Where environmental remediation contractors lose money
6 things cost environmental remediation contractors money without ever becoming a line item, and each one traces to a step you can install. Environmental remediation contractors average 23% gross margin, 16% overhead and 7% net profit at $1M to $5M of revenue. The CFOS target at that size is 25.5% gross margin, 15% overhead and 10.5% net, and the 3.5 points left on the table is where those mechanisms live. Figures for all 7 revenue bands are in the table below.
Environmental remediation ranks 2nd of 11 in civil and earthwork on net profit, and it has heavier overhead than the 48-trade average. Here is every figure, across all 7 revenue bands.
Environmental remediation by revenue band
| Metric | $1M to $5M | $5M to $10M | $10M to $25M | $25M to $50MModeled | $50M to $100MModeled | $100M to $500MModeled | $500M+Modeled | CFOS target at $1M to $5M |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overhead | 16% | 15% | 14% | 13% | 12% | 11% | 10% | 15% |
| Gross margin | 23% | 24% | 26% | 27% | 28% | 30% | 31% | 25.5% |
| Net profit | 7% | 9% | 12% | 14% | 16% | 19% | 21% | 10.5% |
| Metric | $1M to $5M | $5M to $10M | $10M to $25M |
|---|---|---|---|
| Overhead | 15% | 14% | 13% |
| Gross margin | 25.5% | 26.5% | 28.5% |
| Net profit | 10.5% | 12.5% | 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 figures CFMA, Jones Maresca and other sources publish by trade and size, and they are before tax figures. Net profit starts from gross margin less overhead and is then adjusted for taxes and a few other expenses, so it is stated after taxes. It is published as its own average and is not calculated from the other two on the page.
CFMA reports net income before taxes, so a CFMA figure is higher than an after tax figure on the same business. CFMA's 2025 medians are 7.1 percent before interest and taxes and 6.7 percent net income before taxes. Read a net profit figure here against CFMA's with that difference in mind.
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, so read those bands as a model and not as a survey result.
Run On CFOS. Run On CFOS Trade Benchmark Reference: Environmental remediation. 2026. Sulphur Prairie Operations, LLC. https://runoncfos.com/trades/environmental-remediation. 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 publishes net profit as a separate average stated after taxes. 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 to $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 environmental remediation
You mobilized, the excavation is open, and the only permitted facility that will take the material is 400 miles away and booked three weeks out. The cut is finished, the sidewalls are trimmed, and your crew and your machines wait there while a lab decides whether you're allowed to backfill. You priced the dirt as non-hazardous off borings somebody else drilled, and the TCLP came back failing for lead. The soil left in the spring, the crew has been on three other jobs since, and your final draw is stuck behind a state agency's review.
Each one below points at the item, the unit, the clock, or the party that makes it an environmental remediation problem, and it says which step fixes it.
| Mechanism | Why it's specific to this trade | Step |
|---|---|---|
| Your disposal outlet is booked before the dig starts | A framer waiting on material has a stack of lumber doing nothing. A remediation contractor waiting on an outlet has an open excavation with shoring, plates, dewatering, and an air monitoring plan in use every single day, and a permitted facility that answers to its own compliance calendar before it answers to yours. The supply chain here is licensed and short: there's no next yard down the road to call. | Project management |
| An open hole is rented equipment with no production | Every other trade on the site is waiting on you, and you're waiting on a laboratory. Weather and sequencing are arguments you can take to the OAC meeting, while a pending confirmation result has no committed return date and no one to escalate to. Machines on a remediation hole also can't be shuffled to another job easily, because pulling decon'd equipment out of an exclusion zone costs more than leaving it parked. | Equipment cost basis |
| One TCLP result can multiply your biggest cost line | A steel or copper escalation is in an index the owner can pull up, so that conversation is short. This one is a chemistry result on material that was never fully characterized before bid, and the change order routes through the owner's own consultant, who wrote the boring plan that missed it. No other trade has its largest cost line reclassified by a laboratory after the contract is signed. | Estimating system |
| Closure letters come quarters after your crew leaves | The party holding your money is a regulator with no contract with you and no duty to your cash flow, so leaning on the GC moves nothing. This is the only trade where the closing signature comes from a state agency reading groundwater data. That's why the job has to be structured with the excavation and the monitoring tail separated, or a finished job looks open on your books for two years. | Job cost structure |
