Moving from project executive to vice president turns the job from advocating for your projects into ruling between them: which job gets the superintendent, which bids the firm chases, which project managers stay, and whose margin covers whose losses. You are ready when you can rule against a job you care about and say why.

When three project executives want the same superintendent next month, who decides? At a Dallas general contractor running, say, a hospital tower, a distribution center and a parking structure at once, the answer is the vice president of operations, and two of the three jobs will think the answer was wrong. Most project executives have lost that argument. Far fewer have had to settle it, and the seat above them is made almost entirely of settling it.

A project executive’s job sits inside a portfolio: a few jobs, a few owners, a team that answers to them. The vice president’s job sits in the gaps between portfolios, where people, backlog and bids are shared and nearly every decision helps one job by costing another. Being very good at the first does not train you for the second.

Who decides between projects once you are vice president?

You do, and the president expects the call made, not escalated. The vice president of operations allocates superintendents, project managers and project engineers across every job, decides which jobs get recovery help first, and answers for the operation’s total margin rather than for any one building.

Take the superintendent question as an illustration. The hospital’s project executive says MEP rough-in is running on every floor and the superintendent already knows the owner’s facilities team. The distribution center’s project executive says tilt-up panels start in four weeks. The parking structure’s project executive says nothing, because that job is quiet, and quiet jobs give up their superintendents unless somebody asks why they are quiet.

Each project executive is right about their own job. That is the trap: three correct local cases, one decision for the whole operation, and an explanation owed to the two who lost.

Moving one person also shifts a project manager’s load, an owner’s weekly meeting and a job’s general conditions. A project executive sees one of those. A vice president is paid to see all three, and superintendents are only the most visible call that moves up a level.

Which decisions move from the project executive to the vice president?

Five decisions move up, and the bonus follows them. The vice president decides who staffs which job, which bids the firm pursues, which project managers are hired or let go, how the operation’s profit and loss is run, and which owners are handled as programs rather than single contracts.

DecisionAs project executiveAs vice president
StaffingAsks for the people the job needsDecides which job goes without
Backlog and bidsSays what a pursuit would take to buildSays which pursuits the field can carry
Project managersCoaches the ones on their own jobsHires, promotes and removes them across the firm
Profit and lossAnswers for the margin on their jobsAnswers for the operation, including jobs they never ran
OwnersHolds the relationship for one contractHolds a repeat owner’s whole program
BonusUsually tied to their own projectsUsually tied to the operation or the company

The right-hand column is the silo problem stated plainly: every line weighs one job against another, on information from project executives who each, reasonably, argue their own case.

The owner line is easy to underrate. Picture an Atlanta healthcare system with three buildings in progress: it wants one person who can move a superintendent from its clinic to its tower when the tower is in trouble, and it calls that person before it calls any project executive.

The employer’s view shows what a contractor hands over with the seat, and a regional vice president carries estimating on top. Of the five decisions, bids are where a project executive’s instincts mislead most, because from inside one job a full backlog looks like safety.

Which bids does an operations leader turn down?

The ones the field cannot staff, whatever the estimate says. A vice president’s bid and no-bid input starts with people: which project executive, project manager and superintendent would run the job, what they would stop doing, and what a win would do to bonding capacity.

The market data explains why people come first. The Census Bureau’s spending release put private nonresidential construction spending at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $773.0 billion in August 2026, within a total of $2,203.1 billion that ran 1.7 percent below August 2025. BLS JOLTS counted 251,000 seasonally adjusted construction job openings in August 2026, against 213,000 a year earlier, and the CES survey put employment in construction of buildings at 1,873,400 in September 2026, up from 1,846,400.

When spending softens while openings climb, the constraint is rarely the next award. It is the next team. A project executive judges a pursuit by whether it can be won and built. A vice president judges it by what it does to everything already won.

Bonding says the same thing in the surety’s language. The Small Business Administration’s surety bond page lists the surety company’s credit, capacity and character requirements among its eligibility steps, and every award uses up capacity. On federal work, FAR 28.102-1 requires performance and payment bonds for any construction contract exceeding $150,000.

Before a pursuit goes forward, the operations seat asks:

  • Who runs it. Which project executive, project manager and superintendent, by name, and which current job loses time from each.
  • What it displaces. The next pursuit, or the owner promised the same team for its next building.
  • What it does to bonding. The surety reads the work-in-progress schedule, and a large award shrinks what is left.
  • Whether the margin pays for the team. A thin job that ties up the best superintendent costs more than its margin shows.
  • What a no costs. A repeat owner turned down once may not ask twice.

Every one of those answers lands in the same place, the operation’s profit and loss, and that is a number no project executive has had to sign.

How does the operations P&L change your bonus?

It moves the bonus from the jobs you ran to the operation you run. As a project executive, your bonus usually rides on your own jobs. As vice president, it rides on every job, including jobs run by project managers you inherited.

