Jobs 80% spent at 60% complete, now bidding at 10% net
A masonry contractor was making money on block and giving it back on brick, and the blended report couldn't show him which.
What it looked like from the owner's chair
He noticed the gap between what his estimates said and what the bank account did about six months in, and hadn't chased it hard because the business was busy. He thought it was retainage, money already earned sitting somewhere he couldn't touch. He had also personally guaranteed the company's merchant cash advances, which is standard on an advance and almost nobody reads, because by the time you are signing one you are too worried about Friday to care what page four says. His house, his vehicles and his investments were collateral against one missed payment.
What was actually happening
The job cost report answered it in the first cycle. Jobs were coming back 80% spent at 60% complete, over and over. He was excellent at takeoff and priced brick per unit, but the rate he used was built for production wall. Soldier courses and the directional cuts around windows and doors burn labor at a completely different rate, and he was pricing all of it the same. About 20% light on brick labor. That had quietly cost a few hundred thousand across a year and a half. He was also underbilled by roughly 10% and chasing receivables at 90 days, so a pricing problem showed up wearing the clothes of a cash problem.
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 split job costing by scope so block and brick reported separately, which is what made the problem visible at all. Then we rebuilt the brick labor rates by type rather than one rate for everything, and fixed the billing strategy to stop the underbilling and pull collections in. Cash flow forecasting ran monthly for the first two months to sequence who got paid and when, and that's what carried payroll while the pricing fix worked its way into new bids.
The result
The merchant cash advances were caught early, only six months in, and were paid off before they compounded. The personal guarantee against his house is cleared. He is winning work at 10% net, which is our bare minimum target. Nothing changed about his ability to sell or take off work. He was already good at both. He just couldn't see the flaw fast enough, and it was structural.
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 job cost report answered it in the first cycle. Jobs were coming back 80% spent at 60% complete, over and over. He was excellent at takeoff and priced brick per unit, but the rate he used was built for production wall. Soldier courses and the directional cuts around windows and doors burn labor at a completely different rate, and he was pricing all of it the same. About 20% light on brick labor. That had quietly cost a few hundred thousand across a year and a half. He was also underbilled by roughly 10% and chasing receivables at 90 days, so a pricing problem showed up wearing the clothes of a cash problem.
What did you change?
We split job costing by scope so block and brick reported separately, which is what made the problem visible at all. Then we rebuilt the brick labor rates by type rather than one rate for everything, and fixed the billing strategy to stop the underbilling and pull collections in. Cash flow forecasting ran monthly for the first two months to sequence who got paid and when, and that's what carried payroll while the pricing fix worked its way into new bids.
How long did it take?
Caught six months in. That is the time to the result on this page, not to the last piece of the install.
Which part of the system did it?
step 01, job cost structure, step 04, estimating system, step 06, project management and 1 more. 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 masonry 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 masonry 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.