| The landfill gets paid in 15 days, you get paid in 90 | A trade that bills labor across months also spends across those same months, so the money going out and the money coming in stay close together. Remediation spends its whole material budget in one dig window and then waits on a technical reviewer before the invoice even becomes an invoice. That distance between the spend and the deposit is what puts a job with good margin on the line of credit. | Monthly cadence |
| Task caps on fund work turn good hours into bad debt | Your customer of record may be a gas station owner, but the payer is a state program with statutory eligibility rules, and correctly performed work outside the approved task is simply a cost the fund doesn't recognize. No other trade can do everything right in the field and still end up with a scope that's ineligible. Job cost has to be coded to the fund's task structure from day one, because that's the only format in which you'll ever be paid. | Job cost structure |
Environmental remediation against the other 47 trades
| Metric | Environmental remediation | Civil and earthwork average | All 48 average | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overhead | 16% | 15% | 15.1% | 32nd of 48 |
| Gross margin | 23% | 20.7% | 22.1% | 13th of 48 |
| Net profit | 7% | 5.7% | 7% | 21st of 48 |
Environmental remediation sheds 6 points of overhead between $1M to $5M and $500M+, against 6.2 for civil and earthwork as a group. Inside that group, SWPPP and erosion control is the most profitable at 10%, and Civil, Excavation, Paving, 1 more all have 14% overhead, the leanest. Environmental remediation is neither, which is the usual position and the one with the most room in it.
Other civil and earthwork trades
What owners ask
What overhead should an environmental remediation contractor have?
Environmental remediation shares its overhead figure with 12 other trades at this revenue, which is what the published data resolves to. It averages 16% at $1M to $5M and 10% at $500M+, as a percentage of revenue. That is 1 point above the civil and earthwork average of 15%. The CFOS target at $1M to $5M is 15%. The CFOS target is one point leaner than your trade's industry average at your revenue.
What gross margin should an environmental remediation contractor have?
Environmental remediation shares its gross margin figure with 6 other trades at this revenue, which is what the published data resolves to. It averages 23% at $1M to $5M and 31% at $500M+, as a percentage of revenue. That is 2.3 points above the civil and earthwork average of 20.7%. The CFOS target at $1M to $5M is 25.5%. The CFOS target recalculates at your revenue: whatever gross margin produces the net profit target once overhead is paid, never below your trade's own industry average.
What net profit should an environmental remediation contractor have?
Environmental remediation shares its net profit figure with 16 other trades at this revenue, which is what the published data resolves to. It averages 7% at $1M to $5M and 21% at $500M+, after taxes, as a percentage of revenue. That is 1.3 points above the civil and earthwork average of 5.7%. The CFOS target at $1M to $5M is 10.5%. The CFOS target recalculates at your revenue: 10 percent after taxes, or 3.5 points better than your trade's industry average, whichever is higher.
What profit margin should a small environmental remediation business have?
Owners usually mean net profit when they say profit margin, and for environmental remediation at $1M to $5M that's 7%. Gross margin is a different number, 23%, and it's what's left after job costs but before overhead. Overhead is the 16% between the two. A small environmental remediation business holding 7% net is at the published figure for its size, and the CFOS target at that revenue is 10.5%.
Does environmental remediation get more profitable as it grows?
Overhead is the number that moves. Environmental remediation sheds 6 points between $1M to $5M and $500M+, which is in line with the 6.2 points civil and earthwork sheds as a group. Net profit starts 0 points under the 48-trade average, so the room is in the overhead line before it's anywhere else.
Where does environmental remediation rank against the other trades?
Environmental remediation ties 4 trades in civil and earthwork on net profit, all at 7%. SWPPP and erosion control is the most profitable at 10%. Civil, Excavation, Paving, 1 more have the leanest overhead at 14%. Gross margin ranks 13th of 48 and overhead ranks 32nd.
That's the industry average and the CFOS target for environmental remediation at every size. Want your own books set beside them? The Financial Health Snapshot builds a CEO Report from your last twelve months, sets every figure against your trade, and walks you through it on a 60 minute call. SPM The Construction CFO (Sulphur Prairie Management, LLC) is a separate firm, and the same author leads it.
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 environmental remediation contractors as a service. It is a separate firm, Sulphur Prairie Management, LLC, led by the same author.
What a fractional CFO does for environmental remediation contractors
Wrote CONTROL, the 8 step system behind these figures. More about the author.