Chief/Director of Estimating

About the role

The Chief of Estimating is a foundational leadership hire charged with building a centralized cost cell, mentoring a young and talented estimating team, and instilling the discipline and systems that will support the firm's next chapter of growth.

Responsibilities

• Centralized Estimating Leadership & Executive Partnership
  - Lead and centralize the estimating function as a single, defensible source of truth for cost intelligence, pricing accuracy, and budget development across all sectors and building types.
  - Partner directly with the Chief Executive Officer and operations leadership to align budgets with project strategy, providing clear cost reporting, win-rate analytics, and recommendations that support confident, profitable growth.

• Standards & Integrity

  • Set, standardize, and continuously improve estimating standards, tools, templates, and processes to ensure consistency, pricing integrity, and defensible opinions of cost across the organization.

• Cost, Not Preconstruction

  • Own the assembly of the number — quantity takeoffs, cost modeling, pricing, subcontractor analysis, bid leveling, and budget development — distinct from preconstruction, which remains embedded with the program managers in operations.

• Bidding Discipline, Win-Rate Growth & Subcontractor Analytics

  • Bid Less, Win More: Rebuild bidding discipline and improve win rate — pursuing a “bid less, win more” philosophy of fewer, better-chosen pursuits rather than volume for volume — moving the function toward a materially higher win rate over time.
  • Analytics Prize: Build subcontractor performance analytics — who bids, who is genuinely competitive, and who wins — to inform invite-to-bid strategy and sharpen the firm's trade-partner engagement.
  • Cost Tracking: Establish direct and indirect cost tracking tied to each estimate to strengthen accuracy, enable post-bid analysis, and connect estimates to actual project outcomes.
  • Post-Bid Discipline & Miss Detection: Run a true post-mortem on every pursuit — completing the analysis on a lost bid within roughly a week rather than letting ego or embarrassment close the book on it, and surfacing missed numbers on won work during buyout, within two to three months, rather than during construction when it is too late to recover — and capture what is learned so it strengthens future bids.

• Team Leadership, Mentorship & Governance

  • In-Seat Mentorship: Develop, mentor, and lead a team of estimators — senior estimators, estimators, conceptual estimators and cost planners, and cost-database analysts — providing in-seat coaching and a disciplined communication cadence.
  • Teach From First Principles: Teach estimators to calculate trade costs from first principles across steel, carpentry, MEP systems, and ductwork, growing the next generation of senior estimators and cost specialists.
  • Career Pathways: Provide career coaching to direct reports in support of the firm's career pathways, and develop and deliver estimating orientation and training that scales talent as the company grows.
  • Discipline & Cadence: Instill a culture of accuracy, discipline, and continuous improvement, establishing the communication cadence, reviews, and governance that make the centralized function reliable to operations — driving depth of estimate coverage rather than surface-level coverage.

Qualifications

• Minimum of fifteen years of progressive estimating experience in commercial and vertical construction, with roughly fifteen to twenty-plus years preferred and a profile in the vicinity of a proven best-athlete leader.

• Demonstrated leadership of a team of at least five true estimators running cost databases and estimating software rather than siloed spreadsheets.

• Estimating mastery across building types and trades — steel, carpentry, MEP systems, and ductwork — with the ability to render a defensible opinion of cost anywhere in the country.

• Proven ability to teach junior estimators to calculate trade costs from first principles rather than relaying subcontractor pricing.

• Hands-on experience across BOTH hard-bid work (public, federal, and municipal — including war-room bid days and large-business/small-business calculations) AND negotiated, owner-directed private work.

• Fluency in scalable, open-API, off-the-shelf estimating technology — takeoff, estimating, invite-to-bid, and cost-database platforms — and a track record of moving a team off siloed spreadsheets onto connected systems.

• Experience integrating estimating platforms with an ERP (for example, Sage Timberline/Estimating, on-screen takeoff, and invite-to-bid platforms).

Skills

• Master Communicator, High EQ & Empathetic In-Seat Mentor
• Deep, hands-on estimating mastery and the ability to render a defensible opinion of cost anywhere in the country
• Experience across both hard-bid and negotiated work
• Scalable estimating technology & systems architecture
• Disciplined win-rate track record, scale pedigree & cultural fit

Benefits

• Competitive and commensurate with experience (Director through Vice President level)
• The total-rewards package includes base salary, an annual performance bonus, and employee stock ownership (ESOP)

Pay

Competitive and commensurate with experience (Director through Vice President level).

Schedule

Periodic travel to regional offices and project pursuits as needed.