Whoever punctured it, the call comes to you
Mechanical set the units, somebody cut your membrane, and the GC still calls you. Two men and a truck later you've proven it wasn't yours and billed no one for the trip.
No other trade's completed work becomes the deck that every other crew walks on for the next year. That's why roofing eats service calls that are really damage claims from other subs. The evidence window closes in hours: the moment the trade that made the hole seals it up, your proof is gone and the call becomes a warranty call by default.
The size of it
Two men and a truck go out for half a day, several times per job, with no cost code open and no change order behind it. Across a year of jobs that's tens of thousands of dollars of unbilled labor buried in overhead, draining the margin on jobs that already closed clean.
Your finished product is the work platform for everyone who follows: mechanical setting RTUs and hanging condensate lines, electrical running conduit on sleepers, plumbers cutting vents, sheet metal crews, and solar installers. A membrane leak has one symptom, water inside, and ten possible causes, so the GC's default is to call the roofer first every single time. Proving the puncture belongs to another trade takes dated photos at the moment of discovery, before the offending trade patches its own hole and before anyone can argue about the entry point, since water tracks 40 feet from where it got in. Most roofers have no routine documentation habit, so the backcharge never gets written and the truck roll gets absorbed into overhead.
Three moves, in order
Step 08: Standards and accountability
Five hours a month of owner time, spent projecting the work.
What else costs roofing contractors money
The same mechanism in other trades
What roofing owners ask
How to backcharge another trade for punctures in my roof membrane?
Mechanical set the units, somebody cut your membrane, and the GC still calls you. Two men and a truck later you've proven it wasn't yours and billed no one for the trip.
What does it cost?
Two men and a truck go out for half a day, several times per job, with no cost code open and no change order behind it. Across a year of jobs that's tens of thousands of dollars of unbilled labor buried in overhead, draining the margin on jobs that already closed clean.
What do I do first?
Open a leak call cost code on every job at closeout so those hours and truck time post somewhere you can see them instead of in overhead.
What are roofing contractors supposed to be making?
Roofing 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 08, standards and accountability. Five hours a month of owner time, spent projecting the work. It comes from chapter 8 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 roofing 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.