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For excavation, earthwork & site utility subcontractors

Excavation contractor software — mobilization to final grade.

You are first on the site and you have to bill before there is anything finished to point at. Your money is machines, trucks and operators, not product in a warehouse, so there is no stored material to carry you — every dollar you draw comes out of quantities somebody surveyed. Then the geotechnical report turns out to have been optimistic, it rains for nine days, and you demobilize and come back six months later to fine-grade a site every other trade has rutted. SubMark keeps the quantities, the soils change events and the rain days in one record. One system, office to field — and the field is free.

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  • Unit-price and quantity lines billed against surveyed work
  • Rock and unsuitable soil documented the day the bucket finds it
  • Rain, standby and access delays on a dated, photo-backed record

What actually goes wrong on a sitework job.

Your schedule of values has no material line to hide in.

Look at what the excavation pack loads and what it leaves out: mobilization, earthwork, utilities, grading, punch — and no line for product at all — no material, no equipment, no gear — which is true of no other trade page on this site. A glazier bills stored glass. A door sub bills stored frames. You are billing production that happened last month, paid for with fuel, rental, dump fees and operator hours that have already left your account. Mobilization is the only front-loaded money you get, which makes the shape of the rest of that breakdown your entire cash-flow argument.

You are billing against somebody else’s survey.

Percent complete on earthwork is an argument about cubic yards, linear feet of pipe and square feet of base, and the quantities that settle it usually come off the GC’s surveyor or the engineer’s take. If your own count of what moved each day — loads out, stations trenched, lifts compacted — is not written down the day it happened, you end up negotiating your own draw from memory against a number somebody else computed.

The soils report is a prediction, not a contract.

Rock, groundwater, buried debris, an old foundation nobody drew, material that has to be undercut and replaced because it will never compact. Every one of those is a change order, and every one of them is perishable evidence: once you have hauled it off and backfilled over it, the only proof it was ever there is the record your foreman made that morning. This is the most expensive habit in the trade — handling it with a phone call, then arguing it in a meeting in March.

Haul-off and import is where the money quietly leaks.

Who owns the spoil, who pays for import, and on what basis — truck loads, in-place cubic yards, bank measure or scale tickets. Those are four different numbers for the same dirt, and the pack asks you to settle them before the job starts for a reason. A sub who hauls 400 loads and gets paid on a bank-measure takeoff loses the difference without a single argument about quality.

Weather is not an excuse on your job, it is a cost.

Nine rain days means standby, dewatering, and recompacting a subgrade that was signed off before it got saturated. Nobody disputes that it rained; what gets disputed is which days, how many crews and machines were standing, and whether the re-work was yours. That is a dated-record problem, and the record has to be made on the day, by the foreman, before anybody is arguing about it.

You leave, and the site you come back to is not the one you left.

Final grade sits inside a grading line the pack starts at a fifth of the contract, and it happens months after the earthwork, after every other trade has driven across your subgrade, stockpiled on it and left it rutted. That is a remobilization plus work you already performed once. Without a dated, photographed record of the condition the day you demobilized, there is no version of that conversation you win.

Before you mobilize

The 4 things excavation subs settle with the GC before mobilizing.

What is approved, where your scope stops, what has to be true before you start, and how you get at the work. Every one of them turns into a change order three weeks in if nobody writes the answer down — and the answer is worth nothing if it only lives in one PM’s inbox.

In the pack

Switch on Pre-Construction Review and these 4 questions are already the list, worded the way excavation subs ask them.

  • Confirm the current site plan, grades and the geotechnical report
  • Confirm utility locates, existing conditions and how unsuitable soil is handled
  • Confirm who owns spoil, import and haul-off, and the pricing basis
  • Confirm erosion control, dewatering and permit responsibility

Tick them off job by job, with your own note on each. The note is your answer — the pack ships the question and leaves the answer to you.

Pre-Construction Review is an opt-in module — it is not one of the eight switched on at setup. Turn it on in Settings and the list is already there in excavation terms, with no upgrade and no setup call. Edit it once and it applies to every job; the tick and the note stay with the job it was asked on. See every module →

The sitework job, stakeout to final grade.

