MASONRY · CONCRETE AND MASONRY · FIXED BY STEP 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.

WHY IT'S A MASONRY PROBLEM

Plenty of trades buy material early. Masonry is the one where splitting the order damages the finished product, so the early buy is mandatory and it can't be staged to match the billing curve. A drywall sub can take another truck of board next month and no one will ever know. A second kiln run bands the wall for the life of the building.

WHAT IT COSTS

The size of it

Material runs 35 to 45 percent of a masonry contract and it hits as one cash event months ahead of the first billing. Stored-material billing needs a bill of sale, off-site insurance, and GC consent, and plenty of subcontracts refuse it outright, which leaves your working capital or the AP line covering all of it.

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.

Brick is fired in plant color campaigns, so the whole job's units get bought and delivered at buyout, before a single course is laid. A second run of the same blend won't match the first, and the difference reads as a horizontal band across the elevation from the parking lot. Cast stone and custom-molded units stretch 8 to 12 weeks from design lock and want a deposit when the molds get made. None of that spend is attached to a pay application, because there's no work in place to bill against yet. So you fund eight months of material on a bank balance that was built for weekly payroll.

WHAT TO DO

Three moves, in order

STEP 01

Pull your last three brick jobs and write the buyout delivery date next to the date the first pay application funded. The days between them are the float you've been financing without pricing it.

STEP 02

Before you sign the next sub agreement, find the stored-material clause. If there's none, ask for a materials-on-hand line with bill of sale and off-site coverage while you still have leverage to ask.

STEP 03

Give units, cast stone, and custom-molded pieces their own cost codes at buyout so the drop reads as one dated event you can point at when you build next year's cash forecast.

THE FIX

Step 07: Monthly cadence

Weekly bookkeeping, cost to complete, and one CEO report, on the same days every month.

CFOS-07 · CHAPTER 7

The monthly close that takes a contractor 5 hours

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

Profitable on the P&L, out of cash

Your P&L says you made money and your bank account says you didn't. Neither is wrong.

SAME TRADE

What else costs masonry contractors money

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-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.

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

CONCRETE

Eight Tons of Rebar Tagged to a Drawing That Changed

The EOR approved the placing drawings, the fab shop cut and bent to the bar list, and then somebody moved a footing. Now you own bundles tagged to grid lines that no longer exist.

DEMOLITION

Your Breaker Burns Tool Steel That Overhead Pays For

A hammer chews $9,000 of tool steel on one teardown and the job that ate it never sees a dollar of the cost. The margin looks fine and the bank account disagrees.

DRYWALL

Lead-lined board is eight weeks and non-returnable

The imaging room's board is eight weeks out, cut to the shielding drawings, and the deposit is gone the day you release the order.

QUESTIONS

What masonry owners ask

Why do I have to buy the whole brick package up front?

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.

What does it cost?

What do I do first?

Pull your last three brick jobs and write the buyout delivery date next to the date the first pay application funded. The days between them are the float you've been financing without pricing it.

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 07, monthly cadence. Weekly bookkeeping, cost to complete, and one CEO report, on the same days every month. It comes from chapter 7 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.