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

WHY IT'S A TILT-UP PROBLEM

Most trades damage somebody else's substrate and get back-charged for it. Tilt-up is the one trade whose deliverable is also its work platform, so the contractor signs for both conditions and only gets paid for one. The estimator prices a slab while the field builds a factory on it, and the difference between those two things is a job no scope was ever written for.

WHAT IT COSTS

The size of it

A whole-footprint grind, patch, and joint repair hits the job as labor and rental weeks after the panels are up, with no line item behind it and nothing on a pay application to cover 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%.

That slab has to reach roughly 3,000 to 4,000 psi before it can support panel casting at all. After that, bond breaker gets fogged and rolled in two perpendicular coats, and layout gets chalked across the whole floor. Forms get pinned into the slab, rebar chairs and pump traffic ride on it, and the pick itself drags panel legs across it. Once the panels are set, the owner accepts that same surface as finished floor. Restoration is a full second trip over the entire building footprint, and the grinding, patching, and joint repair all bill as labor and rental after the crane has gone home.

WHAT TO DO

Three moves, in order

STEP 01

Open a slab restoration cost code and load it in the estimate at the same square footage as the casting bed, before you price a single panel.

STEP 02

Walk the slab with the owner's rep the day bond breaker goes down and again after the last pick, with dated photos, so the change in condition has a record and a change order has something behind it.

STEP 03

Track the grind, patch, and rental hours against that code on this job, and use that number as the line on the next bid.

THE FIX

Step 01: Job cost structure

Seven cost categories and three levels of granularity, built so the estimate and the ledger use the same words.

CFOS-01 · CHAPTER 1

Job cost codes that match how you bid the work

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

Cost codes the field ignores

You have 200 cost codes. The crews use four of them, and one is called Miscellaneous.

SAME TRADE

What else costs tilt-up contractors money

TILT-UP · CFOS-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.

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

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 hung 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 tilt-up owners ask

Who pays to repair the slab after tilt-up panels are cast on it?

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.

What does it cost?

A whole-footprint grind, patch, and joint repair hits the job as labor and rental weeks after the panels are up, with no line item behind it and nothing on a pay application to cover it.

What do I do first?

Open a slab restoration cost code and load it in the estimate at the same square footage as the casting bed, before you price a single panel.

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 01, job cost structure. Seven cost categories and three levels of granularity, built so the estimate and the ledger use the same words. It comes from chapter 1 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.