Ask for a construction raise before the firm sets next year’s salary budget and bonus pool, usually two to three months ahead of your review, and soon after a job closes well. Bring the revenue you carried and the margin you held, in dollars. Leave a competing offer out unless you would take it.
Your review is in January. The number that will be read to you there was approved in late October, in a budget meeting where your whole department was one line on a spreadsheet. By the time you sit down to make your case, the person across the desk has about a point of discretion and a prepared sentence about next year. A construction raise is won or lost roughly ten weeks before anyone asks how your year went. So the useful questions are when that meeting happens at your firm, and what is written beside your name when it does.
When is the right time to ask for a construction raise?
Before the budget is set, and soon after a job closes well. Many contractors fix salary budgets and bonus pools in the last quarter of their fiscal year. Ask eight to ten weeks ahead of that, while your number is still a variable in somebody’s draft.
Find the date first. Fiscal years do not all end in December, and the simplest way to learn yours is to ask your boss when the compensation budget goes in. Nobody minds the question. A firm with a written compensation philosophy will tell you the calendar outright. A firm without one will tell you by how it reacts to being asked.
Inside that window there are two good moments. One is closeout, when the final cost report shows margin held or gained. The other is the award of work you helped win. Both put a number in the building that has your name near it.
The bad moments are just as specific: the middle of a claim, the week a forecast moved the wrong way, and the review itself. An ask made out of exhaustion is another, because burnout calls for a change to the seat before a change in pay. The firm’s own outlook counts too. Associated Builders and Contractors publishes a monthly backlog indicator, and your firm has its own version of it. A raise request made while backlog is shrinking is heard as a cost. The same request after a strong award is heard as retention.
Timing gets you into the draft. It does not write the line.
What evidence supports a construction raise?
The fee and margin you carried, stated in dollars. Bring the revenue you ran, the margin at bid against the margin at closeout, and the change orders you recovered. Tenure, effort and the cost of living are all true, and none of them moves a person holding a budget.
Here is a worked example. A senior project manager in Houston earns a $150,000 base. Last year she ran $38 million of work that bid at a 4.0 percent margin and closed at 4.6. The 0.6 point difference is $228,000 of fee the estimate did not have. She does not claim all of it. She traces it to two recovered change orders and one buyout saving, and asks for $12,000 on her base and a bonus target in writing.
The request is about 5 cents on each dollar of margin she can account for. That is a different conversation from “I have been here six years.”
| Evidence | Why it works | What to avoid |
|---|---|---|
| Margin at closeout against bid | It is the firm’s own number | Claiming gains that came from a soft estimate |
| Revenue carried in the year | Shows your load beside your peers | Counting a job you joined at 80 percent complete |
| Repeat award from the same owner | Future fee with your name on it | ”The owner loves me” |
| People you trained | Shows you are working a level up | Headcount offered as an achievement |
| Market range for the seat | Sets the frame for the number | A screenshot from a salary website |
On that last row, use public data as a floor and not as your argument. The Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes national wage tables for construction managers and a Texas table by state, but one occupation code covers a wide spread of seats. A project manager running industrial work in Houston and one running tenant interiors in Charlotte share that code and little else. If you lead preconstruction, the gap is wider still, and our note on VP of preconstruction pay explains why no public survey reliably covers that seat. Our note on project manager compensation covers why base, bonus and backlog have to be read together. The same whole-package count is how to answer a question about salary expectations when a new firm asks it.
Your controller will check whatever you bring. Many contractor finance leaders belong to the CFMA and read margin benchmarks for firms their size, so a figure that does not tie to the cost report will be found before you leave the room. Use the cost report’s numbers, even where they flatter you less.
What should you ask for besides base salary?
Ask for the terms that cost the firm less this year than they are worth to you over three. Base is the hardest line to move because it compounds and it sets a precedent for your peers. Several other terms sit in different budgets, and some cost nothing until you perform.
- A written bonus target. If yours is a verbal understanding, getting it on paper may be worth more than the raise. Our guide to reading a bonus plan lists the clauses that decide whether it pays.
- The title or band. A move from project manager to senior project manager resets the range you are measured against next year.
- A six-month review. It turns “next year” into a date.
- The next assignment. The job you run next sets the evidence you bring next time.
- Vehicle, per diem or training. Small lines, different budgets, often approved by someone other than the person guarding salaries.
One item stays off the list. A competing offer you do not intend to take is a bluff with a short life. It works once, and afterward you are filed as a flight risk whether or not you were paid. If you have a real offer, treat it as a real decision, and read our piece on whether to accept a counteroffer before you mention it to anyone. Our note on comparing job offers sets out the five lines to weigh it on. If it carries a sign-on bonus, read the repayment terms first, because leaving inside the window can cost more than the bonus paid you.
What a “not now” should come with
A refusal worth accepting has four parts: a reason, a number, a date and a condition. “We cannot do $12,000 in this budget; we can do $6,000 in January, and the rest in July if the school job closes at or above its forecast.” You can plan around that.
“Not now” with none of the four is “no” said politely. Ask for the missing parts in the meeting, and confirm them in a two-line email that afternoon. Managers change and budgets get rewritten. A condition that lives only in one person’s memory leaves when that person does.
If the date arrives and the condition was met and nothing happens, you have learned what the firm will pay for the work you do. That is market information, and the firm gave it to you free.
Ask your boss one question this week: when does next year’s compensation budget go in? Everything above hangs off that date. If you want an outside read on what your seat pays in your metro before you name a number, ask on the candidates page. Selah Talent Partners does confidential executive search for mandates that cannot be publicly posted, for contractors across the United States. The hiring contractor pays the fee, and a candidate is never charged.
A raise is a line in a budget before it is a conversation, and that line gets written with or without your numbers beside it.
Sources and further reading
- Backlog indicator, Associated Builders and Contractors
- Wage tables, Bureau of Labor Statistics, construction managers (11-9021)
- Texas table, Bureau of Labor Statistics, state occupational employment and wages
- CFMA, Construction Financial Management Association