Built Environment Health Score
Six quick inputs, four real CPA metrics, and the break-even number most contractors, architects, and designers never calculate.
What industry are you in?
This tells us which benchmarks to score you against.
What's your annual revenue?
What are your total direct costs?
What's your total annual overhead?
What's your cash runway?
Backlog & Growth
Here's a sneak peek of your score
Enter your email below and we'll send your full personalized breakdown.
Benchmark tool built for the Built Environment
We built this score after enough conversations with California contractors, architects, and interior designers who all said some version of the same thing: the P&L looked fine, the bank balance looked fine, and the business was still quietly running out of room.
That gap isn’t about bad bookkeeping. Most of these owners already have a bookkeeper, a QuickBooks file, and a positive number at the bottom of their P&L. What they don’t have is an answer to the one question that actually matters: is that number actually healthy, given what’s normal for a business their size and their trade? A 4% net margin can look like a normal year to a contractor who’s never seen it stacked against what other California contractors are running. A business can look “fine” for years right up until it isn’t.
The Built Environment Health Score exists to close that specific gap: take the numbers already sitting in an owner’s books and translate them into the one thing a generic P&L can’t tell you, how healthy this business actually is, compared to businesses like it.
Why use this tool
In the built environment, problems don’t show up as one bad month — they show up as one underpriced job repeated on every job after it, one overhead number nobody’s revisited since last year, or one client payment that’s 60 days late while payroll is due Friday. By the time any of that shows up on a year-end financial statement, it’s already cost real money.
This tool exists to move that moment earlier. Instead of waiting for a bank meeting, a slow quarter, or a CPA conversation to surface a number you should have known months ago, you get it now — free, in about 60 seconds, benchmarked against businesses like yours instead of a generic small-business average.
It isn’t a substitute for a real financial review, and it isn’t trying to be. It’s the number that tells you whether you need one — and if you do, exactly which part of your business to start with.
Profitability
Know your net margin after direct costs and overhead, scored against the range that’s normal (and actually strong) for California contractors, architecture firms, or interior design studios.
Cash Runway
Spot how many months your current cash covers your average operating expenses
Backlog & Growth
Understand how much signed, contracted work you have queued up relative to your revenue.
Alongside your score, you get your break-even revenue. It’s the exact sales number your overhead requires before you keep a dollar of profit. It’s a number most owners have never calculated, because most bookkeeping software doesn’t surface it.
Who this is for
This tool is built specifically around California cost structures, labor burden, and market conditions — and works best for businesses in the roughly $2M–$20M annual revenue range, where the gap between “the books are done” and “the owner actually knows their numbers” tends to be widest.
The Built Environment Health Score is calibrated for:
- General contractors, plumbing, electrical, HVAC, and other trade contractors
- Architecture firms, from solo practitioners to multi-principal studios
- Interior design studios, including those reselling furniture, fixtures, and materials
How it works
The Built Environment Health Score runs as a short, guided set of questions — not a long form you fill out and submit blind.
01
Pick your industry. Construction, architecture, or interior design — every question and benchmark that follows is scored against that specific peer group, not a generic small-business average.
02
Answer 6 financial questions. Each field includes a plain-language explanation of what counts and what doesn’t, so you’re not guessing at accounting definitions mid-quiz.
03
See your score and break-even revenue. Once every field is filled in, your full score, tier (Healthy / Watch / At-Risk), and break-even revenue calculate instantly and show on-screen.
04
Unlock the full written breakdown. Enter your name and email to get a category-by-category write-up of what’s working, what needs attention, and specific next steps, sent straight to your inbox.
The tool takes about 60 seconds if your numbers are close at hand. If you don’t know a figure exactly, a close estimate is fine — the score is directional, meant to point you toward a real conversation, not to replace your actual financial statements.
Key Terms, Explained
You don’t need an accounting background to use this tool. A few terms come up more than once in the questions and in your results, so here’s what they actually mean — the same plain-language version we’d use walking through your numbers on a call.
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Term
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Definition
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Direct Costs (COGS)
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The costs tied directly to the work itself, not to running the business day-to-day. The exact label changes by industry: for contractors it's materials, subcontractors, and field labor on a job; for architects it's wages and benefits for staff who bill time to a project; for interior designers it's the wholesale cost of furniture and materials plus direct design labor.
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Overhead
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Everything you pay whether or not you're actively working a job — insurance, rent, software, admin payroll, trucks. This is the cost your margin has to cover before any of it becomes profit.
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Gross Margin
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Revenue minus direct costs, shown as a percentage of revenue. It's your margin on the work itself, before overhead is subtracted.
Formula: (Revenue − Direct Costs) ÷ Revenue × 100 |
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Net Margin
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What's left after direct costs and overhead are both subtracted from revenue. This is the real, bottom-line profit percentage — and what the Profitability subscore is built around.
Formula: (Revenue − Direct Costs − Overhead) ÷ Revenue × 100 |
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Break-Even Revenue
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The exact amount of revenue needed to cover your overhead, calculated as overhead ÷ gross margin. Anything you earn above it is profit; anything below it means the shortfall is coming from somewhere else — savings, a credit line, or a slow bleed you haven't noticed yet.
Formula: Overhead ÷ Gross Margin % |
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Cash Runway
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How many months your current cash in the bank would cover your typical monthly expenses if revenue stopped tomorrow. This measures liquidity, not profitability — a business can be profitable on paper and still run out of cash.
Formula: Cash in Bank ÷ Average Monthly Expenses |
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Signed Backlog
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The total value of work or projects you're contracted for but haven't finished or invoiced yet. It's your visibility into the next several months of revenue, whether or not you've ever written it down as one number.
Formula (months of backlog): Signed Backlog ÷ (Annual Revenue ÷ 12) |
Where the benchmarks come from
Construction and architecture benchmarks are drawn from Basta & Company’s own work with California built-environment clients, corroborated against published industry data rather than invented from scratch.
What is a Built Environment Health Score?
It’s a free, instant financial health score (0–100) for California contractors, architects, and interior design studios, built from your revenue, direct costs, overhead, cash position, and signed backlog, benchmarked against your specific industry.
What is break-even revenue and how is it calculated?
Break-even revenue is your total overhead divided by your gross margin percentage — it’s the sales volume your current cost structure requires before any revenue becomes profit, regardless of whether you’ve ever calculated it.
What's the difference between gross margin and net margin?
Gross margin is revenue minus direct job or project costs; net margin is what’s left after overhead is subtracted too — gross margin can look healthy while net margin is thin or negative if overhead is high.
What counts as overhead for a contractor, architect, or design studio?
Overhead is everything paid whether or not you’re actively working a job — insurance, rent, software, admin payroll, and trucks — as opposed to direct costs, which are tied to a specific job or project.
How do we get started with Basta & Company?
Fill out our contact form to share your business details and biggest financial challenges. We’ll review everything, and if it looks like a good fit, we’ll invite you for a call to dive deeper. No obligation.
Frequently Asked Questions
Still Have A Question ?
We’re here to help. Reach out to our team and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible.
Sounds like a fit? Let's talk.
Basta & Company guides San Francisco businesses through every financial milestone — from business structure and accounting systems to tax strategy and scaling with confidence.
