Intel
Field notes from
the institutional bench.
Notes on how US construction firms hire preconstruction, cost and project management people, written for the person carrying the requisition.
Market Intelligence
Confidential construction search: what your team should never learn
Most confidential searches are not leaked by the recruiter. They are leaked internally, for good reasons, by people trying to be helpful.
Hiring
When a construction project executive should be replaced
The hardest replacement decision is the one everybody likes. Here are the signals that separate a bad year from a bad fit.
Market Intelligence
Why a construction leadership search fails: the brief nobody wrote
Failed leadership searches in construction almost never fail at sourcing. They fail at the beginning, in a conversation that did not happen.
Market Intelligence
Construction executive incentive compensation: what actually keeps a project manager
Most construction bonus plans pay for outcomes the recipient cannot control. That is why they retain nobody and cost a fortune.
Market Intelligence
The construction non-compete: what it costs your estimating and project management hiring
A non-compete you would never enforce still shapes who applies, what they cost, and how long the seat stays empty.
Market Intelligence
Construction project executive compensation: what the seat pays and what the bonus is quietly rewarding
Project executive pay is set by the scope carried, not the title. How base, bonus and vehicle are structured, and what most plans pay for by accident.
Market Intelligence
Construction project manager compensation: base, bonus and the backlog problem
Construction project manager compensation is a regional question with a structural trap: bonus plans tied to job margin quietly discourage bad news.
Market Intelligence
Construction workforce planning: reading bench depth against backlog
Your backlog is a leadership headcount forecast. Most contractors never read it that way until a job mobilizes without a leader.
Hiring
Design-build construction leadership hiring: why your best hard-bid estimator may struggle
Design-build moves the money decisions upstream into design. The estimator who wins hard-bid work is not automatically the one who wins this.
Market Intelligence
An ESOP transition exposes your bench: construction leadership hiring after the sale
An ESOP buys the founder out over years. It does not buy a second layer of leadership, and the repurchase obligation makes that gap expensive.
Market Intelligence
Family contractor succession: handing operations to the second generation
Family contractor succession usually fails at the operations handover, not the ownership transfer. The bench around the successor decides the outcome.
Hiring
The first 90 days of a construction project executive: where the hire is actually decided
A construction project executive who fails usually fails in the first quarter, and almost never for the reason the search was scoped around.
Hiring
Hiring a commercial interiors construction leader: the seat that runs forty jobs a year on someone else's floor
A commercial interiors leader runs dozens of short tenant improvement jobs inside occupied buildings. Most briefs hire a ground-up builder instead.
Market Intelligence
Hiring a construction buyout director: the seat that keeps or loses the GMP
The estimator sets the GMP. Somebody else decides whether you keep it. In most contractors that person does not have the job title or the authority.
Hiring
Hiring a construction CFO: the WIP schedule is the interview
A construction CFO who cannot defend the WIP schedule to a surety is a general finance hire in the wrong industry. Here is what the screen should test.
Hiring
Hiring a construction claims and change order manager: where the margin actually leaves
Most projects do not lose money on the estimate. They lose it in the change order position nobody was employed to defend.
Market Intelligence
Hiring a construction closeout leader: the last 2 percent that holds your retention
The job is substantially complete and the money is still outstanding. Closeout is a leadership seat, and almost nobody staffs it as one.
Hiring
Hiring a construction cost control manager: the seat that forecasts the job from documents while the cost is made on site
A cost control manager builds the forecast from what was written down, while the decisions that move the money are made on site by people who never notice.
Hiring
Hiring a construction division manager: the seat that owns preconstruction and operations at once
Promoting your best project executive into a division manager seat breaks two functions at once. Here is what the role actually requires.
Hiring
Hiring a construction estimating manager: the seat that runs the bid calendar and the estimating bench
An estimating manager decides which bids get the department's best hours and who grows into the next chief estimator. Most briefs hire a senior estimator.
Hiring
Hiring a construction prequalification leader: the seat your surety is already assessing
Your bonding capacity is partly a judgment about your people. Most contractors never hire against that fact, and pay for it at renewal.
Market Intelligence
Hiring a construction project controls leader: the seat that reconciles the field and the ledger
Buying better reporting software does not fix a project controls problem. The gap is between two teams running one job on different information.
Hiring
Hiring a construction project director: the seat between the project executive and the P&L
A project director runs several jobs through other people and answers for the number. Most briefs describe a bigger project manager. That is the wrong hire.
Market Intelligence
Hiring a construction risk manager: claims and dispute exposure on self-perform work
Verbal instruction is a risk transfer. A construction risk manager exists to stop it landing on you eighteen months later.