Silt fence outlives the invoice that paid for it
You installed erosion control in month one for a thin lump sum, and you're still driving out to fix it two springs later on a job that quit paying you a long time ago.
Every other trade starts work after the permit is already in force and inherits none of it. The excavator is the one disturbing earth, so the inspection and repair duty attaches to your scope and stays attached through the entire vertical build you're no longer on. Billing and obligation run in opposite directions here: the money comes in during the first quarter, and the work runs across the next two years.
The size of it
You get a 14-day window at the front with nothing to bill, then 18 to 24 months of inspection, repair, and re-seeding charged against a line item that closed at 100% in month three. Add fines when an inspector finds a blown-out control nobody was watching.
Under the EPA Construction General Permit, the NOI goes in at least 14 calendar days before any earth-disturbing activity, and perimeter control, inlet protection, and the stabilized construction entrance all go in before the first blade of dirt moves. That makes erosion control your first cost on the job and usually your thinnest line item. The permit then requires weekly inspections, an inspection within 24 hours of any storm of 0.25 inch or more, stabilization initiated immediately and completed within 7 days over 5 disturbed acres or 14 days under, and repair after every rain. Those obligations run until the Notice of Termination, which is long after the mass grading line is billed to 100%.
Three moves, in order
Step 03: Overhead calculation
What indirect cost really comes to at your size, and the rate your estimating template should be carrying.
What else costs excavation contractors money
The same mechanism in other trades
What excavation owners ask
How do i get paid for swppp maintenance after grading is complete?
You installed erosion control in month one for a thin lump sum, and you're still driving out to fix it two springs later on a job that quit paying you a long time ago.
What does it cost?
You get a 14-day window at the front with nothing to bill, then 18 to 24 months of inspection, repair, and re-seeding charged against a line item that closed at 100% in month three. Add fines when an inspector finds a blown-out control nobody was watching.
What do I do first?
Split erosion control into two codes at bid: install, and maintenance by the month through the Notice of Termination.
What are excavation contractors supposed to be making?
Excavation runs 21% gross margin, 14% 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 03, overhead calculation. What indirect cost really comes to at your size, and the rate your estimating template should be carrying. It comes from chapter 3 of CONTROL: The Construction Financial Operating System.
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.