Sitework is rarely one continuous mobilization. Earthwork, utilities and final grade are often three separate trips with other trades’ months in between, and your billing has to survive the gaps. This is how the job runs, and what carries each stage in SubMark; the pack’s own phase list is below.

  1. 01 Bid & estimate

    Takeoff off the civil sheets, cut and fill off the grading plan, quantities per unit, the equipment spread, haul distances and dump fees, erosion control.

    Bid Board, Plans & Drawings with deep zoom, Takeoff, Estimating & Proposals with equipment as its own cost category

  2. 02 Pre-construction

    Current site plan, grades and the geotechnical report confirmed; utility locates called; who owns spoil, import and haul-off settled, and on what basis; erosion control, dewatering and permits assigned.

    Pre-Construction Review — a switch in Settings, carrying the pack’s own four items — Plans & Drawings, Sub Contracts

  3. 03 Mobilization

    Machines moved in, construction entrance and erosion control installed, benchmarks and stakes verified against the survey before anything is cut.

    Purchase Orders, Daily Labor Logs, Schedule of Values & Draw Log for the mobilization line

  4. 04 Clearing & grubbing

    Vegetation cleared, existing paving and structures demolished, topsoil stripped and stockpiled somewhere it will not be in the way of the building.

    Daily Labor Logs with photos of existing conditions, Change Events for anything the drawings did not show

  5. 05 Mass excavation

    Cut to fill, undercut where the material will not hold, export or import, trucks counted and tickets collected.

    Time Clock & Labor Logs feeding Job Costing, Invoices Inbox for hauling and dump tickets, Change Events for anything the soils report missed

  6. 06 Utility trenching

    Storm, sanitary and water laid to grade, structures and manholes set, then the utility inspection that has to pass before any of it is covered.

    Daily Labor Logs as the dated record of each inspection, T&M Tags for anything found in the trench, Crew Scheduling for the pipe crew

  7. 07 Backfill & compaction

    Lifts placed and compacted, density tested by a third-party lab, then retested wherever a test failed.

    Daily Labor Logs as the dated record of each test, Change Events for re-work caused by others

  8. 08 Grading

    Subgrade cut to tolerance, proof-rolled and accepted, aggregate base placed and compacted ahead of paving or the slab.

    Daily Labor Logs, Purchase Orders and the Invoices Inbox tying base rock cost to the job

  9. 09 Final grade & punch

    Months later, back on site to fine grade, repair what other trades drove through, pull erosion control, seed, and hand over as-builts.

    Daily Labor Logs with photos of the condition you came back to, Schedule of Values & Draw Log for the final draws, Lien Waiver Tracking

Every module named above ships today; the eight below are on from day one, and the rest are a switch in Settings, not an upgrade. The full list is on the product page.

In the pack

These 8 phases load with the Excavation & Sitework pack the moment you pick it at setup.

They are the phase list your foremen pick from on every daily log, so the hours come back tagged to the part of the job they were spent on.

  1. 01 Survey / Stakeout
  2. 02 Clearing
  3. 03 Mass Excavation
  4. 04 Utility Trenching
  5. 05 Grading
  6. 06 Backfill / Compaction
  7. 07 Final Grade
  8. 08 Punch

Rename, reorder or delete any of them in Settings — the pack is a starting point, not a cage.

A sitework schedule of values that bills quantities, not opinions.

The excavation pack opens the builder at mobilization 10%, earthwork 35%, utilities 30%, grading 20%, punch 5%. Read it twice and the missing line is the point: no material, no stored product, no fabrication. A sitework draw is earned quantities and nothing else, which is why the unit-price lines have to exist before the contract is signed rather than after you hit rock. These are the kinds of lines a commercial sitework schedule of values usually needs:

In the pack

Open the SOV builder on a new job and these 5 lines are already in it.

