TILT-UP · CONCRETE AND MASONRY · FIXED BY STEP 02

The longest lead item is a date on a crane calendar

The crane is booked for the 14th and the cylinder results decide whether you can use it. Standby costs are yours either way.

WHY IT'S A TILT-UP PROBLEM

For most subs the long lead item is a product, and a product can be expedited, substituted, or air-freighted. Here the long lead item is somebody else's iron on somebody else's schedule. What has to be ready on that date is concrete strength, which answers to weather and to a break result, so you're matching a fixed calendar slot to a curve you don't fully control.

WHAT IT COSTS

The size of it

A standby day or a re-book is a five-figure hit at those day and week rates, and no change order comes attached to it.

OVERHEAD AT $1M–$5M

14%

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

GROSS MARGIN AT $1M–$5M

21%

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

NET PROFIT AT $1M–$5M

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

A pick needs a mobile crane sized to the heaviest panel, and that booking gets made weeks ahead as a fixed calendar slot you can't expedite the way you would a material order. Panels have to verify at least about 2,500 psi by cylinder break, test beam, or split cylinder before tilting starts. Only a test result proves that strength, and counting days on a calendar doesn't. A cold week, a soft break, a misplaced embed, or a windy morning puts you on standby or at the back of the queue behind everyone else who booked the same iron. Mobile crane rates in a market like Atlanta run roughly $575 to $1,975 a day and $4,000 to $13,825 a week.

WHAT TO DO

Three moves, in order

STEP 01

Put the cylinder break schedule on the same page as the crane booking and set break dates so you hold a result at least three days before the iron rolls in.

STEP 02

Budget a standby allowance as a real crane cost code with a dollar figure in it, so when you burn it you see it in the month it happened.

STEP 03

Before you confirm the pick date, walk every embed and lifting insert against the shop drawings, because a misplaced insert costs you the same day a soft break does.

THE FIX

Step 02: Equipment cost basis

A correct internal rate per machine covering ownership, maintenance, fuel, and transport, charged to the projects that used it.

CFOS-02 · CHAPTER 2

What your equipment really costs per hour

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

BENCHMARKS

Tilt-up 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

Your equipment is eating the margin

The machine is paid for, so the jobs use it at no charge. Then the transmission goes and the year is gone.

SAME TRADE

What else costs tilt-up contractors money

TILT-UP · CFOS-01

You bid the floor slab once and build on it twice

You pour the building's floor slab and then beat it up for weeks as a casting bed. The repair pass was never in the number, so you fix it on your own dime.

TILT-UP · CFOS-08

Panel joints leak years after you booked the profit

The building is three years old and water is coming through a joint. Yours is the first phone number they dial.

TILT-UP · CFOS-05

Nothing you buy for a panel comes in square feet

You know your price per square foot of panel cold. Ask for your cost per square foot and there's no answer, because every line you buy is measured in something else.

SAME MECHANISM, OTHER TRADES

The same mechanism in other trades

CONCRETE

Eight Tons of Rebar Tagged to a Drawing That Changed

The EOR approved the placing drawings, the fab shop cut and bent to the bar list, and then somebody moved a footing. Now you own bundles tagged to grid lines that no longer exist.

DEMOLITION

Your Breaker Burns Tool Steel That Overhead Pays For

A hammer chews $9,000 of tool steel on one teardown and the job that ate it never sees a dollar of the cost. The margin looks fine and the bank account disagrees.

DRYWALL

Lead-lined board is eight weeks and non-returnable

The imaging room's board is eight weeks out, cut to the shielding drawings, and the deposit is gone the day you release the order.

QUESTIONS

What tilt-up owners ask

Crane standby cost when tilt-up panels aren't at strength on the pick date?

The crane is booked for the 14th and the cylinder results decide whether you can use it. Standby costs are yours either way.

What does it cost?

A standby day or a re-book is a five-figure hit at those day and week rates, and no change order comes attached to it.

What do I do first?

Put the cylinder break schedule on the same page as the crane booking and set break dates so you hold a result at least three days before the iron rolls in.

What are tilt-up contractors supposed to be making?

No survey separates tilt-up, so there is no figure of its own. The nearest comparable trade in the reference is Concrete, 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 tilt-up'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 02, equipment cost basis. A correct internal rate per machine covering ownership, maintenance, fuel, and transport, charged to the projects that used it. It comes from chapter 2 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 tilt-up 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.