MASONRY · CONCRETE AND MASONRY · FIXED BY STEP 02

Standby scaffold has no line on the pay application

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

WHY IT'S A MASONRY PROBLEM

Scaffold is the mason's largest non-labor cost and the GC's schedule decides how long it is up. A trade that pulls up with a van and a scissor lift can walk off a stalled elevation and lose nothing that day, while your access is bolted to the building and metered by the month. Schedule slip converts directly into equipment cost for masonry in a way it simply doesn't for the trades working behind you.

WHAT IT COSTS

The size of it

Equipment cost accrues against a job with zero units in place to offset it. Scaffold usually gets coded to one lump equipment line, so the margin loss stays invisible until closeout, when the last rental invoice finally posts.

OVERHEAD AT $1M–$5M

14%

CFOS target 13% for masonry.

GROSS MARGIN AT $1M–$5M

21%

CFOS target 23.5% for masonry.

NET PROFIT AT $1M–$5M

CFOS target 10.5% for masonry.

Frame scaffold rents at roughly fifteen to thirty-five cents per square foot of wall face per month, and erect and dismantle labor runs about eight to fifteen dollars per square foot on top of that. Mast climbers bill by the month whether they move or not. You erect to the schedule you bid, and then the shelf angles aren't set, the windows haven't been delivered, or the steel backup is late. The scaffold can't come down, because you're coming back to that elevation, and it can't advance, because there's nothing to lay against.

WHAT TO DO

Three moves, in order

STEP 01

Split your equipment code by elevation so the north wall's scaffold months post against the north wall's production, and you can see which face is losing money.

STEP 02

Log the erect date, the planned dismantle date, and the date the scaffold really came down on every job, then review the spread weekly while you can still act on it.

STEP 03

The week a predecessor trade slips, send written notice with the rental rate and the standby days attached, before anybody's memory of the cause gets fuzzy.

THE FIX

Step 02: Equipment cost basis

A correct internal rate per machine covering ownership, maintenance, fuel, and transport, charged to the projects that used it.

CFOS-02 · CHAPTER 2

What your equipment really costs per hour

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

BENCHMARKS

Masonry by revenue band

All 7 bands are published. The CFOS target is beside the figure up to $10M to $25M, and the 4 bands above that are labelled modeled.

ACROSS EVERY TRADE

Your equipment is eating the margin

The machine is paid for, so the jobs use it at no charge. Then the transmission goes and the year is gone.

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 stays 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-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 stays untouched until substantial completion, a year and a half later.

MASONRY · CFOS-08

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

Your wall is exposed 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

Four mobilizations, one mob line item

You clear and grub in month one, come back for wet utilities, come back again for paving subgrade at closeout, and the contract still has one mobilization line.

CONCRETE

Six Trips Back for Pads and Sidewalks, One Unit Price

You were first on the site and you're still coming back for stairs, pads, curbs, and exterior flatwork, all priced inside a per-yard number that assumed you never left.

DRYWALL

You Go Back Six Times And No Ticket Gets Signed

You hung the corridor in March and you're still sending a guy back in June, one hole at a time, on somebody else's dime.

QUESTIONS

What masonry owners ask

Who pays for scaffold rental when the GC schedule slips?

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

What does it cost?

What do I do first?

Split your equipment code by elevation so the north wall's scaffold months post against the north wall's production, and you can see which face is losing money.

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 is right on it. The CFOS target is 10.5%.

Which part of the system fixes it?

The step is number 02, equipment cost basis. A correct internal rate per machine covering ownership, maintenance, fuel, and transport, charged to the projects that used it. It comes from chapter 2 of CONTROL: The Construction Financial Operating System.

OR HAVE IT HANDLED

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 masonry contractors as a service. It is a separate firm, Sulphur Prairie Management, LLC, run by the same author.

What a fractional CFO does for masonry contractors

AUTHOR

JOSH LUEBKER

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

Wrote CONTROL, the 8 step system behind these figures. More about the author.