  • Mobilization 10%
  • Earthwork 35%
  • Utilities 30%
  • Grading 20%
  • Punch 5%
Of contract value 100%

What most commercial excavation subs add

  • 01 Mobilization the only front-loaded line you get
  • 02 Erosion control & SWPPP install
  • 03 Clearing, grubbing & demolition
  • 04 Topsoil strip & stockpile
  • 05 Mass excavation — cut to fill
  • 06 Export & haul-off name the basis: loads, in-place or ticket
  • 07 Imported select fill
  • 08 Undercut & unsuitable soil replacement unit price
  • 09 Rock excavation unit price
  • 10 Dewatering
  • 11 Storm drainage — pipe & structures
  • 12 Sanitary sewer — pipe & structures
  • 13 Water & fire line
  • 14 Backfill & compaction
  • 15 Subgrade preparation & proof-roll
  • 16 Aggregate base
  • 17 Fine grade & final grade earned months after the earthwork
  • 18 Erosion control removal, as-builts & closeout

Three things worth arguing for before the contract is signed. Get unit-price lines for undercut, rock and dewatering into the breakdown while you are still negotiating, because a single lump-sum earthwork line gives a surprise nowhere to land and turns every soils problem into a fight about your base scope. Split haul-off and imported fill out of mass excavation — different trucks, different basis, different money, and bundling them is how a 400-load overrun becomes invisible. And keep fine grade separate from grading, because it is earned after a remobilization that may be half a year away; folded together, a fifth of your contract waits on a trip you have not taken yet.

That longer list is an illustration, not a template — your SOV is negotiated with your GC. SubMark gives you the SOV to build, and tracks every draw, retainage amount and payment against it. It is your record of the job, not a replacement for the GC’s billing system — you submit the draw the way each GC requires and log it here.

Inside SubMark

One calendar for every crew on every job.

Two dirt crews, a pipe crew and a grading crew across four sites, with one operator promised to two jobs on Wednesday. SubMark schedules every worker in one calendar and flags the double-booking before a machine is on the wrong site.

A week of crew scheduling in SubMark, with one worker flagged for a double-booking on Wednesday, a '1 conflict' warning in the toolbar, and per-day worker capacity bars underneath

On from day one, in every trade’s setup.

Nothing is paywalled by tier. These eight are switched on in every one of the 29 trade packs, excavation included, from the moment you finish setup.

T&M Tags

Field tickets priced off your own rate lists and signed by the GC on the spot.

Change Events

The field logs a scope change with photos the day it happens, then it converts to a CO.

Draw Calendar

Every GC’s billing cutoff and submission method in one calendar, with reminders.

Submittals

Submittal packages with a material library, cover sheets and merged PDF export.

Daily Labor Logs

Weather, narrative, labor, materials and photos, with a submit-and-review workflow.

Timesheets

Weekly rollups with worker signatures and supervisor approval, plus a payroll summary export.

Where Workers Are

A live view of which workers are on which job today.

Safety

Toolbox talks, inspections, incidents, and certification and COI tracking with expiry dates.

Pick Excavation & Sitework at setup and SubMark loads the sitework pack: the phase list your foremen pick from — Survey / Stakeout, Clearing, Mass Excavation, Utility Trenching, Grading, Backfill / Compaction, Final Grade and Punch; worker types for Foreman, Operator, Pipe Layer and Laborer; a material list built around storm and sewer pipe, aggregate base rock, fill dirt, geotextile, manholes and structures, and erosion control; project statuses that run Pre-Construction, Earthwork, Utilities, Grading, Complete; the two inspection passes that actually gate your work — utility inspection and final grade; a schedule-of-values breakdown weighted mobilization, earthwork, utilities, grading and punch. The pack also writes four pre-construction review items in your trade’s terms rather than a generic four — the current site plan, grades and geotechnical report; utility locates, existing conditions and how unsuitable soil is handled; who owns spoil, import and haul-off, and the pricing basis; and erosion control, dewatering and permit responsibility — waiting for the day you switch that module on, because the pre-construction review is one of the switches in Settings rather than one of the eight that are on from day one. Anything the pack gets wrong, you change in Settings.

The worker types are already there too — Foreman, Operator, Pipe Layer and Laborer — on every worker record and on every daily labor log. The only thing left to enter is your own rates.

