For $5M–$20M General Contractors & Subs

Cash flow you can sleep on. Margins that match the bid. A P&L you actually trust.

Fractional CFO advisory built by a CPA who's actually run the books from the inside of construction - so you can run the field, not the spreadsheets.

Book a 30-min discovery call → Read the Playbook ↓

Construction site with tower crane and concrete building under construction

Where you are

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Where we get you

Cash flow that's healthy one month, tight the next

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A 13-week cash forecast you actually trust

Bids close 10–15 points under what you quoted

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Job-cost data that makes the next bid right

Books built for the IRS, not for decisions

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Monthly KPIs that drive Monday's calls

Bookkeeper too light, full-time CFO too heavy

→

CFO leadership at a fraction of the hire

The Methodology

The Contractor Profit Builder.

Four phases that take you from murky numbers to a P&L you actually trust - and a forecast you can run a business off of. Click any phase to see what's inside.

01 - Analyze

Read the room. Then read the numbers.

We start by mapping current profit margins, profit drivers, and the inefficiencies that aren't showing up in the P&L. Goals get set for gross profit. The systems that should be feeding you real-time financials get stood up properly.

Margin diagnostic by job type
Profit-driver mapping
System stand-up: Buildertrend, Sage, Built, Deltek ComputerEase, QuickBooks
Initial GP target lock-in

02 - Identify

Find the leaks. Quietly.

Cost-reduction opportunities surface through a structured labor-cost analysis, project-by-project costing, and a forensic pass on contract and project-related expenses. Most $5M–$20M shops are bleeding in 2–3 places they didn't know about.

Labor cost by crew/project
Project-related expense audit
Estimated-vs-actual margin variance
Vendor & subcontractor leakage

03 - Optimize

Working capital, on a leash.

Working-capital optimization, vendor-term renegotiation, and a real revenue/cash forecast that integrates with your active project schedule. KPIs get instrumented so you're managing DSO and DPO instead of guessing where you'll be in 60 days.

DSO / DPO instrumentation
Vendor & supplier term renegotiation
Rolling 13-week cash forecast
Project-integrated revenue plan

04 - Review

Close the loop. Then keep closing it.

Progress against goals and KPIs reviewed in monthly close. Strategy adjusted on real data. Continuous monitoring + process improvement built in so that quarter two looks better than quarter one - and quarter four is a different business.

Monthly KPI close
Strategy adjustments on real data
Continuous process improvement
Forward 12-month growth plan

The Five Leaks

Where the money usually leaks.

After two CFO tenures and a stack of contractor engagements, the same five financial problems show up in roughly the same order. Naming them is half the fix.

Cash flow that's healthy one month, tight the next.

Some months the bank balance looks fine. Other months you're worried about making payroll. Billing goes out late. Collections drift. Material and labor go out at the front of a job. The customer's check shows up months later. You end up managing the bank balance instead of running the business.

Estimated margins and actual margins don't match.

The bid said 24%. The job closed at 11%. Without job-cost tracking and a clean way to compare what you bid to what you actually delivered, the gap stays invisible - and the next bid you write carries the same blind spot.

Accounting is reactive - built around tax filings, not decisions.

Your books exist to satisfy the IRS, not to run the business. By the time a problem shows up on the financials, the decision that could have fixed it is three months behind you.

The bids that win are quietly the wrong bids to win.

When the material, labor, and overhead numbers on a bid don't line up with what jobs actually cost you to deliver, the bids that come in lowest quietly become break-even jobs. The fix sits upstream of the bid itself - real cost data from the jobs you've actually closed, not gut and last year's memory.

No forecast. No budget. Just last month's bank statement.

A construction business without a rolling forecast is a construction business reacting to its own past. Forecast and budget aren't a luxury - they're the only way to see the slow quarter coming and to adjust the project pipeline before it bites.

By the Numbers

What two CFO seats and one real engagement look like.

These are real outcomes from real W-2 CFO tenures and a real anonymized contractor engagement - not aggregated industry stats.

