SHORING AND SHIELDING · CIVIL AND EARTHWORK · FIXED BY STEP 07

Your work ends in March; your retention ends next spring

Shoring starts on day one of excavation, so your install is done in the first quarter. The retention rides until the whole project is accepted.

WHY IT'S A SHORING AND SHIELDING PROBLEM

Every trade dislikes retention; what's different here is the span. You're the first trade on and one of the earliest done, so your retention is held across the longest possible stretch of any sub on that job. The last piece of your scope waits on another contractor's backfill, which means your completion date belongs to their schedule.

WHAT IT COSTS

The size of it

Cash earned in month two stays until month eighteen, financed out of your line of credit while you're bidding the next three jobs.

OVERHEAD AT $1M–$5M

14%

Derived from Excavation, the nearest comparable trade. CFOS target 13%.

GROSS MARGIN AT $1M–$5M

21%

Derived from Excavation, the nearest comparable trade. CFOS target 23.5%.

NET PROFIT AT $1M–$5M

Derived from Excavation, the nearest comparable trade. CFOS target 10.5%.

Your first day on site is essentially day one of excavation, and the install portion is complete very early in a civil or structure schedule. Retention is withheld against final acceptance of the entire project, not against completion of your work. The removal portion can't close out until the permanent work is built and backfilled, so you can't reach substantial completion of your own scope on your own effort, no matter how well your crews run. Money earned in month two gets financed by you until month eighteen, stacked on top of pay-when-paid on the progress billings themselves.

WHAT TO DO

Three moves, in order

STEP 01

Build the cash plan by month on the calendar, not by percent complete. Mark the month your scope finishes and the month acceptance is forecast, and look at the distance between them.

STEP 02

Negotiate release of your retention at acceptance of your removal work, or a partial release at install completion. Even a partial changes the float materially.

STEP 03

Age retention as its own receivable by job with an expected-release month attached, and review that list monthly with the same seriousness as AR.

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

Shoring and shielding 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 shoring and shielding contractors money

SHORING AND SHIELDING · CFOS-04

You pay for the stamp and wait on somebody else's data

The box can't go in the ground until a registered PE seals the design, and the engineer is waiting on borings the GC hasn't sent. Your crew and your iron are already on site.

SHORING AND SHIELDING · CFOS-02

Footage Stops Earning and the Box Rental Never Stops

Trench safety pays by the linear foot of centerline. Shields and slide rail cost by the calendar day, and that clock runs whether or not the pipe crew is waiting on an inspector.

SHORING AND SHIELDING · CFOS-04

Cut-off Piles Turn Your Salvage Credit Into Zero

You locked sheet pile pricing at bid and bid the same steel a second time as salvage. Then an obstruction forces cut-off, and the residual you counted on stays in the dirt.

SHORING AND SHIELDING · CFOS-03

Rain Adds Qualified Hours Your Pay App Never Bills

OSHA wants a competent person walking the excavation before anybody enters, daily, and again after every rainstorm. That's qualified labor on a schedule set by weather.

SHORING AND SHIELDING · CFOS-08

You Leave Nothing Behind and Still Get a Claim Later

You leave no permanent installation behind, so there's no warranty item to cover. Settlement, voids after extraction, and a rental damage invoice come after the job is closed.

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 is locked 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 shoring and shielding owners ask

Shoring scope finished early but retainage held until the end of the project?

Shoring starts on day one of excavation, so your install is done in the first quarter. The retention rides until the whole project is accepted.

What does it cost?

Cash earned in month two stays until month eighteen, financed out of your line of credit while you're bidding the next three jobs.

What do I do first?

Build the cash plan by month on the calendar, not by percent complete. Mark the month your scope finishes and the month acceptance is forecast, and look at the distance between them.

What are shoring and shielding contractors supposed to be making?

No survey separates shoring and shielding, so there is no figure of its own. The nearest comparable trade in the reference is Excavation, 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 shoring and shielding'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 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 shoring and shielding contractors as a service. It is a separate firm, Sulphur Prairie Management, LLC, run by the same author.

What SPM The Construction CFO does, and what it costs

AUTHOR

JOSH LUEBKER

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

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