Director, Capital Estimating - Real Estate

About the role

The Director, Capital Estimating owns Gap Inc.’s enterprise estimating function across four brands — Gap, Old Navy, Banana Republic, and Athleta — and six store formats, with direct accountability for the accuracy and integrity of a $250M+ annual capital budget.

Responsibilities

• Deliver milestone-appropriate estimates (Conceptual through GMP) across all four brands and six formats, with clear scope basis, assumptions, and confidence levels.
• Maintain format-specific cost templates and benchmarks that enable rapid, consistent budget development at each RE approval stage.
• In partnership with the RE Finance team, quantify the IRR impact of capital cost assumptions and risk so Real Estate and Finance can make fully informed investment decisions.
• Own the monthly Estimated Final Cost (EFC) process — translating job cost data, change orders, and vendor actuals into a reliable portfolio-level forecast for Finance and senior leadership.
• Provide scenario modeling and sensitivity analysis to flag overrun risk and support proactive capital reallocation.
• Track commitments, actuals, and projected spend across the $250M+ portfolio; enforce change order and contingency protocols; produce monthly performance reports with clear variance explanations.
• Set and maintain annual cost-per-square-foot targets by brand, format, and project type; publish updates as market conditions shift.
• Lead value engineering early in design — identifying cost alternatives when scope decisions can still be meaningfully influenced.
• Benchmark Gap Inc.’s costs against industry indices and retail peers; deliver quarterly market intelligence to inform capital planning assumptions and investment strategy.
• Conduct formal RCA on all projects with final cost variance greater than 5% versus approved budget — categorize root causes, present findings to senior leadership, and ensure learnings feed future estimates.
• Elevate cost overruns to senior leadership and escalate them consistently and on time through the appropriate approval chain; evaluate GC bids that exceed budget, identify project-level cost levers to offset overages, and make a clear recommendation for leadership approval.
• Lead development and adoption of AI/ML tools to generate parametric estimates from historical project data, with defined confidence intervals.
• Build an estimating interface that allows project managers to input site- and deal-specific parameters to generate a recommended starting budget — reducing manual effort and improving early-stage consistency across the portfolio.
• Direct multiple outsourced estimating firms — allocating project load, setting quality standards and turnaround expectations, and maintaining performance accountability across all brands and formats.

Qualifications

• 12+ years in capital estimating, cost engineering, or construction management; multi-brand retail environment strongly preferred.
• Demonstrated track record managing a large capital portfolio ($150M+) with measurable accuracy and EFC outcomes.
• Experience connecting project budgets to deal IRR and investment return analysis.
• Background in RCA on capital variances and translating findings into systemic process improvements.
• Proficiency in estimating software (Sage Estimating, WinEst, DESTINI, or equivalent) and cost databases (RSMeans, Gordian, or equivalent); advanced Excel and Power BI.
• Familiarity with AI/ML concepts and demonstrated interest in applying emerging technologies to cost estimation and capital management.
• Working knowledge of retail construction delivery methods (design-bid-build, CM at-risk, negotiated GMP).

Skills

• Translates cost data into clear, executive-ready narratives that drive decisions; confident and credible presenter to senior and executive leadership.
• Experienced director of outsourced professional services firms — sets expectations, holds partners accountable, and maintains quality across a distributed network.
• Effective without direct reports: influences through expertise, analytical rigor, and cross-functional relationships.

Pay

$182,000.00 - $236,600.00

Schedule

Full time