$24K TO $1.1M
NET PROFIT.
YEAR TWO.
An erosion control and SWPPP contractor was doing $4.2M in revenue and netting $24,000. Year one of CONTROL implementation. By year two on the same revenue base, net profit was $1,112,000. Multi-site job costing made it visible which sites were truly profitable, and which ones were being subsidized by the winners. Once that was clear, the business changed fast.
SWPPP work is uniquely complex to job cost because you have dozens of sites running simultaneously, maintenance billing mixed with installation billing, and rain event responses that are hard to capture. Most SWPPP contractors run everything as one bucket. That is why they cannot see where the money is going.
An erosion control and SWPPP contractor was doing $4.2M in revenue across dozens of active sites. On the surface, the business was busy. Sites were running. Crews were working. At year end: $24,000 in net profit. 0.6%.
The problem with SWPPP work is the complexity. Installation billing, maintenance billing, and rain event response billing all mixed together across 30, 40, sometimes 60 active sites at once. Most contractors running this type of work lump it all together, one revenue number, one cost number. That means the profitable sites are subsidizing the losing ones, and nobody knows it.
No Site-Level Job Costing
Revenue and costs were tracked at the company level, not by site. The profitable sites and the losing sites were averaged together. There was no way to know which was which.
Maintenance Billing Lag
Maintenance visits were not being billed promptly or at the right rates. Rain event responses, which are billable as emergency services, were being absorbed as a cost of doing business.
No Forward Visibility
Without a monthly cadence, there was no early warning system. Problems compounded for months before they were visible. By the time something looked wrong, the damage was done.
Overhead Not Allocated by Site
Overhead was a fixed monthly number spread across all sites equally, regardless of how profitable or large each site was. Bigger, more complex sites were undercharged. Small sites were overcharged.
Multi-site job costing was installed. Every site got its own job cost structure. Installation billing, maintenance billing, and rain event billing were separated and tracked independently. Within the first month, it was immediately clear which sites were profitable and which were not.
The monthly cadence was established: weekly bookkeeping, books closed by the 10th, cost to complete by site, and the CEO report with 13 months of data. For the first time, the owner could see eight to ten weeks ahead: which sites were making money, which maintenance routes needed to be repriced, and how much cash was available to make decisions.
CONTROL Chapters 1 + 7: Job Cost Structure and Monthly Cadence. Multi-site job costing and the CEO report. Download the templates at constructioncfo.net.
- You run multiple sites or projects simultaneously and track everything as one number
- You are doing significant revenue but your net profit at year end never makes sense
- You cannot tell your most profitable clients from your least profitable ones
- Maintenance billing or recurring service billing is not being tracked separately from installation
- You have no forward visibility, you find out about problems when they are already serious
SWPPP stands for Stormwater Pollution Prevention Plan. SWPPP contractors install and maintain erosion control measures on commercial construction sites: silt fence, inlet protection, hydroseeding, and similar BMPs. It is typically multi-site, maintenance-heavy work with complex billing across dozens of sites simultaneously.
Multi-site job costing was installed so profitability could be tracked by site instead of lumped together. Previously, profitable sites were subsidizing losing sites invisibly. Once visibility existed, unprofitable sites were repriced or dropped, and the profitable model was replicated.
Chapters 1 (Job Cost Structure) and 7 (Monthly Cadence) are most directly relevant. Multi-site contractors especially benefit from the CEO report and cost to complete, which surfaces which sites are performing and which are not.
Weekly bookkeeping, books closed by the 10th, cost to complete on every active project, and the CEO report: 13 months of leading indicators including revenue, active cash flow, gross profit, overhead, and net profit. Takes about 5 hours a month once the system is running.
Start by giving every site its own job cost structure, with installation, maintenance, and emergency response billing tracked separately. Chapters 1 and 7 of CONTROL walk through that build and the monthly reporting cadence that keeps it running. SPM The Construction CFO also builds this for you directly at constructioncfo.net.
SEE WHICH SITES ARE REALLY MAKING MONEY.
CONTROL covers multi-site job costing and the monthly cadence in full. Get the book.
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