Sleeving goes in month two and bills like nothing
Fifteen percent of your material goes under the pavement early and bills as three percent of a pay application, because the whole scope rides on one schedule of values line.
A trade that installs once, in sequence, can live with a single percent-complete line because its cost burns evenly. Your cost front-loads with buried pipe that can't be inspected, and then it repeats four more times across eighteen months of schedule. Percent complete on one line assumes a straight burn, and irrigation doesn't burn straight.
The size of it
Four unbudgeted mobilizations get absorbed as if they were overhead, and the job shows a bid margin no crew in your company can hit.
Irrigation is four to six discrete trips spread across the entire job calendar. Sleeving has to be in at subgrade before curb and paving; mainline and POC follow wet utilities; laterals and heads follow finish grade and precede sod; startup and coverage testing come due at substantial completion; punch and adjust happen after every other trade is gone. Each one is a truck, a crew, a trencher on a trailer, and travel time. The GC's schedule of values usually shows one line called irrigation, so early buried material bills as a sliver of the whole and every return trip bills as zero.
Three moves, in order
Step 01: Job cost structure
Seven cost categories and three levels of granularity, built so the estimate and the ledger use the same words.
What else costs landscaping contractors money
The same mechanism in other trades
What landscaping owners ask
How to bill irrigation sleeving installed months before the rest?
Fifteen percent of your material goes under the pavement early and bills as three percent of a pay application, because the whole scope rides on one schedule of values line.
What does it cost?
Four unbudgeted mobilizations get absorbed as if they were overhead, and the job shows a bid margin no crew in your company can hit.
What do I do first?
Send the GC a five line irrigation breakdown before the first pay application: sleeving, mainline and POC, laterals and heads, startup and testing, and punch.
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 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.
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.