Questions

Excavation & Sitework subcontractors ask us these.

Can we bill unit prices and quantities instead of percent complete?

Yes, because you build the schedule of values. Carry unit-price lines for undercut, rock, imported fill and dewatering next to the lump-sum lines for earthwork, utilities and grading, and bill each one as it is earned. SubMark holds that breakdown and tracks what you billed on every line, what was certified, what retainage is held against it and when the money landed. The honest limit: SubMark does not compute quantities from a survey file or keep a running quantity ledger — the quantity you and the GC agree on is what you bill on the line.

Does job costing track equipment cost?

It tracks the money, not the machine. Job costing is per job, grouped by cost type — labor, crew lump sum, materials invoiced, materials committed, QuickBooks costs and subcontractors — against your budget lines, and rental invoices, fuel, trucking and dump fees reach the right job through purchase orders, QuickBooks bills coded to it, and the invoices inbox if you switch it on. What there is not: an hour meter, a fleet register, or an internal ownership rate that charges your own excavator to a job at $95 an hour. If you run internal equipment rates, that stays wherever you do it now. On the bid side it is different — an estimate carries Equipment as its own cost category alongside labor, material, subcontractor, overhead and other, so the spread is priced where you priced it before.

How do we document rock or unsuitable soil?

With a change event raised the morning the crew finds it, carrying photos, the depth and limits, the station or grid location and what it is costing you, plus that day’s hours and loads on the daily log. From there it becomes a T&M tag priced off your own rate lists and signed on site by the superintendent, or a priced change request if the GC wants it that way — and several T&M tags can convert into one change order later. What SubMark will not do is decide whose risk the soil was, or make the GC agree the report was wrong.

Can we record rain days, standby and dewatering?

Yes, and this is the part of the product a sitework contractor gets the most out of. Every day’s log carries the weather and temperature, a work summary, hours per worker, photos, and a delay with its cause from a fixed list — weather, material, labor, access, GC direction, inspection or other. Nine rain days recorded as nine dated logs with crew counts on them is a different document from a recollection assembled for a claim. Sorting out who owes for the standby is still your claims consultant’s job; the nine dated logs are what you hand them.

Does it total up quantities placed — yards moved, feet of pipe?

Not as a computed number, and it would be easy to imply otherwise. The daily log takes a written work summary, labor hours per worker, materials and photos — uploads are images only — so the day’s loads and stations are recorded in the narrative, dated and searchable by job. There is no numeric quantity field that rolls up into a yards-moved total. If you need that total it still comes off your survey or your tickets; what SubMark gives you is the dated field record the total gets defended with.

What about the utility inspection before backfill?

The excavation pack ships two passes — utility inspection and final grade — and each inspection goes on that day’s log with who was there, what passed, what did not, and photos. That is the record. SubMark does not schedule the inspector, does not tie a draw to an inspection result, and has no inspection module of its own, so the sequence it supports is the one you already run: trench open, inspected, logged, backfilled.

Does the safety module know anything about trenching?

It does, and it is pack-specific. The safety module ships toolbox talks with the trade, and excavation’s include a trenching and heavy-equipment-operations talk tied to 29 CFR 1926.652 — protective system at five feet, an exit within twenty-five feet, spoil two feet back from the edge, daily competent-person inspection, and staying out of the swing radius. Alongside that: safety inspections, incident records, and certification and COI tracking with expiry dates.

Do we have to stop using the GC’s billing portal?

No. Keep submitting through whatever portal, template or email each GC requires. SubMark is where the schedule of values lives — mobilization, the unit-price lines, utilities by system, fine grade kept separate — and where every draw you submit is logged against it, with retainage held and payment tracked across every GC you work for. Procore, Textura and GCPay are recorded as the submission method on a job; nothing is sent on your behalf.

Does it connect to QuickBooks?

Yes. Connect QuickBooks Online once and bills and purchases pull into job costing — hourly, if you switch auto-pull on — so hauling, rental, aggregate and pipe invoices sit against the right job instead of a monthly pile. Draws go across as QuickBooks invoices and POs as purchase orders, one at a time with a click. A coverage meter shows how much of the cost pulled from QuickBooks is coded to a job at all; it is company-wide rather than per job, so read it before you trust a clean variance on one site.

