33 points of overhead found in the first 30 days
An electrical service contractor had been running on fear since a partner situation pulled six figures out of the company.
Thirty days in and still running. The 4 points of overhead are identified and scheduled, not yet removed, and this page says so until they are.
What it looked like from the owner's chair
This wasn't an owner who never knew her numbers. She used to run a weekly profit and loss review broken out by job. A partner situation took six figures out of the business and took that discipline with it, and everything after was scrambling to stay afloat while real money sat frozen, including an unpaid invoice and a bank error still working through resolution. She was carrying debt from a previous business, receivables were stretching past 60 days, and the collections list was 80 names deep with no way to tell which ones mattered.
What was actually happening
The numbers said the work was fine. Gross profit at 39.17%, net at 6.07%. That is 33 points of overhead sitting between the two, roughly $1.03M a year at her revenue. She wasn't losing money on jobs. She was losing it on structure, and no amount of selling harder closes a gap that size, because every additional job carries the same 33 points with it.
This is a known failure and it has a page of its own, with what it costs and how to size it in your business.
The work
We started with cash flow forecasting to sequence who gets paid, when, and how much beyond the minimum, so decisions come off a plan and not off whatever the balance says that morning. Invoicing moved to immediately at completion instead of batching. The collections list got ranked so she chases the accounts that matter rather than staring at 80 names. Alongside that we are building a commercial branch to steady the work next to the service side, and a cash reserve so net 60 terms stop being a threat.
Where it stands at 30 days
Accounts payable is current. Receivables are at 30 days or less, down from 60 plus. The bad debt from the previous business and the vehicles are nearly paid off. We have identified 4 points of overhead to remove, $124,000 a year, which takes her from 6.07% net to roughly 10.1% and clears our 10% minimum without selling one additional job. All of that inside 30 days.
Other contractors carrying the same thing
All 14 are on one page, filterable by which step did the work.
What owners ask about this one
What was actually wrong?
The numbers said the work was fine. Gross profit at 39.17%, net at 6.07%. That is 33 points of overhead sitting between the two, roughly $1.03M a year at her revenue. She wasn't losing money on jobs. She was losing it on structure, and no amount of selling harder closes a gap that size, because every additional job carries the same 33 points with it.
What did you change?
We started with cash flow forecasting to sequence who gets paid, when, and how much beyond the minimum, so decisions come off a plan and not off whatever the balance says that morning. Invoicing moved to immediately at completion instead of batching. The collections list got ranked so she chases the accounts that matter rather than staring at 80 names. Alongside that we are building a commercial branch to steady the work next to the service side, and a cash reserve so net 60 terms stop being a threat.
How long did it take?
30 days. Still running, and this page says which parts have landed and which haven't.
Which part of the system did it?
step 03, overhead calculation and step 07, monthly cadence. Installed in dependency order, which is the same order every client gets, because a step that reads from a number nobody established yet produces output that looks finished and isn't.
Do these figures apply to every electrical contractor?
No. This is one company at $1M–$5M and the numbers are its own. What generalizes is the mechanism, not the magnitude. The published electrical benchmarks across all 7 revenue bands are on its trade page, and those are the figures to measure yourself against.
Josh Luebker ran commercial construction projects before he ran the numbers behind them, on data centers, 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.