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.
Hiring
Onboarding a construction leader: the employer's first 100 days
The search ends at the offer. The hire succeeds or fails in the hundred days after it, and most of that is the employer's work, not the new leader's.
Hiring
Pay Transparency and Construction Salary Bands: What Contractors Post Now
Pay transparency laws force construction salary bands into public view. What a contractor should fix before the range goes into the posting.
Hiring
Hiring leadership for a private equity backed contractor
The sponsor wants reporting discipline. The field wants to build. The hire has to survive both, and most briefs only describe one.
Market Intelligence
Leadership Diligence: What a Private Equity Buyer Reads in Your Org Chart
How a private equity buyer runs leadership diligence on a contractor, and what the operations and preconstruction org chart tells them before you do.
Hiring
Replace or coach: deciding on a construction leader who is struggling
The decision to replace a struggling estimating or operations leader is usually made too late, for reasons that have nothing to do with the person.
Hiring
Retaining construction leaders after an acquisition
The retention agreement holds people for the term and tells you nothing about what happens the day after it ends.
Hiring
Span of control for a construction operations leader
The number of projects one operations leader can carry is not a headcount question. It is a decision about what you want them to actually do.
Market Intelligence
What a surety bonding agent looks for in construction leadership
Your underwriter has an opinion about your org chart. Most contractors never ask what it is until capacity tightens.
Hiring
What to expect from a construction search firm before the first interview
The weeks between signing with a search firm and meeting the first candidate are where a search is won or lost. Here is what should be happening.
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.