0pts

Gross margin lift, 12% → 22%, across a 19-entity construction holding group.

Construction Managers Inc. · CFO 2020–2023

+0%

Revenue growth in 21 months at a PE-portfolio construction-services company.

BLAIR DURON · CFO 2023–2024

+0%

EBITDA increase over the same 21-month tenure. Same playbook.

BLAIR DURON · CFO 2023–2024

Reduction in one contractor's tools & supplies expense, $390K → $230K.

Anonymized engagement · See case study below

A Real-World Fix

$160K in tool spend, hiding in the credit-card statements.

A general contractor I worked with was dead certain their costs were in line - they'd looked at the financials, nothing jumped out. Two months of P&Ls in, one line was clearly out of register: Small Tools & Supplies, $390K a year. Way too high for the size and type of work.

Fifteen general foremen. Fifteen company credit cards. Tools bought on whichever foreman happened to need a saw that morning. Tools left on jobsites and never seen again. The dollars weren't being stolen - they were just walking off the books, $400 at a time, with nobody tracking who bought what.

$500 purchase-approval threshold installed
Foreman-to-foreman comms on tool buys, before the swipe
Lockable, GPS-tagged job boxes - tools stayed on-site

By the end of the year the same line was running $230K. That's $160K a year on a single expense category. The bigger lesson: when the financial side is reactive, leakage like this is invisible. Once it's strategic, it's catchable in 60 days.

Before · Annual $390K

After · Annual $230K

Annual saving −$160K · −41%

Single expense line. Three procedural changes. One quarter to land. Multiply this kind of attention across cash flow, job costing, vendor terms, and KPIs - and you have what a fractional CFO actually does for the bottom line.

Engagement Paths

Three ways to put a CFO mind on your business.

Most engagements start with the Six-Week Project, then either continue as a retainer or run separately. Tax & compliance can run alongside either or stand alone.

Path 01

Fractional CFO Retainer

Ongoing CFO leadership at a fraction of a full-time hire. Monthly close, KPI dashboard, rolling cash forecast, vendor negotiation, and direct strategic seat in your ops conversations. Best when your shop is past the point a bookkeeper can serve, and the next hire would be six figures.

Best fit $5M–$20M revenue contractors with active job complexity Cadence Monthly retainer · 6–12 month minimum

Start the conversation

Path 02

The Six-Week Project Engagement

The Contractor Profit Builder run end-to-end. Cash-flow plan, KPI dashboard, job-cost system stood up, vendor terms reviewed, forecast built. Concrete deliverables in your hand by week six. Many shops convert to an ongoing retainer at the close - the project earns the trust.

Best fit Shops who want outcomes before committing to a retainer Cadence Six weeks · Fixed scope

Scope a project

Path 03

Tax & Compliance Advisory

Tax preparation, planning, and compliance for construction businesses, leveraging twenty years of audit and CPA practice. Often runs alongside the retainer; can also stand alone for shops that already have advisory coverage but want a CPA who actually understands construction tax mechanics.

Best fit Contractors who want their tax work done by someone who reads job-cost reports Cadence Project-based or annual

Discuss your tax situation

About Brian

Twenty years of audit, controller, and CFO seats - most of them in construction.

Brian started in audit at the North Carolina Department of Revenue, then spent six years at Cahaba Safeguard Administrators leading Yellow Book Medicare/Medicaid audits - including audits at hospitals over $3.5B in annual patient revenue. Controller and accounting-manager seats at Empire Equipment and Med First Primary & Urgent Care followed.

Then came the construction CFO years. Construction Managers Inc. - a 19-entity construction and real-estate group in Fremont, NC - where Brian took gross margin from 12% to 22% and drove a 30% increase in cash on hand. Then BLAIR DURON - a private-equity-owned portfolio company in Garner, NC - where he delivered 40% revenue growth and a 300% EBITDA increase in 21 months, plus secured $500K in CAPEX financing.