Picture an illustrative operation: eight commercial building jobs and $240 million of annual revenue, planned at a 6 percent margin, which is $14.4 million. One $40 million job fades three points. That is $1.2 million gone, the whole planned margin of a $20 million job elsewhere in the operation, lost on a building you visited once a month. The figures are our illustration, not a study.

The project executive on that job has a bad job. You have a bad year. You explain it to the president, perhaps to the surety and, if the bonus pays from a pool, to every project manager whose share just shrank for a building they never touched. Then you decide whether the project manager who lost it stays, knowing the project executive above them will argue that they should.

Pay data does not settle what the seat is worth, for a structural reason. The Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes no occupation called vice president of operations; depending on the duties, the seat is counted among construction managers, general and operations managers, or chief executives. Nationally, across all industries, construction managers earned a median of $114,990 in May 2025, with $88,550 at the 25th percentile and $151,640 at the 75th. The median for general and operations managers was $105,770, below the construction managers’ figure, a reminder that it spans every industry and every size of firm. Chief executives had a median of $213,990.

Annual pay in the BLS occupations nearest the seat Bar chart, Annual pay in the BLS occupations nearest the seat: Construction mgr 25th pct $88,550, Construction mgr median $114,990, Construction mgr 75th pct $151,640, General and ops mgr median $105,770, Chief executive median $213,990. Annual pay in the BLS occupations nearest the seat No BLS occupation is called vice president of operations. The nearest ones run from $88,550 to$213,990, so the operation's P&L, not a survey, sets the number. $0 $125,000 $250,000 $375,000 $500,000 Construction mgr 25th pct $88,550 Construction mgr median $114,990 Construction mgr 75th pct $151,640 General and ops mgr median $105,770 Chief executive median $213,990 Source: BLS OEWS, May 2025, national, all industries
No BLS occupation is called vice president of operations. The nearest ones run from $88,550 to $213,990, so the operation's P&L, not a survey, sets the number.

The BLS handbook profile of construction managers describes planning, budgeting and supervising projects; its top executives profile describes setting strategies and policies so an organization meets its goals. A vice president whose bonus still pays on a handful of named jobs holds the second title with the first incentive, and the incentive usually wins. Some project executives read that and feel relief rather than disappointment. They should listen to that relief.

Who should not chase the vice president seat?

A project executive who wants to be the best advocate for their jobs, rather than the judge between everyone’s, should think hard before chasing it. So should anyone at a contractor small enough that the president still assigns every superintendent: the title is available there, but the decisions are not.

Being the advocate is honorable work, and the project executive seat is a full career. The vice president’s chair turns advocacy into a conflict of interest: you cannot champion the hospital job and also judge whether it keeps its superintendent.

Two more situations fit badly. A project executive who has never run a job that lost money has not yet learned what a fade teaches, and that lesson is cheaper on one job than on eight. And someone chasing the title mainly for the pay should ask whether a project director seat, between the project executive and the P&L, already gives them what they want.

If none of that describes you, the useful question is whether you can start doing the work before anyone offers it.

How can a project executive rehearse the job before the title?

Take decisions that sit between projects before you are given them. Run the monthly staffing meeting, sit on bid reviews for jobs that are not yours, help hire a project manager for another team, and read the company’s injury log rather than only your own jobs’ incidents.

Hiring and firing is the decision many project executives have watched more often than made. The Department of Labor’s definition of an executive employee, in its overtime fact sheet, includes authority to hire or fire, or recommendations on hiring, firing and promotion that are given particular weight. That last phrase is the practice ground: ask for your recommendation on the next project manager hire to count, then live with the result.

Safety scales the same way. Many employers with more than 10 employees must keep OSHA injury records on forms 300, 300A and 301, and a vice president reads the pattern across those records rather than the incident on one job. OSHA’s recommended practices rest on seven core elements, and the first is management leadership. On one job, that means the project executive’s site walk. Across eight, it means deciding which job gets the safety manager’s week.

The staffing meeting is the best rehearsal of all. Volunteer to prepare it instead of attending as an advocate: every superintendent and project manager, where each one sits, when each frees up, and which pursuits need whom. Whoever prepares that list ends up proposing the answers, and whoever proposes the answers is already doing the vice president’s job.

So, back to the three project executives and the one superintendent. The answer was never which job argued best. It was which choice left the operation stronger next quarter, said out loud, with the reasons, to the two people who lost. If you can make that call against your own job and keep the trust of the project executive whose job won, the title is catching up with work you already do.

Vice president of operations seats are often filled before anyone outside the president’s office knows the seat is open, because announcing one tells every project executive in the firm, and every competitor, that operations is being rebuilt. We run these as confidential executive search for mandates that cannot be publicly posted, structurally different from a posted search rather than a quiet version of one. Before you accept the title, read the bonus plan that comes with it, and check whether it pays on the operation or on a list of jobs.

A few years from now, a project executive will stand in your doorway asking for a superintendent you have already promised to another job, and you will owe them an answer and a reason, not an apology.

Sources and further reading