A construction vice president of operations owns delivery across every project executive, the field organization, margin fade, backlog conversion and the WIP conversation with the CFO and the surety. The seat exists so the owner can stop running operations. Most first hires fail because the owner did not stop. Hire someone who has held a P&L above their own portfolio, and give them the decisions on day one.
The first construction vice president of operations a contractor hires usually reports to someone who still does the job. The owner built the firm by running the work, hires the seat because the firm has outgrown one person, and then keeps making the operations decisions to see how the new hire does.
The hire cannot be judged on decisions they were not allowed to make. That is why the seat turns over, and it has nothing to do with the candidate.
What does a construction vice president of operations own?
Delivery, all of it. A construction vice president of operations owns the project executives and the portfolios they run, the general superintendent and the field organization, margin fade across the firm, the conversion of backlog into revenue on schedule, and the monthly WIP conversation with the CFO that the surety reads.
Set that beside the owner’s own job and the difference is that the seat was carved out of it.
A general contractor in Dallas at $250 million of annual revenue with $400 million of backlog has perhaps four project executives, fourteen project managers, a general superintendent, and a founder who has personally reviewed every job’s forecast for twenty years. The BLS operations manager tables price the seat generically; the construction manager profile describes the people it manages. Neither describes the transfer of authority that makes the seat real.
Four responsibilities carry that transfer.
- The project executives. Who runs which portfolio, who is developing, who is fading, and who has to go. The vice president of operations manages them as a bench, and the division manager piece sets out what that bench looks like when a firm splits by market.
- Margin fade. The gap between the margin at bid and the margin at closeout, tracked by job, by project executive and by cause. The CFMA benchmarks on fade are the number the seat is measured against, and the WIP schedule is where it shows first.
- Backlog conversion. Whether the $400 million of backlog turns into $250 million of revenue this year on the schedules the estimates assumed, which is a staffing question as much as a scheduling one. The workforce planning piece describes the arithmetic.
- The surety conversation. The SBA surety program and every private surety underwrite the firm partly on whether someone other than the owner can deliver the backlog. The vice president of operations is that someone, and the bonding capacity piece explains why the underwriter asks.
Where the firm also carries a chief operating officer, preconstruction sits there instead. The last of those is the reason the seat has to be real. A surety that sees an owner still making every operations decision has not seen a vice president of operations; it has seen a title.
Why does the first construction vice president of operations hire fail?
Because the owner hires the seat and keeps the job. The hire arrives, the project executives keep walking past them to the founder, the forecast reviews still happen in the founder’s office, and six months later the owner concludes the hire never took charge. The hire was never given anything to take charge of.
The failure is predictable enough to have a shape.
| What the owner says at the hire | What the owner does in month three |
|---|---|
| You own operations | Reviews every job forecast personally |
| The project executives report to you | Takes their calls directly, as always |
| Make the staffing calls | Moves a project manager between jobs without telling the hire |
| Run the WIP meeting | Sits in, and answers the CFO’s questions first |
| Tell me what you need | Decides what the hire needs |
| I want to step back | Steps back from the parts that were never the problem |
None of that is malice. The owner built the firm by making those decisions well, and stopping is harder than hiring. The replacing an operations leader piece describes the version where a seated leader is being replaced; this is the version where the seat is being created, and the person being replaced is the owner, who is still there.
The candidate side of the failure is the mirror image. A project executive promoted into the seat has usually never held a P&L above their own portfolio and keeps running the jobs they know. An outside hire from a larger contractor on the ENR list has run operations with three layers of staff below them and finds none of that here. Either way the owner reads the gap as the hire’s, and the JOLTS series shows how quickly a senior seat in construction turns over once that reading sets in.
What it costs is not the search fee.
What does one point of margin fade cost?
More than the seat, by an order of magnitude. On a $250 million contractor, one point of margin fade across the year is $2.5 million of gross profit the estimates assumed and the jobs did not deliver. A proven construction vice president of operations costs perhaps $350,000 in total compensation.
