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For waterproofing, sealant & below-grade subcontractors

Waterproofing contractor software — prove it was right before it was buried.

Your work disappears. The membrane goes on, protection board goes over it, and within a week there is backfill, a topping slab or pavers on top of it. From that day until the warranty runs out, every drop of water in that building is your phone call — including water that came through somebody else’s flashing, or a penetration somebody drilled through your deck a year after you demobilized. The only defense that has ever worked is a dated, photographed record of what the substrate looked like, what you installed, what the conditions were and when the test passed. SubMark holds that record, and keeps the prep you were never bid out of your own pocket. One system, office to field — and the field is free.

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  • Every area photographed and dated before it is covered up
  • Flood tests, retests and conditions on the day’s log
  • Substrate prep you did not bid raised as a change the morning you find it

What actually goes wrong on a waterproofing job.

You get one chance to document it, and it is the day before cover-up.

Once there is backfill against the wall or a topping slab over the deck, nobody can see your work again — not you, not the GC, not the forensic consultant the owner hires in year four. The whole quality argument for your trade lives or dies on photographs taken in a window of a few days. A photo in a foreman’s camera roll is not that record: it has no job on it, no area, no date anyone will accept, and it leaves the company the day he does.

The substrate is somebody else’s work, and you are told to proceed anyway.

Honeycomb, tie holes, laitance, green concrete that has not cured, a deck that was never sloped to drain. Your options are to stop — and own the schedule conversation — or fix it for nothing and quietly lose the hours. The third option is the one that works: a dated change event with photos the morning you find it, and a T&M tag for the grinding and patching, priced off your rate list and signed on site before you touch it.

The pack gives prep and detailing fifteen percent of the contract. The field gives it no limit.

The pack starts prep and detail at 15% of contract value, and that is the line that decides whether a waterproofing job makes money. Corners, terminations, penetrations, reinforcing at cracks and control joints — it is slow hand work on a substrate you did not build. If it is folded into the install line in your schedule of values and into one bucket in your costs, the install rate you bid off last year is a number that never existed.

Every leak is at a transition you share with another trade.

Membrane rarely fails in the middle of a wall. It fails where your work ends and somebody else’s begins: into the roofing, into a curtain wall sill, at a slab joint, around a plumbing penetration, at a door threshold. The pack asks you to settle those termination and transition details with the adjacent trades before you start, because they are agreed in a meeting and then remembered three different ways — unless the agreement is written down with a date on it.

A flood test is a pass-or-fail day, and nobody budgets the retest.

Fill, hold for a day or two, have it witnessed, drain. If it fails you hunt the leak, repair it and test again, and the second test is labor, standby and a schedule hit nobody priced. Then another trade cores the deck two weeks after a passing test, and without a dated record of the test that passed, that leak is yours too.

Your last money is caulk, long after everyone forgot you were here.

Exterior joint sealants and the punch come at closeout, months and sometimes a year after the membrane was buried. It is a small share of the contract that holds the final draw and the retainage on work you finished a long time ago — and it is the scope most likely to be rescheduled four times, because it needs weather and access nobody is protecting for you.

Before you mobilize

The 4 things waterproofing 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 waterproofing subs ask them.

  • Confirm the approved system, details and warranty requirements
  • Confirm substrate condition, cure time and who prepares it
  • Confirm the termination, flashing and transition details with the adjacent trades
  • Confirm the testing, inspection and protection required before cover-up

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 waterproofing 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 waterproofing job, substrate to flood test to sealants.

You are on and off a commercial job more than almost anybody — footings, walls, decks, plaza, then sealants at the very end — and every trip restarts the same argument about whether the substrate is ready. This is how the work runs, and what carries each stage in SubMark; the pack’s own phase list is below.

  1. 01 Bid & estimate

    Takeoff off the architectural and structural sheets: square feet of horizontal and vertical, linear feet of joint and detail, the system the spec names, and the warranty it demands.

    Bid Board, Plans & Drawings with deep zoom, Takeoff, Estimating & Proposals

  2. 02 Submittals & warranty

    Approved system and manufacturer details, mock-ups, the installer certification the warranty depends on, and the testing the spec requires before cover-up.

