DRYWALL · INTERIORS AND FINISHES · FIXED BY STEP 06

Rough-in inspection owns your start date

Twelve hangers report Monday, rough-in failed Friday over three missing straps, and you pay all twelve to wait in the parking lot.

WHY IT'S A DRYWALL PROBLEM

Every trade waits on somebody, but very few trades are the physical act of concealment. The inspection exists because your board is what makes the other work impossible to see again, so that gate is structural to what you do and it will never move upstream. You're usually the largest headcount on the floor that week, which makes standing around cost real money by the hour.

WHAT IT COSTS

The size of it

Idle crew days cost full burden and produce nothing, and a piece crew that gets tired of waiting leaves for another contractor and is gone two weeks. The stamped-framing engineering runs $8k to $30k, spent in month one of a job that doesn't bill until month four.

OVERHEAD AT $1M–$5M

13%

CFOS target 12% for drywall.

GROSS MARGIN AT $1M–$5M

19%

CFOS target 22% for drywall.

NET PROFIT AT $1M–$5M

CFOS target 10% for drywall.

Your start date belongs to an inspector and four other subs, so release crews against the signed inspection card and treat the GC's three-week look-ahead as a rumor. Board permanently conceals framing, MEP rough-in, firestopping, and insulation, so none of it can be covered until every one of those is inspected and signed off. On exterior light-gauge and tall interior partitions there's a second gate: the framing is a deferred submittal, you pay for the PE-stamped calcs, and the engineer of record reviews them on a clock your office doesn't control. While both of those clocks run, you're the one holding a crew that gets paid whether the card is signed or not.

WHAT TO DO

Three moves, in order

STEP 01

Write a release rule into your scheduling: no crew is dispatched until the signed inspection card is in your file or the approval is visible in the GC's system, confirmed 48 hours ahead.

STEP 02

Set the deferred-submittal engineering fee up as its own cost code and its own schedule of values line so it bills in the first application, not at the end.

STEP 03

Keep a designated backup job for every crew across the two-week window around each board start, and tell the GC in writing that the crew moves if the gate slips.

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

Drywall 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 drywall contractors money

DRYWALL · CFOS-06

You Go Back Six Times And No Ticket Gets Signed

You hung the corridor in March and you're still sending a guy back in June, one hole at a time, on somebody else's dime.

DRYWALL · CFOS-01

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.

DRYWALL · CFOS-04

Your contract holds two commodities and hedges neither

You bid it in October off a quote good for thirty days, and you're buying board and studs in March on two markets that move separately.

DRYWALL · CFOS-01

The eleven-month callback hits this year's payroll

It's March, two of your best guys are in a truck all month fixing houses you finished last spring, and none of those hours bill.

DRYWALL · CFOS-04

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 between you and your retention.

SAME MECHANISM, OTHER TRADES

The same mechanism in other trades

CIVIL

The grading permit clock isn't on your schedule

Third resubmittal on the grading permit, the power pole relocation is six months out, and your crew and iron cost money while no party in your contract chain is at fault.

CONCRETE

The 28-Day Break Decides a Pour You Already Billed

You poured in March on an approved mix, the cylinders came back low in April, and two floors have already gone up on the slab in question.

DEMOLITION

Four Clocks Own Your Start Date And You Own None

The machine is on the pad, the crew is standing around, and everyone is waiting on a letter from the gas company. None of the clocks that release your start belong to you.

QUESTIONS

What drywall owners ask

Drywall crew waiting on rough-in inspection to pass?

Twelve hangers report Monday, rough-in failed Friday over three missing straps, and you pay all twelve to wait in the parking lot.

What does it cost?

What do I do first?

Write a release rule into your scheduling: no crew is dispatched until the signed inspection card is in your file or the approval is visible in the GC's system, confirmed 48 hours ahead.

What are drywall contractors supposed to be making?

Drywall runs 19% gross margin, 13% overhead and 6% net profit before taxes at $1M–$5M. The all-trade average is 7%, so this trade is 1 point below it. The CFOS target is 10%.

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 drywall contractors as a service. It is a separate firm, Sulphur Prairie Management, LLC, run by the same author.

What a fractional CFO does for drywall contractors

AUTHOR

JOSH LUEBKER

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

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