Put the two numbers beside each other and the question is not whether to hire the seat.
The illustrative figures are one year. The fade compounds, because the causes of it, a project executive who forecasts late, a superintendent bench that is two people short, a buyout that was never closed, are the things the seat is meant to see across the firm and the owner can only see one job at a time. The Census Bureau spending series shows the volume contractors are converting, and the AGC release on the 2025 workforce survey records that staffing, not demand, is the constraint on delivering it. A vice president of operations who reads the bench against the backlog is the person who tells the owner which of the $400 million the firm should not have won.
The OSHA construction record sits in the same seat, because the general superintendent reports there, and the ABC chapters in Texas and Georgia where the firm’s competitors meet are where the candidates for it already are.
Which changes what the owner has to do before the search starts.
What should the owner give up?
The operations decisions, on day one, in writing. Before a construction vice president of operations search starts, the owner should list the decisions the seat will own, tell the project executives those decisions now go to the hire, and set a date after which the owner stops reviewing job forecasts.
The list is the brief, and it is harder to write than the job description.
The owner usually wants to keep three things: the relationship with the two biggest clients, the final say on which work to bid, and the right to walk any job. The first two are legitimate and should be written down as the owner’s. The third is where the seat dies, because a founder who walks a job and tells the superintendent what to change has just overruled the vice president of operations in front of the field. The OEWS metropolitan tables price the seat in Atlanta and Dallas; the price is wasted if the authority does not come with it.
The owner also has to decide who the seat reports to when the owner is not the president. At a family contractor where the second generation holds the presidency, the family succession question and the vice president of operations question are the same question, and the DOL executive exemption tests on the salaried staff below are the least of the seat’s compliance concerns. The real one is whether two owners can agree on what the hire is allowed to decide.
Which is the search that cannot be posted.
Can this search be run publicly?
Almost never. A posting for a construction vice president of operations tells the project executives that one of them will not be promoted, tells the two biggest clients that the founder is stepping back before the founder has, and tells the surety and the bank that delivery leadership is changing mid-underwriting.
Selah Talent Partners runs these as confidential executive search for mandates that cannot be publicly posted, which is a different process from a discreet version of a posted search. The mechanics are set out in how a confidential construction search runs, and the confidential search process is built for a seat where the candidates are running operations at competitors and the firm’s own project executives are watching.
Selah works with contractors and construction consultancies across the United States on preconstruction and estimating, project and construction management, and cost and commercial management, in commercial building and heavy civil. Candidates are never charged a fee at any stage.
The search is not the right tool for a contractor at $40 million where the owner is the operations leader and should stay that way. There, the right hire is a second project executive. The confidential search earns its cost when the firm has outgrown one person’s span, the surety has started asking who else can deliver the backlog, and the owner has actually decided to answer.
Give the seat the decisions before the search starts
The instinct on this hire is to find someone strong enough to take the job from the owner.
Nobody can take it. The owner has to give it, in writing, to the project executives as much as to the hire, with a date on it. The candidates who have done the seat know that, and the first question the best of them ask is which decisions the owner is keeping. A firm with a clear answer gets a vice president of operations. A firm without one gets a year of the owner deciding whether to let go, and a second search.
Ask what the owner will stop doing on the hire’s first Monday, and whether the project executives have been told.
If you are scoping this seat and want to compare notes on the brief, get in touch.
Sources and further reading
- BLS operations manager wage tables
- BLS construction manager occupational profile
- BLS metropolitan area wage data by metro
- BLS JOLTS job openings and labor turnover
- SBA surety bond guarantee program
- CFMA construction financial benchmarks
- ENR top 400 contractor rankings
- Census Bureau construction spending
- AGC release 2025 workforce survey findings
- OSHA construction standards
- ABC Associated Builders and Contractors
- DOL executive exemption fact sheet