TILE AND STONE · INTERIORS AND FINISHES · FIXED BY STEP 04

Ten Guys Can't Beat A 24 Hour Cure

The GC compressed the schedule and wants more men on the floor, but the floor is set and waiting on grout. The restroom scope you bid as one trip has turned into four.

WHY IT'S A TILE AND STONE PROBLEM

Every other trade recovers schedule with bodies. A framer doubles the crew and the wall goes up twice as fast; tile goes at the speed of chemistry whether one man or ten is on the slab. So tile is the trade that can't answer a compressed schedule with manpower, and it's also the trade whose scope gets fractured into separate trips by the sequence of everybody else's work.

WHAT IT COSTS

The size of it

Three or four mobilizations on a $12K restroom scope wipe out the labor margin before the first tile gets set. When the GC compresses the schedule, you either pay overtime you never priced or you take the delay backcharge.

OVERHEAD AT $1M to $5M

14%

CFOS target 13% for tile and stone.

GROSS MARGIN AT $1M to $5M

22%

CFOS target 24.5% for tile and stone.

NET PROFIT AT $1M to $5M

CFOS target 11.5% for tile and stone.

Thinset needs 24-48 hours before grout, grout needs 24-72 hours before traffic, and a shower waterproofing assembly needs a 24-48 hour flood test that has to pass before anything covers it, all of it with 50 degrees held through cure. Putting a second crew on a floor that's already set moves none of those clocks. The scope also comes in pieces: restroom floors and wainscot before partitions and accessories, base at the toilet partitions on a second trip, the lobby whenever the GC releases it, and punch as a fourth. Every one of those trips is a truck, a mixer, a saw setup, water, and half a day of travel no one paid for.

WHAT TO DO

Three moves, in order

STEP 01

Count the real trips on your last five jobs off truck tickets and crew hours, then set that against the number of mobilizations you priced in the estimate.

STEP 02

Price mobilizations as a separate line with a stated quantity, and put a fixed dollar amount per trip in the proposal for anything beyond that count.

STEP 03

Give the GC your cure and flood test durations in writing at the preconstruction meeting so the schedule shows the days the material owns, not just the days your crew is on site.

THE FIX

Step 04: Estimating system

The estimate maps one to one onto the job cost codes, so variance means something the day it appears.

CFOS-04 · CHAPTER 4

Make the estimate and the job cost report match

What this step changes, what it depends on, and how to tell it's installed.

BENCHMARKS

Tile and stone 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

The estimate and the actual never match

You can compare the estimate to the job cost report, but the two use different words, so the comparison means nothing.

SAME TRADE

What else costs tile and stone contractors money

TILE AND STONE · CFOS-01

The Dye Lot Forces You To Buy The Whole Job Up Front

One purchase order has to cover the entire floor, and it gets placed before the GC has a slab. On a $180K scope that's $70-90K out the door months ahead of any pay application.

TILE AND STONE · CFOS-06

Setting Over A Bad Slab Means You Just Bought It

Crew is mobilized, the container is on site, and the floor reads 3/16 in 10 feet. Everybody in the trailer turns and looks at you to make it work anyway.

TILE AND STONE · CFOS-04

The Leftover Pallet Is Margin You Already Spent

Bid 4,200 square feet, buy seven pallets, and the difference stays in the warehouse until somebody hauls it off. At year end it reads as material was high again.

SAME MECHANISM, OTHER TRADES

The same mechanism in other trades

CIVIL

Four mobilizations, one mob line item

You clear and grub in month one, come back for wet utilities, come back again for paving subgrade at closeout, and the contract still has one mobilization line.

CONCRETE

Six Trips Back for Pads and Sidewalks, One Unit Price

You were first on the site and you're still coming back for stairs, pads, curbs, and exterior flatwork, all priced inside a per-yard number that assumed you never left.

DRYWALL

You Go Back Six Times And No Ticket Gets Signed

You finished the corridor in March and you're still sending a guy back in June, one hole at a time, on somebody else's dime.

QUESTIONS

What tile and stone owners ask

How do I charge a GC for extra mobilizations on a tile job?

The GC compressed the schedule and wants more men on the floor, but the floor is set and waiting on grout. The restroom scope you bid as one trip has turned into four.

What does it cost?

What do I do first?

Count the real trips on your last five jobs off truck tickets and crew hours, then set that against the number of mobilizations you priced in the estimate.

What are tile and stone contractors supposed to be making?

Tile and stone has 22% gross margin, 14% overhead and 8% net profit after taxes at $1M to $5M. The all-trade average is 7%, so this trade is 1 point above it. The CFOS target is 11.5%.

Which part of the system fixes it?

The step is number 04, estimating system. The estimate maps one to one onto the job cost codes, so variance means something the day it appears. It comes from chapter 4 of CONTROL: C.F.O.S. Construction Financial Operating System.

OR HAVE IT HANDLED

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 tile and stone contractors as a service. It is a separate firm, Sulphur Prairie Management, LLC, led by the same author.

What a fractional CFO does for tile and stone contractors

AUTHOR

JOSH LUEBKER

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

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