Dewatering
No survey separates dewatering on its own, so this page shows Excavation's figures as the nearest comparable trade, labelled as derived, and lists 6 mechanisms that cost dewatering contractors money and the step that fixes each.
No survey separates dewatering, and it isn't one of the 48 trades in the SPM reference. The figures on this page are Excavation's, the nearest comparable trade that's in it, and every table and export labels them as derived. They describe a trade that works like this one, not dewatering itself. Use them to find the neighbourhood, then let your own job costing be the answer.
Dewatering by revenue band
| Metric | $1M–$5M | $5M–$10M | $10M–$25M | $25M–$50MModeled | $50M–$100MModeled | $100M–$500MModeled | $500M+Modeled | CFOS target at $1M–$5M |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overhead | 14% | 13% | 12% | 11% | 10% | 9% | 8% | 13% |
| Gross margin | 21% | 23% | 24% | 26% | 27% | 28% | 30% | 23.5% |
| Net profit | 7% | 10% | 12% | 15% | 17% | 19% | 22% | 10.5% |
| Metric | $1M–$5M | $5M–$10M | $10M–$25M |
|---|---|---|---|
| Overhead | 13% | 12% | 11% |
| Gross margin | 23.5% | 25.5% | 26.5% |
| Net profit | 10.5% | 13.5% | 15.5% |
Modeled extension of the survey curve, not reconciled against the licensed CFMA Benchmarker. That applies to the 4 bands above $10M to $25M, and no CFOS target is published for them.
Gross margin and overhead come from CFMA, Jones Maresca and SPM's own trade data, because those are the figures those sources report by trade and size. Net profit is calculated from them as gross margin minus overhead, so the three rows tie. That makes it an operating profit figure: what is left before interest, other income and expense, and the tax planning choices owners make, such as bonuses, depreciation methods and retirement contributions.
Surveys report net income before taxes after those items, so a reported net can run below the figure here. At the typical contractor the difference is small: CFMA's 2025 medians are 7.1 percent before interest and taxes and 6.7 percent net income before taxes. It grows with size. Against the separate measured net profit dataset, the calculated net runs 0.8 points higher at $1M to $5M, 2.2 points at $5M to $10M and 3.5 points at $10M to $25M, because the gross margin and overhead rows change faster with size than reported net profit does.
Above the $10M to $25M band the gross margin and overhead rows are a modeled extension of the same curves. They have not been reconciled against the licensed CFMA Benchmarker, and the calculated net there runs well above survey medians, so read those bands as a model and not as a survey result.
Run On CFOS. Run On CFOS Trade Benchmark Reference: Dewatering. 2026. Sulphur Prairie Operations, LLC. https://runoncfos.com/trades/dewatering. CC BY 4.0.
Figures on this page were last revised 2026-08-21. Published under CC BY 4.0, which permits reuse of any figure here, including commercially, as long as the credit above travels with it. The same figures in machine-readable form: /benchmarks.json.
Trade level gross margin and overhead come from figures CFMA, Jones Maresca and other sources publish, and Run On CFOS derives net profit as gross margin minus overhead. The CFOS targets beside them are from the book CONTROL: C.F.O.S. Construction Financial Operating System, published with the full reference at runoncfos.com.
- 2024 Construction Financial Benchmarker, Executive Summary, Construction Financial Management Association, 2024.
- 2025 Construction Financial Benchmarker, Executive Summary, Construction Financial Management Association, 2025.
- 2025 Performance Benchmarks, Construction Companies, Jones Maresca and Company, 2025.
- Run On CFOS Trade Benchmark Reference, Sulphur Prairie Operations, LLC, 2026.
Sourcing and method: the methodology page.
Which bands are measured. The 4 bands above $10M–$25M extend the survey curve further out and have not been reconciled against the licensed CFMA Benchmarker. How every figure was built is explained on the methodology page.
6 problems specific to dewatering
The GC has you mobilizing Monday, and you're still waiting on a discharge authorization and an Engineer's stamp on your means-and-methods submittal. Wellpoints, header, pumps, tanks, and fuel are all in play before there's anything to bill, and then you wait 30 days to invoice and longer to get paid. You set up for mass excavation, then the utility run, then the structure, and then you leapfrog the pipe crew down the alignment. You priced pumps, fuel, and rental days against a gallons-per-minute number pulled from borings somebody else paid for, and the subsurface came in wetter.
