For contractors and builders
General contracting, remodeling, roofing, siding, concrete, decks, additions. Winning the job is the easy half. This section is about the half that decides whether you keep the money.
Every article carries a worked example. No theory without a number attached.
A construction company can sell every job it bids and still finish the year with nothing. The money does not disappear in the market — it disappears in markup applied as margin, change orders never signed, draws that lag payroll, and jobs nobody costed after they closed.
Takeoff discipline, allowances, contingency, and the exclusions that turn a dispute into a priced line item before it happens.
The arithmetic error that quietly eats a contractor’s year, and the overhead recovery number that fixes it.
What a permit actually costs in calendar days, why the code items nobody quoted appear at inspection, and how to schedule around them.
Written before the work, priced by a stated method, approved by a named person. The single largest recoverable loss in the trade.
Draws that arrive after payroll, retainage, mechanics lien deadlines, and how a profitable company runs out of cash.
Estimated versus actual by cost code. The habit that separates contractors who improve from contractors who guess.
A $100,000 job where the contractor thought 20% was 20%.
Applying 20% markup and calling it 20% margin leaves this contractor 3.3 points of margin short — and the error repeats on every job of the year. On $2.4M of annual volume that is about $79,200, which is usually the difference between a good year and “I do not know where it went.” The conversion table and the formula are here.
Every piece in this section is built the same way: the framework, a worked example with real numbers, and something you can use this week.
Selecting on something other than bid price, the two-page subcontract that prevents the argument, what your markup is buying, and why a three-day slip becomes eleven days.
13 min read
ScheduleWhere the days actually go, why client selections are the largest preventable delay, running the schedule week to week, and announcing a delay so it does not become a dispute.
14 min read
NumbersAdd 20% and you keep 16.7%. The conversion table, how to derive the markup your own overhead actually requires, and the same jobs producing $260,520 more profit.
13 min read
ContractsSetting an allowance the client will actually spend, writing it in units rather than dollars, billing overages with markup, and when specifying the product beats carrying a placeholder.
13 min read
CloseoutWhy most punch items are created rather than discovered, the walkthrough run as a procedure, what substantial completion should trigger, the handover as a sales event, and the warranty year.
14 min read
CommercialWho actually buys TI work, bidding to specifications rather than drawings, the contract clauses that decide profitability, working in an occupied building, and how to get in.
14 min read