Intel · Cost control & commercial management
Cost control and commercial hiring.
Cost control is the discipline US contractors are thinnest in, largely because the vocabulary is unsettled: the same seat is a cost manager, a commercial manager or a quantity surveyor depending on who is writing the job description.
These notes cover what the seat owns after the handover from preconstruction, how to read a WIP schedule for the hiring signal in it, and why claims and change-order work is a distinct hire.
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40 articles
Hiring
Hiring a construction commercial director: one owner for cost, change and the final account
Estimating, operations and accounting each track cost on a building job. A construction commercial director owns it, through to the final account.
Hiring
Hiring a construction warranty manager: the cost that arrives after closing
Warranty cost lands after the margin is booked. The seat that turns callbacks into data for purchasing and the trades is a manager, not a desk.
Risk
When the project manager leaves during a construction claim
When the project manager resigns mid-claim, the paperwork stays and the witness goes. The departure steps that keep the claim provable, in order.
Careers
From project manager to construction claims consultant: the move to the other side of the dispute
What a project manager needs to become a construction claims consultant: the record, the written report, billable hours and the road back.
Hiring
Executive search fees in construction: what the percentage leaves out
Every search firm quotes its percentage. The payment trigger, the pay it applies to and the guarantee conditions decide what a search costs.
Careers
The construction scheduler career path: from updating P6 to running project controls
The stages from scheduler to director of project controls, the forensic and owner-side branches, and the skills that move a planner up.
Risk
A contractor emergency succession plan: the first thirty days after the owner is gone
When a contractor's owner dies, bank authority, the surety indemnity and the license qualifier stall first. The plan that keeps them working.
Careers
A quantity surveyor career in the US: which American job title is yours
The US has no quantity surveying profession by name. How a UK, Irish or Australian QS maps onto the American seats that pay for the same skill.
Hiring
Hiring an owner-side cost manager into a contractor
What transfers when a contractor hires a cost manager from the owner's side, what does not, and how to interview and onboard for the gap.
Careers
The construction employment agreement: what a senior hire should have in writing before resigning
Offer letter or agreement, severance and its triggers, bonus terms, covenants and repayment clauses: what a senior construction hire should get in writing.
Careers
Evaluating a construction equity offer: phantom stock, ESOP shares and the buy-in nobody explained
An equity offer from a private contractor can be shares, phantom units or an ESOP account. How to value each, and the questions to ask before signing.
Hiring
Hiring a construction controller: the WIP schedule, the surety and the first-year gap
A contractor's controller is judged by a WIP schedule the surety and the bank read first. Here is what the seat owns and what to test.
Careers
Signing a construction non-compete: what to read before the offer letter binds you
What a construction non-compete restricts, how state law changes the answer, and the terms an estimator or project manager can negotiate before signing.
Careers
Vetting a construction employer before you accept: backlog, bonding and who gets paid on time
The contractor checked your references. Here is how to check theirs: public records, backlog and bonding questions, and the calls worth making.
Risk
Hiring a construction project team from a competitor: what a lift-out buys and what it risks
Hiring an intact project team is the fastest way into a sector and the easiest way into a lawsuit. How to do it carefully, and when not to.
Hiring
Hiring a forensic schedule and delay analyst for a construction claims and dispute consultancy
A forensic delay analyst is hired for the report that survives cross-examination, not the one that looks best. How a consultancy should test for it.
Hiring
Hiring an affordable housing construction project executive: LIHTC deadlines, cost certification and delivery
On a tax credit deal a late building can cost the credits. What an affordable housing project executive carries that a market-rate builder does not.
Risk
When the contractor license qualifier leaves: the resignation that can stop the work
In many states a contractor's license rests on one named person. What happens when that person resigns, and how to keep it from stopping the work.
Hiring
What to Negotiate Into a Construction Recruiting Agreement Before You Sign
The clauses in a construction recruiting agreement that decide what happens when a hire leaves, a candidate applies twice, or the search stalls.
Market Intelligence
Subcontractor default risk: the exposure your hiring decisions quietly control
A subcontractor default is usually visible months before it happens. Whether anyone sees it is a staffing question.
Hiring
Hiring a construction commercial manager for a joint venture delivery team
Two firms, one project, one set of books. The commercial manager is the only person who works for the job rather than a partner.
Hiring
Hiring a construction contract administrator: the seat that proves what was agreed
Most change-order losses are not pricing failures. They are proof failures, and the contract administrator is the seat that prevents them.
Hiring
Hiring a construction equipment manager: the seat that decides whether you own or rent
A heavy civil contractor's second largest cost is usually its fleet, and in most firms nobody owns it end to end.
Hiring
Hiring a construction project accountant: the seat that finds the loss before the WIP does
A project accountant is the earliest place a bad job is visible. Most contractors staff the seat as data entry and then wonder why nobody saw it.
Hiring
Hiring a heavy civil construction CFO: the seat your surety reads before you do
A contractor CFO is not a corporate CFO with a hard hat. The WIP schedule is a forecast, and someone has to own it.
Hiring
Hiring a heavy civil cost engineer: the seat that knows the unit-price job is losing before the quantities are agreed
On unit-price heavy civil work the estimate stops being true at the first overrun. The cost engineer says by how much, and most firms leave the seat empty.
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
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.
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 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 cost consultant for an owner's representative practice: the seat that argues with the contractor's number
A cost consultant on an owner's rep practice defends the owner's budget against the contractor's estimate. Contractor estimators rarely switch cleanly.
Market Intelligence
Bonding capacity and bench depth: what your surety sees when a project executive leaves
A resignation letter is a personnel event to the contractor and an underwriting input to the surety. The two do not always reach the same conclusion.
Hiring
Is a construction recruiting fee based on base salary or total compensation?
Same percentage, same hire, thousands of dollars apart. The fee base is the clause nobody negotiates and everybody disputes.
Market Intelligence
Hiring a construction safety director before your surety asks about it
Your EMR is a hiring record. Sureties and brokers read the safety seat as an underwriting input long before it shows up as a claim.
Market Intelligence
What your WIP schedule says about whether you have a hiring problem
Fade, underbilling and stalled cost-to-complete revisions are read as accounting problems. Often they are the first written record of a leadership gap.
Market Intelligence
Preconstruction and cost control: what a cost control recruiter sees at the handover
The money does not leak in preconstruction or in cost control. It leaks in the handover between them, and no job title owns it.
Hiring
Quantity Surveyor Recruitment for US Contractors: Hiring the Cost Control Lead
US results for quantity surveyor recruitment are all job boards. How a US contractor actually hires cost control and commercial management leadership.
Hiring
What a construction search actually costs, and what you are paying for
Construction recruiters charge a share of the hire's pay. The share matters less than what it is attached to, and almost nobody explains the difference.
Other disciplines
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