Cost Management Without Cutting Corners: Lessons From the Field

Words: Kelsie Bounds
Photos: mihailomilovanovic, FatCamera, ProfessionalStudioImages

When it comes to cost management, most articles will tell you to focus on spreadsheets, software, and metrics. Those things have their place, but after nearly 25 years in the masonry business and watching more than 1,300 jobs pass through our doors, I’ve come to believe that cost management is less about technology and more about judgment. It’s about knowing when to say no, how to protect your people, and why chasing the wrong job can cost you more than losing it ever would.

Lessons We’ve Learned he Hard Way
When “Just a Box” Becomes a Financial Black Hole One of the jobs that sticks with me the most wasn’t some multimillion-dollar high-profile project. It was a small, simple structure, “just a box,” we told ourselves. The kind of job we thought we could knock out clean and fast. But the economy was tight, and we bid it lean. Then came the dreaded phrase from the general contractor: “Best and final.”

We were hungry, and hungry subs make bad decisions. We trimmed our price even further just to land it. By the time the contract came through, we were committed to the project and wound up taking on more scope than we’d bid for, but we didn’t push back. We were already full speed ahead, thinking that disaster awaited if we didn’t have the job in our schedule. The weather didn’t help either, and rain delays ate our float and any margin we had left.

We didn’t lose money because we couldn’t build. We lost because we convinced ourselves we had to have the job. That mindset can sink you faster than bad production ever will. Nobody forced us into that job; we did that to ourselves. Sometimes the biggest financial hits come from our own unwillingness to say no. We thought we were covering overhead. What we were really doing was digging a bigger hole. We learned that lesson the hard way, but it wasn’t the last time we paid for a bad decision.

The Most Expensive Thing You’ll Ever Do Is Hire the Wrong Person
If I were starting a new masonry business today, the first thing I’d invest in wouldn’t be software, equipment, or even marketing. It’d be people.

We’ve made the mistake over the years of convincing ourselves that someone was “ready” for a role they weren’t. Or worse, we’ve been so desperate to fill a spot that we lowered our standards and hoped it would work out. That never ends well.

One project manager we were looking at hiring had a great résumé and said all the right things. But in his interview, we began to have some doubts about his abilities. Nonetheless, we told ourselves, “We have to have somebody!” So we hired him and turned him loose. Then, the damage started rolling in. First, he ordered the wrong materials. Then he went with vendors that technically met the specs but were hundreds of miles away, adding unnecessary freight costs. He had no concept of budget-none and no awareness of how his decisions impacted it. He accepted contract terms that added tens of thousands in exposure. He underpriced (or didn’t price at all) several change orders.

Every bad decision costs us money. Eventually, we had to fire him mid-project. And guess who picked up the pieces? Our senior team. Looking back, we would have been better off just limping through the job ourselves than handing it to someone who had no business running it.

Want to control costs without cutting quality? Hire the right people. The right people aren’t cheap, but the wrong people will bleed you dry in change orders, rework, delays, and reputation.

Growth Isn’t Free! It Might Be What Breaks You
One of the hardest things to do in this business is to know your own limits—and to stick to them. That means having real benchmarks around forecasting, scheduling, and capacity. Without those, you’re just guessing.

One of the biggest mistakes I see, especially with newer contractors, is growing too fast. Few people understand how big a drain growth is on capital. I’d wager a lot of “profitable” contractors go under because they didn’t account for the cash strain their growth created. Labor costs go out today and usually stack for weeks before you get paid for that work. Never mind retainage that gets withheld and is often not paid for months after the project is complete. You need more capital than you think, and you'd better have a way to manage it.

The same is true with manpower. Do you even know how many man-hours you have available? Or are you just bidding jobs “until it feels like enough”?

I can’t tell you how often I hear customers complain that subs don’t have the manpower to keep up. And they’re not wrong. A lot of it stems from contractors overbooking themselves without realizing it, or having no system to track it in the first place.

My advice: build a manpower schedule and bid work to fit that schedule. Then, especially the further out you go (say six months or more), allow for a controlled amount of overbooking. Not because you plan to run short, but because schedules always slide. If you don’t slightly overbook long-range capacity, you’ll be staring at gaps in your calendar you can’t fill. The key is knowing what that buffer looks like (maybe 10–20%) and having the systems in place to adjust when those shifts come.

Closing Thoughts Cost management isn’t about cutting corners. It’s about protecting your margins while delivering work you’re proud of. For us, that has meant learning when to walk away from a job, investing in people who will protect the company, and building infrastructure that supports sustainable growth.

To a new contractor, my message is simple: don’t confuse activity for success. Be intentional. Bid and build smart. Know your limits. And never forget that the long-term cost of doing it wrong always outweighs the short-term gain of winning the job.

Cost Management Without Cutting Corners: Lessons From the Field

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