A moved slab edge scraps a bundle you already paid for
The bundle was cut for one building and one slab edge. Move that edge after fabrication release and roughly 100 coiled tendons become scrap with no credit memo behind them.
A drywall sub orders stock-length board and sends the leftovers back on the same truck. Post-tension has no stock and no return: the material is engineered to one structure's geometry and becomes scrap the moment that geometry changes. That's why the change-order clock on a PT job starts at the fabrication release and not a day later.
The size of it
One late slab-edge revision buys you a scrapped bundle plus an expedited re-fab, and when the change order wasn't written before the truck rolled, that number ends up in your material variance where the owner never sees it.
Unbonded tendons are fabricated to unique lengths off the approved tendon layout, then shipped in bundles of about 100 coiled, color-coded strands on a flatbed. There's no stock tendon waiting in a warehouse for your job. When a slab edge moves, a stair opening gets added, or a column line changes after the fabrication release, every strand in that bundle is now the wrong length. Short strands are scrap. Long ones are a field problem at every live end, and the plant takes neither back for credit.
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 post-tension contractors money
The same mechanism in other trades
What post-tension owners ask
Who pays when the slab edge changes after tendons are fabricated?
The bundle was cut for one building and one slab edge. Move that edge after fabrication release and roughly 100 coiled tendons become scrap with no credit memo behind them.
What does it cost?
One late slab-edge revision buys you a scrapped bundle plus an expedited re-fab, and when the change order wasn't written before the truck rolled, that number ends up in your material variance where the owner never sees it.
What do I do first?
Put the fabrication release date for each PT job on your schedule and email the GC the day it locks: after that date, any slab edge, opening, or column line change is a change order with material and re-fab priced into it.
What are post-tension contractors supposed to be making?
No survey separates post-tension, so there is no figure of its own. The nearest comparable trade in the reference is Concrete, which runs 21% gross margin, 14% overhead and 7% net profit before taxes at $1M–$5M, with a CFOS target of 10.5% net. Those are derived figures, not post-tension's own. Read them as the neighbourhood, and read your own job costing as the answer.
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 post-tension 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.