size of it

Your ready-mix supplier is effectively your largest and least patient lender, and their collection tool is your entire schedule. That's the real mechanism behind the near-miss on payroll: the profit reads fine, and the calendar of when the cash moves is what fails.

OVERHEAD AT $1M–$5M

14%

CFOS target 13% for concrete flatwork.

GROSS MARGIN AT $1M–$5M

22%

CFOS target 24.5% for concrete flatwork.

NET PROFIT AT $1M–$5M

CFOS target 11.5% for concrete flatwork.

A 400 yard placement is roughly $66,000 of material bought and consumed between 6am and 1pm. Ready-mix terms are usually net 30 from statement, and the supplier holds leverage no other vendor has: a past due balance triggers a credit hold that stops deliveries on every job you have, not only the one that's behind. The subcontract is pay-when-paid, so the cash for that Tuesday comes back 45 to 75 days later. Before any of it is billable you've already paid for forms and lumber, rebar and welded wire mesh delivered and tied, vapor retarder, chairs, dowel baskets, blades, and cure and seal.

WHAT TO DO

Three moves, in order

STEP 01

Build a 13 week cash calendar keyed to pour dates, with the yardage and the dollars placed on the day the trucks roll, not on the day the job starts.

STEP 02

Call the plant and get the statement date, the terms, and the aging that triggers a credit hold, then set your own payment date three days ahead of it and treat that date as fixed.

STEP 03

Before you accept a pour date on a job, confirm the last pay app on that job cleared, and tell the GC plainly that the next placement follows the payment.

THE FIX

Step 07: Monthly cadence

Weekly bookkeeping, cost to complete, and one CEO report, on the same days every month.

CFOS-07 · CHAPTER 7

The monthly close that takes a contractor 5 hours

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

BENCHMARKS

Concrete flatwork 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

Profitable on the P&L, out of cash

Your P&L says you made money and your bank account says you didn't. Neither is wrong.

SAME TRADE

What else costs concrete flatwork contractors money

CONCRETE FLATWORK · CFOS-04

Your ready-mix quote expires. Your subcontract doesn't.

You priced the yard in March off a quote sheet and bought it in November off a new one, and the number you signed with the GC never moved an inch.

CONCRETE FLATWORK · CFOS-01

The 63 yards disappear between square feet and cubic yards

The slab came out at the thickness the drawings called for, you never got a change order, and you still bought and placed yards that weren't in the bid.

CONCRETE FLATWORK · CFOS-06

The long lead item in flatwork is a truck slot

You can't buy concrete ahead of the job or ahead of a price increase. You buy a place in the plant's Tuesday morning schedule, and the plant decides whether you keep it.

CONCRETE FLATWORK · CFOS-02

You bid one mobilization and drove out five times

The building slab made money and the sidewalks, ramps, and dumpster pad at the end took it back, eighteen months after you priced them.

CONCRETE FLATWORK · CFOS-08

Fifteen trades wreck the floor and one sub pays for it

Every contractor on the job used your finished slab as a work platform and a staging yard for a year and a half, and the closeout punch list comes to you.

SAME MECHANISM, OTHER TRADES

The same mechanism in other trades

CONCRETE

Ten Jobs Used Those Forms, One Job Paid for Them

Your yard is full of panels and shoring, every job report says you made money, and the bank account disagrees. The form buy hit job one and jobs two through ten absorbed none of it.

DEMOLITION

The Scale Wants Cash Today, The GC Pays In Sixty Days

Almost everything a demolition job costs goes out in the first two weeks, and the first pay application hasn't even been submitted yet.

FLOORING

You bankroll the mill six months before you get paid

The mill wants a check before it ships, the GC won't pay for stored material, and your cash is stuck in a warehouse for four months waiting on a space that isn't ready.

QUESTIONS

What concrete flatwork owners ask

How do I cover ready mix bills before the GC pays me?

Tuesday morning you spend sixty grand before lunch, you bill it on the 25th, and the money reaches your account sometime in October if the GC gets paid.

What does it cost?

What do I do first?

Build a 13 week cash calendar keyed to pour dates, with the yardage and the dollars placed on the day the trucks roll, not on the day the job starts.

What are concrete flatwork contractors supposed to be making?

Concrete flatwork runs 22% gross margin, 14% overhead and 8% net profit before taxes at $1M–$5M. The all-trade average is 7%, so this trade is 1 point above it. The CFOS target is 11.5%.

Which part of the system fixes it?

The step is number 07, monthly cadence. Weekly bookkeeping, cost to complete, and one CEO report, on the same days every month. It comes from chapter 7 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 concrete flatwork contractors as a service. It is a separate firm, Sulphur Prairie Management, LLC, run by the same author.

What a fractional CFO does for concrete flatwork contractors

AUTHOR

JOSH LUEBKER

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

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