MASONRY · CONCRETE AND MASONRY · FIXED BY STEP 05

Block laid in month two, retention released in month twenty

You set structural block right behind the foundation, and the ten percent held on it sits untouched until substantial completion, a year and a half later.

WHY IT IS A MASONRY PROBLEM

Most trades earn where their retention sits, late in the job, so the hold and the work sit near each other on the calendar. Masonry goes vertical early and finishes late under a single number, which stretches the distance between earning and release further than any other subcontract on the building. The block scope alone can be held longer than some subs are even on site. Your estimator sees the bid margin and never sees the eighteen months the cash was gone.

WHAT IT COSTS

The size of it

On an 18 to 24 month building, ten percent of your largest and earliest revenue is unavailable for roughly eighteen months, while the labor that produced it went out the door weekly back in month two.

OVERHEAD AT $1M–$5M

14%

CFOS target 13% for masonry.

GROSS MARGIN AT $1M–$5M

21%

CFOS target 23% for masonry.

NET PROFIT AT $1M–$5M

CFOS target 10% for masonry.

On a load-bearing CMU building the mason follows the footings, and structural block is usually the biggest single piece of the contract value. Then the same subcontract brings you back for veneer after dry-in, and back again for tuckpoint and cleandown at punch. The whole scope runs under one contract with one retainage account and one release at substantial completion. So your earnings pile up in the first third of the schedule while the release waits on the last day of the last third. The payroll that produced that block cleared the bank in month two.

WHAT TO DO

Three moves, in order

STEP 01

Build a retainage aging report keyed to the month the work was earned, not to the job, so you can see how old your oldest held dollar really is.

STEP 02

Negotiate a partial retention reduction on the structural scope at topping out, and do it during subcontract negotiation, not on a phone call in month fourteen.

STEP 03

Carry block, veneer, and cleandown as separate lines on the schedule of values so the release conversation has three levers instead of one.

THE FIX

Step 05: Software and bookkeeping alignment

Live job costs inside thirty seconds, with the bookkeeping cadence that keeps them true.

CFOS-05 · CHAPTER 5

Live job costs in 30 seconds, not 6 weeks

What this step changes, what it depends on, and how to tell it's installed.

BENCHMARKS

Masonry by revenue band

Every one of the 7 bands carries the CFOS target beside the published figure.

ACROSS EVERY TRADE

Your job costs are six weeks old

By the time the report is right, the job is closed and the only thing left to do is feel bad about it.

SAME TRADE

What else costs masonry contractors money

MASONRY · CFOS-07

The whole brick package hits cash before course one

You take the full brick package in one or two drops at buyout, then lay it out over the next eight months while the cash sits in a stack on the ground.

MASONRY · CFOS-01

Three days of your best mason, buried in general labor

Your top mason and a tender spend three days building a wall that gets walked, argued over, and torn down. Not one hour of it reaches a pay application.

MASONRY · CFOS-02

Standby scaffold has no line on the pay application

Steel slipped four weeks, your scaffold stands on an elevation you can't advance, and the rental invoice still comes in right on time.

MASONRY · CFOS-08

You go back to clean a wall you finished a year ago

Your wall sits out in the open for twelve months while every other trade works off it, and you're the one who mobilizes at the end to wash it and patch it.

SAME MECHANISM, OTHER TRADES

The same mechanism in other trades

CIVIL

Your retainage is waiting on 70 percent grass

You finished grading in month three and utilities in month six, and the last 5 to 10 percent of your contract sits behind a seed bed that has to hit 70 percent cover.

CONCRETE

Done in June, Retention Releases When the Building Opens

Footings, foundations, and slab-on-grade are the first real dollar volume on the site, so you bill most of your contract early and then wait on a building you left a year and a half ago.

DEMOLITION

Demo Goes First And Gets Its Retention Back Last

You work five weeks and wait twenty months for the money. Your retention rides the prime's substantial completion on a building you left before the foundation went in.

QUESTIONS

What masonry owners ask

How to track masonry retention when block is done a year before the job?

You set structural block right behind the foundation, and the ten percent held on it sits untouched until substantial completion, a year and a half later.

What does it cost?

What do I do first?

Build a retainage aging report keyed to the month the work was earned, not to the job, so you can see how old your oldest held dollar really is.

What are masonry contractors supposed to be making?

Masonry 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 05, software and bookkeeping alignment. Live job costs inside thirty seconds, with the bookkeeping cadence that keeps them true. It comes from chapter 5 of CONTROL: The Construction Financial Operating System.

AUTHOR

JOSH LUEBKER

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

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.