Your Gate Ships in 20 Weeks. The Schedule Says Two.
It's a two-week install that you order four months ahead, and the only calendar anybody upstream watches is your install window.
Most trades that buy long-lead gear also have weeks of on-site work to absorb the wait. Fencing has a two-week field window against a build clock up to ten times longer, so the ratio is upside down and the procurement date is the real schedule. The gate is also the piece that makes the site secure, so a late gate reads to the GC as an open perimeter, and you get the call about it every morning until the truck delivers it.
The size of it
The order goes in months before there's a pay application to bill it against, so your cash is stuck in somebody's fab queue. If the release slips you pay for acceleration and a return mobilization, plus temp fence rental to close the opening until the permanent gate is set.
Stock posts and standard fabric come off a shelf. Ornamental panels, cantilever slide gates, custom powder coat colors, and integrated operator packages get built after you order them. Bulk steel fence production runs roughly 8 to 12 weeks standard, and 16 to 20 weeks once the order includes a non-standard color, a specialty coating, or an automated gate package. The GC's schedule shows your install window and says nothing about the fab clock behind it, so no one upstream is tracking the date that decides whether you hit that window. When the gate misses, you're the one at an open drive lane on turnover day explaining a purchase order you cut four months ago.
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 fencing contractors money
The same mechanism in other trades
What fencing owners ask
How far ahead to order a cantilever slide gate?
It's a two-week install that you order four months ahead, and the only calendar anybody upstream watches is your install window.
What does it cost?
The order goes in months before there's a pay application to bill it against, so your cash is stuck in somebody's fab queue. If the release slips you pay for acceleration and a return mobilization, plus temp fence rental to close the opening until the permanent gate is set.
What do I do first?
Pull every open contract this week and write the fab lead time next to each gate and ornamental line: 8 to 12 weeks stock, and 16 to 20 weeks with custom color, specialty coating, or an operator package.
What are fencing contractors supposed to be making?
No survey separates fencing, so there is no figure of its own. The nearest comparable trade in the reference is Sitework, which runs 18% gross margin, 15% overhead and 3% net profit before taxes at $1M–$5M, with a CFOS target of 10% net. Those are derived figures, not fencing'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 fencing 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.