Your mobilization depends on a clock the engineer owns
The GC wants fence in Monday, the NOI is still at the agency, and your crew has already been scheduled and released twice.
Your mobilization commitment is promised against a permit clock held by the design engineer and a regulator, with the GC's dirt date in between and no contract between you and either party. Other subs get scheduled off a predecessor trade they can walk out and look at. You get scheduled off the status of a document, and the only outfit that pays for a false start is the one with the trucks.
The size of it
Every false start is a mobilization you paid for and never billed. Every mid-job SWPPP amendment is a reinstall that reads as ordinary maintenance unless somebody documents it as a change on the day it happens.
Under the Construction General Permit the NOI has to be filed at least 14 calendar days before construction commences, and coverage becomes effective 14 calendar days after EPA confirms the NOI is complete. That's roughly 28 days from filing to legally disturbed dirt, and none of those days are on your calendar. The SWPPP itself is a sealed engineered document that a CPESC or a P.E. produces for the owner, not for you. When phasing or grading changes mid-job, that document has to be amended before the field changes, and by then you installed to the sheet that just got superseded.
Three moves, in order
Step 06: Project management
Billing dates, change orders, and notices, written as standards that work without anyone following up on them.
What else costs SWPPP and erosion control contractors money
The same mechanism in other trades
What SWPPP and erosion control owners ask
GC wants silt fence installed before NOI coverage is effective?
The GC wants fence in Monday, the NOI is still at the agency, and your crew has already been scheduled and released twice.
What does it cost?
Every false start is a mobilization you paid for and never billed. Every mid-job SWPPP amendment is a reinstall that reads as ordinary maintenance unless somebody documents it as a change on the day it happens.
What do I do first?
At contract signing, ask for the NOI filing date and the date coverage becomes effective, put both in the job file, and schedule crews off the later one.
What are SWPPP and erosion control contractors supposed to be making?
SWPPP and erosion control has 24% gross margin, 14% overhead and 10% net profit after taxes at $1M to $5M. The all-trade average is 7%, so this trade is 3 points above it. The CFOS target is 13.5%.
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 following up on them. It comes from chapter 6 of CONTROL: C.F.O.S. Construction Financial Operating System.
Everything on this page is something you can install yourself, and CONTROL is the order to do it in. If you would rather buy the finished result, SPM The Construction CFO does this work for SWPPP and erosion control contractors as a service. It is a separate firm, Sulphur Prairie Management, LLC, led by the same author.
What a fractional CFO does for SWPPP and erosion control contractors
Wrote CONTROL, the 8 step system behind these figures. More about the author.