Senior Specialist, Florida Facilities

About the role

Success Academy is building a network of exceptional public schools in Florida. We are seeking a Senior Specialist, Florida Facilities to join our Renovations & Facilities team as the on-the-ground leader accountable for delivering and operating safe, compliant, instruction-ready school facilities across this growing portfolio of co-located district campuses. This role covers both sides of a new campus. It builds operating requirements into design and construction, leads the readiness and acceptance work that gets a campus open, and then owns ongoing facilities performance and the working relationship with each district partner. This role is ideal for someone who thrives in fast-moving, mission-driven environments, is comfortable moving between an active construction site and an occupied school, and wants to shape how a facilities operation is built rather than inherit one.

Responsibilities

• Represent facilities requirements during design review and construction coordination, reviewing plans and proposed systems for maintainability, reliability, life-safety compliance, service access, operating cost, resilience, and daily fit with the needs of scholars and school teams.
• Confirm that design and construction address wind loading, water intrusion, drainage, and power resilience appropriate to each site and to Florida conditions.
• Drive permitting, district approvals, inspections, accessibility, and fire and life-safety milestones through disciplined tracking and follow-through.
• Serve as Success Academy's on-site representative during construction, monitoring field progress, workmanship, safety, schedule, cost, submittals, and corrective work.
• Coordinate construction activity with host-campus operations so occupied areas stay safe and usable and site conditions remain controlled.
• Maintain credible budgets and schedules with commitments, contingency, forecast at completion, and variance, and require documented justification and approval before any change-order commitment.
• Build campus-specific readiness plans covering vendors, inspections, emergency procedures, utilities, spare parts, warranties, access, and facilities training.
• Lead commissioning, inspections, systems testing, punch-list management, occupancy approvals, and closeout, and confirm each campus is presented for operational acceptance with verified approvals, tested critical systems, and a documented open-items list with owners and dates.
• Own post-opening stabilization, driving defects, incomplete work, warranty claims, and contractor obligations to resolution.
• Own the working relationship with each host district's facilities organization, maintain a per-campus record of which party carries each obligation, and hold host partners to those obligations through documented requests, tracked response, and escalation.
• Own facilities performance in Success Academy space, including preventive and corrective maintenance, and manage the service providers Success Academy contracts with clear scopes, service levels, escalation paths, and performance expectations.
• Serve as the senior Florida facilities escalation point, participate in after-hours response, and establish hurricane preparedness, response, continuity, and recovery procedures coordinated with each host's plan.
• Build the repeatable playbooks for campus opening, turnover, inspection, maintenance, emergency response, and vendor management that later campuses will use.

Skills / Qualifications

• Seven or more years across facilities operations and renovation or construction delivery, with a demonstrated record in both.
• Direct experience bringing a new or substantially renovated facility from construction into stable operation, including commissioning and turnover.
• Experience delivering renovation or fit-out work inside an occupied building, under another party's approval process.
• Practical knowledge of core building systems, including HVAC, electrical, plumbing, controls, fire and life safety, security, accessibility, and envelope.
• Ability to read and challenge drawings, specifications, estimates, schedules, bids, and change orders.
• Command of project budgets, forecasting, procurement, change control, closeout, and warranty administration.
• Experience managing preventive and corrective maintenance