Each one below points at the item, the unit, the clock, or the party that makes it a dewatering problem, and it says which step fixes it.
| Mechanism | Why it's specific to this trade | Step |
|---|---|---|
| Your Start Date Belongs to the Permit Reviewer | No other trade on that job needs a regulator to approve where its water goes before it can begin, and no other trade has to get its methods reviewed before the first wellpoint goes in the ground. Both of those clocks are held by people who don't answer to you or to the GC's schedule. Your mobilization date is therefore a forecast made by an agency reviewer and an Engineer, while the equipment reservation and the crew are already committed. | Project management |
| The Whole System Runs Before Invoice One | Trades that install progressively spend roughly what they bill each month, so their cash curve tracks the work. Dewatering front-loads the entire system, then converts calendar time into fuel and rental with no additional installed work to point at. That means peak outflow and zero inflow fall in the same month on every single job, which is why this trade's payroll near-misses cluster at the front of the schedule. | Monthly cadence |
| You Priced One Setup and the Job Took Five | Your work is horizontal across the whole site while everyone else's is vertical inside their own footprint, so the thing that gets damaged is a line no other trade is responsible for protecting. The estimate almost always counts one setup because the pay item reads like one setup, even though the schedule contains several. Three to six moves and a flood recovery aren't events other trades price for, so there's no line item waiting to absorb them. | Project management |
| The Geotech Set Your Price and Never Signed It | Other trades price quantities they can measure on a drawing. You price a subsurface behavior somebody else modeled, and the variance between the model and the site conditions falls entirely into fuel and rental, the two lines almost no one reviews weekly. By the time the overrun is visible in the monthly financials, the pumps have already run the extra days. | Estimating system |
| Drawdown Claims Hit Months After You Demobilize | Your pumping changes the soil under property you were never hired to touch, and no other trade on the job has that exposure. The claim also runs on a delay, because settlement develops over months while your job closes in weeks. Subsidence and earth-movement exclusions are common in general liability coverage, so the one claim your trade is most likely to see is the one your policy may be written to sidestep. | Overhead calculation |
| Incidental Means Your Scope Was Never Priced | This is the only trade on the job whose entire scope routinely gets buried inside another trade's unit price. An excavation contractor at least has a quantity to bill against, while you absorb a cost with no measurable and no adjustment path. That makes the spec's payment language a bigger driver of your outcome than the design, because it determines whether your scope exists as a priced item at all. | Estimating system |
Other civil and earthwork trades
What owners ask
What gross margin should a dewatering contractor run?
No survey reports dewatering on its own, so there's no figure of its own to give you. The nearest comparable trade in the reference is Excavation, which runs 21% gross margin at $1M–$5M. That's the number this page shows, labelled as derived. Treat it as the neighbourhood, because dewatering can run above or below it.
Where do the figures on this page come from?
From Excavation. In the surveys dewatering rolls into 238910 Site Preparation, which mixes it with several other trades, so the reference pairs it with the nearest trade it does measure. Gross margin and overhead are that trade's, and net profit is calculated as gross margin minus overhead, so the three tie out. Every table and every export says "Derived from the nearest comparable trade."
What costs a dewatering contractor the most money?
Your Start Date Belongs to the Permit Reviewer. The GC has you mobilizing Monday, and you're still waiting on a discharge authorization and an Engineer's stamp on your means-and-methods submittal. That's one of 6 on this page, and 2 of the 6 resolve to step 06, project management.
Which steps does dewatering keep pointing to?
step 06 project management on 2 of them, step 04 estimating system on 2 of them, step 07 monthly cadence on 1 of them, step 03 overhead calculation on 1 of them. That distribution is the install order for this trade, because the step with the most mechanisms is the one holding the most money.
What should a dewatering contractor use instead?
Work the mechanisms on this page first, since they're specific and actionable. For a rough sense of the economics, read the civil and earthwork group, which is the nearest published context. Your own job costing beats any industry average once step 01 is installed.
Everything on this page is something you can install yourself, and CONTROL is the order to do it in. If you would rather buy the finished result, SPM The Construction CFO does this work for dewatering contractors as a service. It is a separate firm, Sulphur Prairie Management, LLC, run by the same author.
Wrote CONTROL, the 8 step system behind these figures. More about the author.