A Typical Project - Cash Flow S-Curve

Ensuring great financial outcomes is the ONLY way to build a sustainable construction business that can serve customers and develop team members over the long-term.

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Cash Flow: A Typical Project - Understanding Cash Flow

A project team has seven basic objectives and those tie into the contractor’s high-level scoreboard.

The basics:

This S-Curve chart shows just the cumulative cash flows in and out at the project level.  Overhead is excluded from this calculation for simplicity. The numbers are all based of the monthly data.

As you can see it is not until month 11 that the project becomes cash flow positive and that is without covering any overhead!  

Look at what happens when you factor in overhead

We are revamping our publicly available cash flow workshop that includes 18 techniques that contractors can use to accelerate cash flow. Stay informed of updates on release.


A Typical Project - Cash Flow S-Curve
Great cash flow is a key driver of valuation and successful successions. Running out of cash is is the #1 reason contractors fail. Improving cash flow improves your Return on Equity. Protect yourself and never let cash flow be the limitation to your profitable growth....

A Typical Project - Cash Flow S-Curve
Great cash flow is a key driver of valuation and successful successions. Running out of cash is is the #1 reason contractors fail. Improving cash flow improves your Return on Equity. Protect yourself and never let cash flow be the limitation to your profitable growth....

Production Tracking - Lessons Learned
Look at productivity as a daily “Jar” where your objective is to pack as much “Earned Value” into it as possible. Look at your costs in three major categories and focus on tracking what matters the most.
The Cost of Specializaton
Learn the right balance between specialists and generalists. Specialization is great and is what has allowed all of us to continually experience improved lives for generations. However, when taken too far, specialization can become a liability.
Collections and Retention Trend Metric
Assuming that a contractor’s project team has done an effective job of aggressively billing the project, the biggest variable that remains for cash flow is the effectiveness of collections.