Shoring and shielding
No survey separates shoring and shielding on its own, so this page shows Excavation's figures as the nearest comparable trade, labelled as derived, and lists 6 mechanisms that cost shoring and shielding contractors money and the step that fixes each.
No survey separates shoring and shielding, 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 shoring and shielding itself. Use them to find the neighbourhood, then let your own job costing be the answer.
Shoring and shielding 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: Shoring and shielding. 2026. Sulphur Prairie Operations, LLC. https://runoncfos.com/trades/shoring-shielding. 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 shoring and shielding
The box can't go in the ground until a registered PE seals the design, and the engineer is waiting on borings the GC hasn't sent. Trench safety pays by the linear foot of centerline. You locked sheet pile pricing at bid and bid the same steel a second time as salvage. Shoring starts on day one of excavation, so your install is done in the first quarter.
Each one below points at the item, the unit, the clock, or the party that makes it a shoring and shielding problem, and it says which step fixes it.
| Mechanism | Why it's specific to this trade | Step |
|---|---|---|
| You pay for the stamp and wait on somebody else's data | Most subs wait on submittals for material they will install later, and the wait happens before anybody trucks equipment out. Here the seal is a condition of entry: no crew goes in the hole and nothing gets set until it exists, so the delay hits a mobilized crew and a staged yard of steel. The data that opens the gate is held by the same party pushing you to start, which means you fund the cost of a decision you can't make. | Estimating system |
| Footage Stops Earning and the Box Rental Never Stops | Most trades buy the same unit they sell, quantity in and quantity installed, so a slow week drops revenue and cost together. You buy time and you sell distance, and the person deciding how long the trench stays open is the pipe crew foreman, not you. The pay application only reports footage, so the job reads healthy right up until the equipment days get totaled. | Equipment cost basis |
| Cut-off Piles Turn Your Salvage Credit Into Zero | A permanent-install trade prices material once and it stays in the building forever. You price the same steel twice, once going in and once on the assumption it comes back out and gets reused on the next job. That second price is a bet on site conditions and other people's specs, buried inside a hard bid you don't get to reopen. | Estimating system |
| Your work ends in March; your retention ends next spring | Every trade dislikes retention; what's different here is the span. You're the first trade on and one of the earliest done, so your retention is held across the longest possible stretch of any sub on that job. The last piece of your scope waits on another contractor's backfill, which means your completion date belongs to their schedule. | Monthly cadence |
| Rain Adds Qualified Hours Your Pay App Never Bills | Plenty of trades have safety overhead. Yours is a qualified-labor requirement tied to each crew entry and to the specific protective system you installed, with a weather trigger that appears on no schedule. Those hours end up in job labor cost, but they were priced as office overhead or never priced at all, and the difference widens in the weeks when rain is already hurting the job. | Overhead calculation |
| You Leave Nothing Behind and Still Get a Claim Later | Trades with a permanent product get a defined warranty window on something anyone can walk up and look at. You get open-ended exposure to soil movement on somebody else's property and a condition assessment on equipment you already returned. Both of those hit a job number your books treated as finished and closed. | Standards and accountability |
Other civil and earthwork trades
What owners ask
What gross margin should a shoring and shielding contractor run?
No survey reports shoring and shielding 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 shoring and shielding can run above or below it.
Where do the figures on this page come from?
From Excavation. In the surveys shoring and shielding 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 shoring and shielding contractor the most money?
You pay for the stamp and wait on somebody else's data. The box can't go in the ground until a registered PE seals the design, and the engineer is waiting on borings the GC hasn't sent. Your crew and your iron are already on site. That's one of 6 on this page, and 2 of the 6 resolve to step 04, estimating system.
Which steps does shoring and shielding keep pointing to?
step 04 estimating system on 2 of them, step 02 equipment cost basis on 1 of them, step 07 monthly cadence on 1 of them, step 03 overhead calculation on 1 of them, step 08 standards and accountability 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 shoring and shielding 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 shoring and shielding 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.