The meter set you don't control ends your job
Every head is in the ground, the trenches are closed, and you can't pressurize a thing because the water purveyor hasn't set the meter yet.
Every other sub's long lead risk is a purchase order they signed and can chase with a phone call. Yours is a utility action with no promise date, and it falls directly between finished work and every acceptance test in the spec. No other trade needs a stranger's crew to come out to the site before its own installed work can even be tested.
The size of it
The last 10 to 20 percent of the contract plus all retention waits behind a date the contract gives no one control over, for weeks to months. Your startup crew demobilizes and comes back, and that return trip was never in the bid.
The longest lead item on an irrigation job is one you never cut a PO for: the tap application, the meter set, and the backflow prevention approval, all controlled by the water purveyor. Until water reaches the POC there's no flush, no coverage test, no backflow test, no final inspection, and no substantial completion for your scope. The pipe is buried and the labor is spent, so your cost is fully in the job while your billing stalls at whatever the last pay application allowed. The purveyor publishes no delivery date and pays no penalty for slipping, so nothing on the GC's schedule can push it either.
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 landscaping contractors money
The same mechanism in other trades
What landscaping owners ask
Can't test irrigation system city hasn't set the water meter?
Every head is in the ground, the trenches are closed, and you can't pressurize a thing because the water purveyor hasn't set the meter yet.
What does it cost?
The last 10 to 20 percent of the contract plus all retention waits behind a date the contract gives no one control over, for weeks to months. Your startup crew demobilizes and comes back, and that return trip was never in the bid.
What do I do first?
Break the tap, meter set, and system testing out of your single irrigation line on the schedule of values so installed pipe bills on its own and doesn't wait on water.
What are landscaping contractors supposed to be making?
Landscaping runs 22% gross margin, 15% overhead and 7% net profit before taxes at $1M–$5M. The all-trade average is 7%, so this trade is right on it. The CFOS target is 10.5%.
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 landscaping 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.