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Paving Business Assessment
Sample report
Full · 29/29 answered · Sep 1, 2026
Developing · 40–59
An uneven business: Growth is well ahead of Purchasing
You scored 59 out of 100. That's a business that runs, built on habits that were right at a smaller size and haven't been rebuilt since. Growth is your strongest area at 75, and Purchasing your weakest at 43.
Your answers flag 4 issues worth dealing with directly. The first three: labor burden isn't really in your job costs; you have no way of knowing whether your pricing is competitive; and you're buying at whatever the day's number is. These aren't inferred from your score — each one comes from a specific answer you gave, and each is set out below with what it costs you.
The numbers exist but arrive too late to change the outcome of a job.
Consistent enough that you're not in the middle of every day.
You shop for price without any structural leverage over the people you buy from.
Mostly connected. Access, not capability, is the current limit.
Ready for a next step that hasn't been chosen and costed yet.
Where the gaps are
The shape matters more than the total. There are 32 points between Growth and Purchasing, which means this isn't a business that needs improving everywhere — it's one where a small number of specific fixes would move the whole picture. Averages hide that; the spread is the useful number here.
- Purchasing — 43
- Buying alone at list price hands margin to your suppliers on every ton and every gallon.
- Job Costing — 46
- Without live job costs you find out a job lost money after it's closed — when nothing can be done about it.
What your answers flagged
These come from specific answers, not from your score — each one is shown with the answer it was read from.
Labor burden isn't really in your job costs
Raw wages leave out payroll taxes, workers' comp, insurance and benefits — the costs that turn a job which looked profitable into one that wasn't. Until burden is carried on the hour, every gross margin you look at is optimistic, and the jobs you think are your best may be the ones you're subsidising.
- How is labor burden handled in your job costs?
- You said: “A rough percentage added at year end”
You have no way of knowing whether your pricing is competitive
Material is the biggest controllable line on most paving work. Without a comparison you are negotiating using the supplier's information and none of your own, and a few percent on tonnage is the difference between a good year and an average one.
- Do you know whether your material pricing is competitive?
- You said: “We assume it's roughly market”
You're buying at whatever the day's number is
Spot pricing on asphalt, aggregate and fuel means your cost base moves underneath bids you've already signed. You carry the volatility and the supplier keeps the certainty.
- How do you buy materials — asphalt, aggregate, sealer, fuel?
- You said: “One supplier we've always used”
You're set up to grow on numbers you can't fully trust
Growth is the multiplier on a costing error. Your growth readiness is ahead of your cost visibility, which means the bigger the year, the more expensive an unnoticed few points of margin becomes. Fix the measurement before you add the volume.
- When a job is halfway done, how well do you know its true cost?
- You said: “We can pull it together, but it takes real effort”
- Do you compare estimated cost against actual cost on every job?
- You said: “On larger jobs”
Overruns surface at close, not on the day
By month-end the crew has moved on and the material is in the ground. A week of drift on a three-week job is most of the margin, and it is invisible until it can't be recovered.
- When a job starts running over, when do you find out?
- You said: “At the next month-end close”
You have the systems; the cost discipline hasn't followed
Your technology score is well ahead of your job costing score. That gap is rarely a software problem — it's that nobody owns the cost structure the software would fill in. Buying more tooling won't close it.
- What runs your estimating, job costing, and billing today?
- You said: “General construction software, adapted to paving”
- Do you compare estimated cost against actual cost on every job?
- You said: “On larger jobs”
What’s already working
Worth naming, because these are what make the rest of the plan affordable.
The business runs without you standing in the middle of it
That's the hard part, and it's done. It means added volume goes through the system rather than through your calendar.
- If you were out of the business for a month, what would happen?
- You said: “It would run, with some decisions waiting for me”
You're not working the problem alone
Access to people who have already solved what you're facing shortens every decision you make from here.
- Where do you go for advice from people who've solved your problem?
- You said: “A peer group or mastermind”
What to do about it
Built from your answers and ordered by return, not by score. Each one starts with the operational fix — the Alliance resource is named after it, and only where it genuinely applies.
- 1
Purchasing · This quarter
Turn spot buying into annual terms
Why this one: Scored 43, with 2 answers pointing at something specific and fixable.
Shopping each job keeps you honest on price and leaves you with no leverage and no predictability. Commit volume and buy the certainty.
- Total last year's volume by material and take that number, not a job, into the negotiation.
- Ask for annual pricing with a stated escalator instead of a discount off a moving list price.
- Put fuel and hauling in the same conversation — they move together and are rarely negotiated together.
Group volume gets you terms your own tonnage doesn't reach, without changing who you buy from in most cases.
See purchasing power - 2
Job Costing · This month
Put burden into your labor rate before anything else
Why this one: Scored 46. One answer here is urgent enough to come before the rest of this area.
Every other number in the business is downstream of this one. Costing labor at wages makes each job look better than it was, and the error is largest on your most labor-heavy work.
- Take last year's payroll taxes, workers' comp, liability insurance and benefits, and divide by field hours worked.
- Add that to base wages to get a burdened hourly rate — by crew if the classifications differ much.
- Re-cost your three biggest completed jobs from last season at the burdened rate. That difference is what you have been managing without.
JCP calculates burden per employee and applies it automatically, so the rate can't quietly go stale.
See labor and time tracking - 3
Across areas · This month
Get the numbers right before you add the volume
Why this one: This one came out of two answers in different sections agreeing with each other.
Your readiness to grow is ahead of your ability to measure a job. Volume is a multiplier — it multiplies a good cost structure and a bad one equally.
- Set a floor: no job over a size you choose gets bid until the last three of that type have been costed all-in.
- Give the growth plan a cost gate — the volume step happens after the costing routine is running, not alongside it.
- Re-cost last season's largest job properly. If the margin you find differs from the margin you booked, that difference is what growth would have multiplied.
This sequencing question — measure first, then scale — is the most common conversation in the peer groups, usually after the fact.
Explore peer groups - 4
Technology · This quarter
Give people the numbers without going through you
Why this one: Scored 63 — already working, which is exactly why the next move here pays.
Your systems are in decent shape. The bottleneck now is access, not capability.
- Decide what each role needs to see, then give them exactly that — not a login to everything.
- Replace the reports you send out with dashboards people check themselves.
- Measure the change by how many number questions reach you in a week.
Role-based visibility is standard in JCP rather than something you configure per person.
See the reporting
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