Five minutes of QuickBooks read-only and a few quick questions surfaces what a buyer would discount your excavation & site-work business for — how much of the bidding only you can do, how exposed you are to a few GCs and the development cycle, and the heavy-iron replacement bill and equipment debt they'll weigh. Preview is free; $499 for the full memo.
Enter two numbers for an instant Excavation ballpark. No signup — the real number comes from your books.
We answer each one from your books first — so you fix the story before a diligence team writes the number.
In most excavation shops the owner does the takeoffs, prices the dirt, and holds the GC and developer relationships. A buyer sees a job, not a transferable business — earthwork estimating and the relationships behind it are exactly what don't survive a handoff unless documented. A search-fund or SBA buyer discounts hard when the company can't bid without you.
Excavators, dozers, loaders, dump trucks, and skid steers are six- and seven-figure assets, and a buyer normalizes the replacement bill while also taking on any equipment-loan debt. Aging iron is a large assumed capex liability; a documented fleet schedule turns it into a financeable plan instead of a worst-case haircut.
Site work is project/bid revenue tied to a handful of GCs, developers, and municipal bids, and demand follows the development pipeline. A buyer prices the risk one relationship leaves and underwrites the next downturn, not the current backlog. Heavy single-customer concentration plus cyclicality pushes the multiple to the floor.
A buyer prices the risk your best machine operators leave at close, and the safety/insurance exposure of underground utility work (locates, strikes). Thin operator depth without retention agreements, or a poor safety record, lowers what they'll pay.
Each lever is sized for a typical $3m–$8m revenue excavation & site-work contractor — about $600K EBITDA. Same number whether we frame it as “what a buyer discounts” or “what you keep by fixing it.”
Documented master service agreements and preferred-sub status with multiple GCs, developers, and municipalities make revenue more durable than one-off bid wins — and a steady, diversified pipeline is what a buyer credits beyond a single year's backlog.
adds about 0.2–0.4× to your multiple · usually takes 12–24 months
Promote or hire a lead estimator and a superintendent, and put your earthwork takeoff and job-costing rules on paper. Moving the bidding and field oversight off your shoulders is the biggest lever to turn 'buying the owner' into 'buying a business.'
adds about 0.4–0.7× to your multiple · usually takes 12–24 months
A per-asset fleet schedule (so the heavy-iron capex and any equipment debt are a clear, financeable picture), a bonding-capacity view, and clean WIP/job-cost books let a buyer underwrite the business with confidence and protect the price.
adds about 0.2–0.4× to your multiple · usually takes 3–9 months
Typical impact ranges blended from lower-middle-market transaction data, sub-$50M M&A databases, and observed consolidator pricing in the $300K–$3M EBITDA band. Directional, not a guarantee — your memo computes your actual numbers from your books.
The metrics buyers grade excavation & site-work contractors on. The diagnostic fills the “your business” column from your actual QuickBooks data.
| Metric | Excavation benchmark | Your business | What it means |
|---|---|---|---|
| Recurring / contracted revenue | ~5% of revenue | Your data | Higher is better — the top multiple lever |
| Gross margin | ~23% | Your data | Pricing and job-costing discipline |
| EBITDA margin | ~13% | Your data | What flows to the bottom line |
| Healthy customer-concentration ceiling | top customer under 20% | Your data | Above it, buyers price the risk |
| Typical industry growth | ~4.5% / yr | Your data | Beating it can add to your multiple |
| Typical sale multiple | 3.0–6.0× EBITDA | Your data | Where the bidding starts; the levers above move you up |
Benchmarks are blended industry composites, service businesses $1M–$10M revenue, 2026-Q1 — directional, not a precise bar. Your memo measures you against your own books. Connect QuickBooks to fill in your numbers →
The diagnostic arrives as formats you can actually use, plus a private, scoped link to share a curated package with a specific buyer — you decide, card by card, what they see.
A branded slide deck, ready to present — for the buyer meeting, the lender, or the board.
A written diagnostic that holds up with buyers, yours to edit — plain-English summary, how we rebuilt your real earnings, every add-back listed.
Live formulas, not a dead printout — the path from raw profit to your real number, plus the cash-tied-up scenarios a buyer can stress-test.
Excavation and site work is a fragmented, equipment-intensive, cyclical trade. Buyers are mostly individuals and search funds using SBA financing for owner-operated shops, regional site and heavy-civil contractors buying for fleet and crews, and larger specialty-infrastructure players (e.g., Sterling Infrastructure) acquiring for scale and data-center/e-infrastructure site work. The ones who pay up want repeat-GC/developer relationships, a modern owned fleet, bonding capacity, skilled-operator retention, and clean WIP books. The memo maps which would actually look at a company your size and how each tends to structure the deal.
Read-only, through Intuit. We never write to your books. About 5 minutes.
Just what the books can’t show — agreements, key accounts, who runs the crews.
Buyer-readiness score, normalized EBITDA, value range and top flags — instantly.
The full engine, all three deliverables, the dashboard and the buyer deal room.
Start with the free preview. Pay once — $499 — only when you want the full memo. No subscription, no per-seat pricing.
Most Excavation businesses in the $1M–$10M revenue range trade at roughly 3.0× to 6.0× normalized EBITDA, with a typical deal near 4.0×. Smaller, owner-dependent shops sit at the low end; larger, manager-run businesses with recurring revenue reach the top. Your actual number depends on your books — that's what the diagnostic computes, blending recent lower-middle-market closings, main-street marketplace sales, and academic M&A survey data.
An excavation valuation begins where a buyer's QoE team begins: your reported earnings as the starting line. From there, the normalizing adjustments — owner add-backs, family wages, personal vehicles, one-time items — each tied to a specific QuickBooks transaction, producing your normalized EBITDA. Against that we apply a site-work multiple grounded in recent transactions, where the heavy equipment base often sets a practical floor. The factors that move it up or down: how much of the estimating only you can do, GC/developer and municipal concentration, the heavy-iron replacement capex and equipment debt a buyer will weigh, bonding capacity, and skilled-operator retention. Every figure traces back to your books — never a revenue rule-of-thumb.
Repeat-GC and developer master relationships beyond the owner, a modern owned fleet with low rental drag, transferable bonding capacity, retained skilled operators, and clean WIP/job-cost books. The diagnostic scores where you sit on each and shows what moving up would be worth.
Sixty seconds. Four numbers. No signup, no email. Just a real answer.