He's a CPA, a North Carolina State University BA Accounting alum (the brick is real), and based in Louisburg, NC. The firm runs out of the Research Triangle; the work runs anywhere a contractor needs it.

The Path That Built the Practitioner

2005 · 2008

Tax Compliance Auditor

NC Dept of Revenue

2008 · 2014

Advanced Staff Auditor

Cahaba - Yellow Book

$3.5B+ audits

2014 · 2017

Senior Accounting Analyst

LGFCU · $1.7B parent

2017 · 2019

Accounting Manager

Med First - 28 clinics

2019 · 2020

Corporate Controller

Empire Equipment

$56M · 7× EBITDA sale

2020 · 2023

CFO

Construction Managers Inc.

GM 12% → 22%

2023 · 2024

CFO

BLAIR DURON · PE

+40% rev · +300% EBITDA

2025 · today

Owner · Fractional CFO

Triangle Finance Group

Same playbook · For you

The Contractor Profit Builder eBook cover

Free Guide

The four-phase playbook I run with clients to boost cash flow, gross profit, and bottom line.

Written for general contractors and subcontractors in the $5M to $20M range. Plain English, real numbers from real construction businesses, no fluff.

The Contractor Profit Builder framework - Analyze, Identify, Optimize, Review. The exact four-phase sequence I built from two consecutive seats as the in-house CFO at construction companies.
The five financial leaks that show up in nearly the same order across every $5M+ contractor I've worked with, and how to spot them in your own books before year-end.
One real anonymized case study - the $390K to $230K Small Tools and Supplies fix, in twelve months, without layoffs.
An honest take on what to do this month if cash flow is what's keeping you up at night, from someone who's actually sat in the construction CFO chair.

Download the Playbook (PDF) ↓

Common Questions

What contractors usually ask before we start.

If your books are clean and you mostly need transactions recorded, a bookkeeper is fine. The line is usually crossed when you're making real bid, hire, or financing decisions and the data isn't there to support them. If you're walking into the office on the 10th and you can't tell me which jobs were profitable last month, you need a CFO seat - not more bookkeeping.

Yes. The stack I see most often is Buildertrend or Procore for project management plus Sage or QuickBooks Contractor for the GL, and Stack for estimating and bidding. I work in all of them. If your stack is duct-taped together, part of the engagement is usually instrumenting it properly so that job-cost data flows into the P&L without manual rework.

The first procedural fixes - collections cadence, large-purchase approvals, vendor-term review - typically move cash within 30–60 days. Margin lifts and forecasting accuracy take a full quarter to land cleanly. The Construction Managers Inc. gross-margin lift (12% → 22%) was a multi-quarter arc, not a single fix.

Both. I'm a CPA, and roughly a quarter of my engagements include tax prep and planning alongside the advisory work. That said, I won't take a tax-only client if the financial side of the business is in worse shape than the return - that's a Band-Aid, and you'd be better served fixing the underlying numbers first.

The Six-Week Project Engagement is exactly what it sounds like - six weeks, fixed scope, concrete deliverables. The retainer minimum is six months. Most retainer relationships continue past 12 months because by then the dashboards, forecasts, and KPIs are stitched into the rhythm of the business, and stepping out would unwind the leverage.

No. I'm based in the Research Triangle, but the work travels. I've run engagements for contractors well outside North Carolina - including two clients down in Georgia. CPA reciprocity and remote-CFO operating practice both make working across state lines straightforward.

Sub-$5M is usually too early for a fractional CFO - the money's better spent on a sharp bookkeeper plus a good tax preparer. Above $20M and you should probably be hiring full-time, not fractional. The sweet spot is $5M–$20M general contractors and subcontractors with active complexity in their job mix.

Let's Talk

Let's see if we'd work well together.

No pressure, just a straightforward conversation about where you are now, where you want to be, and how I can help.

Emailinfo@trianglefinancegroup.com

Phone919 · 210 · 6675

Office100 Northview Ct.
Louisburg, NC 27549

ReachUnited States, anywhere · Research Triangle home base