Building A's retainage waits on the landscaper
Building A was wrapped and occupied last summer, and the retention on it is still sitting in the GC's account waiting on paving and punch.
Siding falls mid-schedule on a job whose completion date belongs to the sitework contractor, so your scope closes out long before the project does. A tail trade like flooring or final paint ages its retention a few months and gets whole. Siding ages more than a year on the earliest buildings, which is why your balance sheet carries a receivable the bank discounts and the field already spent.
The size of it
On a $1.2M multifamily siding contract, $60,000-120,000 is locked up 12-18 months past the crew's last day on the earliest building. That's roughly a month of payroll parked in someone else's account, per job.
Retainage on your first building is measured against the last building's punch list. On a 3-5 story wood-frame multifamily job, siding starts after dry-in around month 8-12 and the last building wraps around month 18-20. The 5-10% held back is withheld against the entire contract, and it releases at project final completion, after paving, landscaping, and the owner's walk, commonly month 24-30. Building A's retention is 14-18 months old before it moves, while the crew, the material, and the swing stage that produced it were all paid in the month they happened.
Three moves, in order
Step 07: Monthly cadence
Weekly bookkeeping, cost to complete, and one CEO report, on the same days every month.
What else costs siding contractors money
The same mechanism in other trades
What siding owners ask
When do I get retainage released on a multifamily siding job?
Building A was wrapped and occupied last summer, and the retention on it is still sitting in the GC's account waiting on paving and punch.
What does it cost?
On a $1.2M multifamily siding contract, $60,000-120,000 is locked up 12-18 months past the crew's last day on the earliest building. That's roughly a month of payroll parked in someone else's account, per job.
What do I do first?
Ask for building-by-building retainage release language before signing; a building that has passed final inspection and been occupied has no punch left of yours to hold.
What are siding contractors supposed to be making?
Siding runs 21% gross margin, 14% overhead and 7% net profit before taxes at $1M–$5M. The all-trade average is 7%, so this trade sits right on it. The CFOS target is 10%.
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.
Josh Luebker ran commercial construction projects before he ran the numbers behind them, on data centres, military bases, hospitals, and high-rises. He wrote CONTROL: The Construction Financial Operating System, which is an eight-step framework for commercial subcontractors, and it publishes on October 1, 2026. He is a master electrician who moved into the office and kept the field vocabulary.
Sulphur Prairie Operations LLC maintains the benchmark reference behind these figures. Every edition is reconciled against the newest CFMA survey release before it publishes here. Where a figure changes between editions, the older edition keeps its year in the title so a citation to it stays correct.