DOOR AND HARDWARE · INTERIORS AND FINISHES · FIXED BY STEP 01

Your first frame is also your longest lead item

Welded hollow metal gets set during wall framing and takes the longest to buy of anything on your list. The money leaves months before there's a pay application to put it on.

WHY IT'S A DOOR AND HARDWARE PROBLEM

Frames are the first thing the building needs from you and the longest thing you can buy, at the same time. No other finish trade mobilises during wall framing, and no other finish trade has a first-trip item that must be released to a factory a quarter ahead. Miss the window and the GC frames the wall without you, which turns a welded frame into a knock-down retrofit and a return trip that was never priced.

WHAT IT COSTS

The size of it

You fund frames and deposits months ahead of any billing that covers them. A missed frame window adds retrofit material plus a mobilization that was never in your number.

OVERHEAD AT $1M–$5M

13%

Derived from Interiors, the nearest comparable trade. CFOS target 12%.

GROSS MARGIN AT $1M–$5M

19%

Derived from Interiors, the nearest comparable trade. CFOS target 22%.

NET PROFIT AT $1M–$5M

Derived from Interiors, the nearest comparable trade. CFOS target 10%.

Release welded hollow metal the day the drawings are usable, and treat the deposit as a job cost that starts before the job does. Quick-ship galvanneal runs a week or two. Anything custom, oversized, fire-labeled, or over a hundred frames goes to a quoted lead time, and welded-frame quotes have run from weeks into months. A custom fire-rated door that runs around 4.5 weeks standard becomes 14.5 weeks once engineering, vision panels, and electrified prep are in the package.

WHAT TO DO

Three moves, in order

STEP 01

Sort every opening on the schedule into two buckets Monday morning: quick-ship galvanneal and quoted lead time. Release the quoted ones first, before the rest of the package is finished.

STEP 02

Give frame deposits their own cost code so the cash going out posts against the job it belongs to and doesn't disappear into overhead.

STEP 03

Get the framing start date from the GC in writing and back-schedule your frame release from it. If that release date has already passed, price the knock-down retrofit as a change before the wall closes.

THE FIX

Step 01: Job cost structure

Seven cost categories and three levels of granularity, built so the estimate and the ledger use the same words.

CFOS-01 · CHAPTER 1

Job cost codes that match how you bid the work

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

BENCHMARKS

Door and hardware 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

Cost codes the field ignores

You have 200 cost codes. The crews use four of them, and one is called Miscellaneous.

SAME TRADE

What else costs door and hardware contractors money

DOOR AND HARDWARE · CFOS-06

Two approval clocks come between you and the factory

Nothing releases to the factory until the hardware schedule submittal comes back and the keying conference happens. Neither clock starts when you sign.

DOOR AND HARDWARE · CFOS-04

Manufacturer list letters reprice your bid three times

Your material has no spot price. It moves when a manufacturer mails a list-price letter, and in 2026 that happened in waves across thirty-plus brands.

DOOR AND HARDWARE · CFOS-06

One install line in the bid becomes three trips

Frames go in at framing, doors hang after paint, and hardware goes on at punch. That's three mobilizations, and most bids price one.

DOOR AND HARDWARE · CFOS-01

Your job cost hides which opening groups lost money

You estimate per opening and purchase per SKU, so one hardware material bucket buries the difference between a passage set and an electrified mortise.

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 door and hardware owners ask

How do I pay for welded frames before the first pay application?

Welded hollow metal gets set during wall framing and takes the longest to buy of anything on your list. The money leaves months before there's a pay application to put it on.

What does it cost?

You fund frames and deposits months ahead of any billing that covers them. A missed frame window adds retrofit material plus a mobilization that was never in your number.

What do I do first?

Sort every opening on the schedule into two buckets Monday morning: quick-ship galvanneal and quoted lead time. Release the quoted ones first, before the rest of the package is finished.

What are door and hardware contractors supposed to be making?

No survey separates door and hardware, so there is no figure of its own. The nearest comparable trade in the reference is Interiors, which runs 19% gross margin, 13% overhead and 6% net profit before taxes at $1M–$5M, with a CFOS target of 10% net. Those are derived figures, not door and hardware'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 01, job cost structure. Seven cost categories and three levels of granularity, built so the estimate and the ledger use the same words. It comes from chapter 1 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 door and hardware contractors as a service. It is a separate firm, Sulphur Prairie Management, LLC, run by the same author.

What SPM The Construction CFO does, and what it costs

AUTHOR

JOSH LUEBKER

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

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