CONSTRUCTIONSECTOR · UNITED STATES AND CANADA

Finance leadership for construction and trades.

The accounts are accurate at completion and meaningless before it. Work in progress is a plug — someone’s percentage-complete estimate, unchallenged, carried forward. Jobs look profitable until the final account, when retention is disputed, variations were never priced, and the margin that was bid has quietly gone. Meanwhile the surety has held the bonding limit flat for two years because the WIP schedule it receives is not one it can rely on, and nobody has asked why.
THE MEASURE THAT FINDS ITGross margin by job, against the estimate that won it
WHAT WE DO ABOUT IT, BELOWREMOTE-FIRST, ON SITE WHEN IT CHANGES THE OUTCOME
How We Run It Here
01 / 03
What a finance function in this sector actually needs.

We rebuild costing at the job level with a defensible basis for percentage of completion — cost-to-cost, or units where that is more honest — and we make the estimate that won the job the benchmark it is measured against every month. Variations get priced when they are instructed, not argued about at the final account.

Retention and holdback are tracked as the receivable they actually are, with a release date against each one, because on most contractors this is the single largest pot of unrecognized cash on the balance sheet.

Then the surety relationship: a WIP schedule they can rely on, delivered on a rhythm, with the same numbers in it as your management accounts. Bonding capacity moves when the surety trusts the reporting, not when the revenue grows.

WHO YOUR CFO DRAWS ON FOR THIS SECTOR

Construction finance specialists who have prepared WIP schedules for surety review

What Changes
02 / 03
What you can do afterwards that you cannot do now.
Know a job’s real margin while there is still time to do something about it. Give your surety a schedule they will lend against. Collect retention on a date rather than eventually.
Who Holds The Seat
03 / 03
Matched to the sector, not to the postcode.
We hire for what somebody has run rather than where they live, which is the only reason we can put a CFO in your seat who has already done this in a business like yours.
YOUR CFO, FOR THIS SECTORHas closed out final accounts and sat opposite a surety

With a named controller alongside them, a named backup on every seat, and the specialist bench behind both — all inside one fixed monthly fee.

THE OTHER ELEVEN
The rest of the scope.
Nobody needs all of it at once. The diagnostic decides which two or three matter first in your business, and you keep that assessment either way.
Distribution and wholesaleManufacturingProfessional servicesMulti-unit and hospitalityProperty and real assetsTechnology and recurring revenueHealthcare and clinical groupsTransportation, fleet and logisticsFranchise and multi-unit operatorsConsumer brands and e-commerceNonprofit and member organizations
SEE THE FULL SCOPE →
What Happens Next

Your sector is one conversation away from a written answer. Start with what is actually going on.

One hour on your business, with the CFO who would hold the seat rather than a salesperson. Nothing to prepare and nothing to sign. A written note back within two working days saying what we heard and what we would look at first.
BOOK A CONVERSATIONREAD THE AGREEMENT
ONE HOUR · NO CHARGE · A WRITTEN NOTE BACK WITHIN TWO WORKING DAYS
THE HOURWhat the business does, how the cash moves through it, and what would have to be different in a year.
THE NOTEWhat we heard and what we would look at first, in writing, within two working days.
THE PODA CFO who has run finance in this sector before, with a named backup who already knows your file.
THE STANDARDClose by the seventh working day, pack on the eighth, and a published response standard in between.