Do my field crews cost extra?

No. Field users are free and unlimited, and so are the subs you invite into a job. You pay one company subscription: $249 a month with your first 3 office users included, then $39 a month each. The whole breakdown is on the pricing page.

See it on an excavation job.

Start the trial, confirm excavation on the first screen, and the pack loads your phases, checklists and worker types in your own words. Or take a 30-minute walkthrough with the person who built it, on your kind of jobs, instead of a canned demo script.

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Other trades

Electrical

Gear you pay for months before you bill it, rough-in hours that disappear, and every tenant change landing on your scope.

HVAC / Mechanical

Equipment bought a year before it is billed, shop fab the GC will not pay for, and a closeout that holds your last 10% for six months.

Plumbing

First in the ground and last out of the building — with a quarter of the contract value stuck behind the finish trades.

Drywall & Framing

A third to half the contract spent on board before anything is hung, five finish passes nobody can measure, and three punch walks and a clean-up that are all on you.

Concrete

Pour days that cannot move, ready-mix invoices you reconcile weeks later, and forms that are capital cycling across placements.

Fire Sprinkler

Weeks of hydraulic engineering before you can bill a dollar, and every phase gated behind an inspection you do not schedule.

Glazing & Glass

Custom material you cannot order until you field measure, cannot return once you do, and cannot bill until a water test passes.

Roofing

A tear-off that owns the building until dry-in, rotten deck nobody bid, and a warranty package standing between you and retainage.

Low voltage

Drop counts that move with every furniture plan, cable sitting in a locked IDF for months, and a final 10% that waits on a test report.

Fire alarm

A quarter of the contract behind an acceptance test you do not schedule, retests you never bill, and device counts that move all year.

Painting

The last trade on the schedule, four return trips for other people’s damage, and prep bid against a wall nobody left you.

Flooring

A slab that fails its moisture test, prep bid against a flatness spec nobody hit, and a whole building’s material stored for months.

Masonry

Scaffold that is capital, grout lifts gated by an inspector, and a mock-up panel holding up the whole brick order.

Structural & Misc Steel

Two thirds of the contract is detailing, mill material and shop work, earned before a single piece is erected, and the last five percent is a handrail holding your retainage.

Wood Framing

Fourteen buildings billed as one percentage, a lumber package that is 40% of the contract before a wall goes up, and blocking you owe six other trades that nobody drew.

Waterproofing

Work that is buried within a week of going in, blamed for every drop of water for the next ten years, and finished with sealants months after everyone forgot you were on the job.

Doors, Frames & Hardware

Half the contract is product you buy months early, and the last three openings out of four hundred hold your punch, your final draw and your retainage.

Demolition

A scope nobody can see until you open the wall, extra work that leaves in the dumpster before anyone prices it, and retainage held for a year after you demobilized.

Insulation

A four-day window between rough-in inspection and board that nobody protects, half the contract sitting in material you staged weeks early, and firestopping everyone assumed was yours.

EIFS / Stucco / Plaster

A schedule set by cure time that nobody believes, a weather barrier you bury on day two and get blamed for in year three, and joints drawn by somebody else that crack on your wall.

Acoustical Ceilings (ACT)

Grid that cannot start until every trade above the ceiling is finished, tile that drops in the last three weeks of a two-year job, and a finished ceiling the whole building then uses as an access hatch.

Paving & Asphalt

Material with a clock on it and a crew on the clock whether you place or not, a subgrade somebody else owns, and six months of construction traffic on the binder course you have to warrant.

Tile & Stone

A finished floor installed on somebody else’s slab, to a flatness tolerance the concrete sub was never asked to hit, with waterproofing and movement joints that belong to nobody until the warranty call comes.

Millwork & Casework

Half your contract earned in your own shop before anything reaches the site, built to a drawing of walls somebody else framed, with the furnish-and-install line drawn in a meeting you were not in.

All trades

SubMark ships a setup pack for 29 commercial trades. See the full list.