    Submittals with a material library, cover sheets and merged PDF export

  3. 03 Substrate review

    Cure time and moisture, honeycomb and tie holes, slope to drain, and the question the pack asks you first — who prepares it.

    Daily Labor Logs with photos as the dated record, Change Events for prep you did not bid, Pre-Construction Review — a switch in Settings, carrying the pack’s own four items

  4. 04 Surface prep

    Grinding, patching, filling tie holes, priming, cove fillets and crack treatment, usually on a schedule that assumed none of it was needed.

    T&M Tags priced off your rate lists and signed on site, Daily Labor Logs

  5. 05 Detailing

    Corners, terminations, penetrations and reinforcing fabric at joints and cracks — the slow work, and the work that decides whether the system performs.

    Daily Labor Logs with each work area and its phase, Plans & Drawings with markups and pins

  6. 06 Membrane install

    Sheet or liquid applied inside the manufacturer’s temperature, moisture and dew-point limits, which is why the weather on the day is part of the job record.

    Daily Labor Logs with weather and temperature, Crew Scheduling, Time Clock & Labor Logs feeding Job Costing

  7. 07 Flashing & terminations

    Termination bar, counterflashing and the transitions into roofing, glazing and whatever else lands on your membrane.

    Change Events for the interface that was never ready, Daily Labor Logs with photos

  8. 08 Protection board & cover-up

    Drainage mat and protection board installed, then photographs of every area before backfill, topping slab or pavers close it forever.

    Daily Labor Logs with photos as the dated record of each area, Schedule of Values & Draw Log

  9. 09 Flood test

    Fill, hold, witness, drain — and when it fails, find it, repair it and test it again.

    Daily Labor Logs as the dated record of each test attempt, T&M Tags for the retest

  10. 10 Sealants, punch & closeout

    Exterior joint sealants and backer rod, punch, the warranty and manufacturer package, then the retainage chase.

    Submittals for the warranties, Lien Waiver Tracking, Schedule of Values & Draw Log for the final draws

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 7 phases load with the Waterproofing 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 Surface Prep
  2. 02 Detailing
  3. 03 Membrane Install
  4. 04 Flashing
  5. 05 Protection Board
  6. 06 Flood Test
  7. 07 Punch

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

A waterproofing schedule of values with prep and testing on their own lines.

The waterproofing pack opens the builder at material 35%, prep and detail 15%, install 40%, test and punch 10%. That 15% is a line many waterproofing contracts fold into install, and it is the one that decides the job: prep and detailing is hand work on a substrate somebody else poured, and it is where your hours actually go. These are the kinds of lines a commercial waterproofing schedule of values usually needs:

In the pack

Open the SOV builder on a new job and these 4 lines are already in it.

  • Material 35%
  • Prep / Detail 15%
  • Install 40%
  • Test / Punch 10%
Of contract value 100%

What most commercial waterproofing subs add

  • 01 Submittals, mock-up & warranty registration earned before any material ships
  • 02 Material — sheet & liquid membrane stored-material line
  • 03 Material — sealant, backer rod & accessories stored-material line
  • 04 Surface preparation — below grade
  • 05 Crack treatment, cove fillets & detailing the line that gets folded into install
  • 06 Below-grade membrane — footings & walls
  • 07 Under-slab vapor barrier
  • 08 Plaza & amenity deck membrane
  • 09 Planter & water-feature waterproofing
  • 10 Parking deck traffic coating
  • 11 Flashing & terminations
  • 12 Protection board & drainage mat
  • 13 Expansion joint systems
  • 14 Exterior joint sealants earned at closeout, not with the membrane
  • 15 Flood testing & retests retests are labor you will otherwise eat
  • 16 Punch, warranty package & closeout

Three things worth arguing for before the contract is signed. Keep prep and detailing as its own line rather than a percentage of install, because that is the scope that grows in the field and you cannot bill growth on a line whose value is already fixed by install progress. Price flood testing and retests separately, including the standby — a retest is a day of labor caused by a repair, and a contract that treats testing as incidental to install means you perform it for free. And carry exterior sealants as their own line, because they are earned at closeout: bundled into install, a caulk scope that cannot start until next spring holds a percentage you earned a year ago.

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.

A below-grade crew, a deck crew and two sealant mechanics across three jobs, with a flood test booked for Thursday on one of them. SubMark schedules every worker in one calendar and flags the double-booking before a crew 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, waterproofing 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 Waterproofing at setup and SubMark loads the waterproofing pack: the phase list your foremen pick from — Surface Prep, Detailing, Membrane Install, Flashing, Protection Board, Flood Test and Punch; work types for below-grade, deck and plaza, sealants and flashing; worker types for Foreman, Mechanic and Helper; a material list built around sheet and liquid membrane, sealant, backer rod, protection board, drainage mat, flashing and primer; project statuses that run Pre-Construction, Install, Test, Punch, Complete; flood test and punch as the two passes, because the test is the event your trade is judged on; and a schedule-of-values breakdown weighted material, prep and detail, install, and test and punch. The pack also writes four pre-construction review items in your trade’s terms: the approved system, details and warranty requirements; substrate condition, cure time and who prepares it; the termination, flashing and transition details with the adjacent trades; and the testing, inspection and protection required before cover-up — 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, Mechanic and Helper — on every worker record and on every daily labor log. The only thing left to enter is your own rates.

Questions

Waterproofing subcontractors ask us these.

How do we prove the work was right before it got covered?

With a daily log per area, made on the day, carrying photos, the crew who was on it, the weather and temperature, and a written note of what was installed and where. Uploads are images only — no PDFs, no video — and they live on the log, filed under the job and the date, so a photograph taken eleven months ago is findable by somebody who was not there. That is the whole mechanism, and for your trade it is the most valuable thing in the product.

Can we document a substrate we did not accept?

Yes, and it is the same path your best PM already uses on paper. A change event raised the morning the crew finds it, with photos, the location and what it will take to correct, then either a T&M tag priced off your own rate lists and e-signed by the superintendent on site, or a priced change request if the GC wants it that way. Several T&M tags can convert into one change order later, so a month of grinding does not become a month of separate arguments. What SubMark will not do is make the concrete sub agree it was his.

Does it record the flood test?

As a dated record, not as a testing module. The pack ships flood test and punch as its two passes, and the test goes on that day’s log — who witnessed it, how long it held, what the result was, with photos. A failed test and the retest two days later are two dated records with the repair in between, which is exactly the sequence a warranty conversation needs. The honest limits: nothing ties a draw to a test result, and there is no inspection module or deficiency item list.

Can we keep prep hours separate from install hours?

Not as hours. The daily log records hours per worker, and each work area on it carries its phase and percent complete, so you can see where prep, detailing and membrane install stood that day. 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; it does not split labor by phase for this trade. The practical approach for a waterproofer is to carry prep as its own budget line, or a large plaza deck as its own job, so prep hours and install hours never land in the same bucket.

Does the weather get recorded with the work?

Yes. Every day’s log carries the weather and temperature along with the work summary, the hours per worker and the photos, plus a delay with its cause from a fixed list — weather, material, labor, access, GC direction, inspection or other. For a trade installing systems with published temperature, moisture and dew-point limits, that daily condition record is what a manufacturer’s warranty claim gets read against, and it is almost impossible to reconstruct afterwards.

What about damage after we are off the deck?

A change event with photos the day you are called back, and a T&M tag for the repair signed on site. The thing that makes it stick is the record that already exists: a dated passing flood test, plus photographs of the area as you left it. That is the difference between a repair you get paid for and a warranty call you absorb. SubMark holds both; it does not assign blame for you.

Can we bill sealants and punch without holding the rest?

That is a schedule-of-values question, and the answer is yes if the lines exist. Carry exterior sealants, flood testing and the punch and closeout package as separate lines, and bill each as it is earned — the approved change orders you pick up along the way are added to the SOV automatically. SubMark tracks what you billed on each line, what was certified, what retainage is held against it, and when the money arrived, across every GC you work for.

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 — prep and detailing separated from install, testing priced on its own, sealants carried to closeout — and where every draw you submit is logged against it. 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 membrane, sealant and protection board invoices sit against the job they went into. 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.

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 a waterproofing job.

Start the trial, confirm waterproofing 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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$249/mo for your company, your first 3 office users included, $39/mo each after that. Field crews are free and unlimited. See what's included →

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.

Excavation & Sitework

The only schedule of values on this site that opens without a single line for product you buy: your contract is production, billed against quantities somebody else surveyed.

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.