CHIEF ESTIMATOR: PREMIER ELECTRICAL DESIGN AND BUILD

We are a half billion dollar class private company performing specialty electrical facilities designer build work and we need a chief estimator. The skinny is that you are a career professional electrical construction estimator with skills that are a blend of those of a deeply experienced large facilities electrical estimator, a strong business strategist, a genuine manager and a very astute politician.


DOING THE JOB

You will be leading the estimating department tasked. We have performed the electrical construction on everything from major wastewater treatment facilities to huge university campus expansions. The requirements lean more towards large commercial and institutional facilities, but many of these buildings are critical facilities and have robust generation, large automated transfer facilities, medium voltage service entrances, spot networks, transformer networks and extensive distribution.

Simply put: Review prospective work with preconstruction and help to make business decisions about what to bring through the department. Make a technical assessment of the drawings and determine the solidity of the design. The sources can be our in house engineering or may be consulting engineers and plans and specifications. Develop the logical breakdowns of the job (buildings, drawings, floors, systems) Take off the work (the chief divides responsibilities with lead estimators who build teams with junior staff) and establish the basic distances and counts, BOMs and then all the details of access, density, elevation and specialty work such as core drilling or cutting required. Account for rental needs, any site work, coordination issues or things that might impact access to the job and schedule. Look at OT, diminishing productivity and everything that changes the cost of installing panels, conduit, pulling and terminating wire/cable. The chief will actually participate in complex projects at the take-off level assisting the staff. Develop manpower/labor units and bill of materials for the take off. Attends meetings with GCs, agencies and owners. Collect and catalog input from any and every source and make sure that input is put into hard records and meticulously coordinated with the estimate in every way. Miss nothing. No letter, no comment, no email …. Nothing. Review for errors, omissions, design integrity and possible alternatives. Value engineering process.


BEING AN EXPERTYou must have a strong code knowledge base an the discipline to stay up to date.You stay current on materials and emerging products that can improve productivity, reliability, lower cost or whatever the specific goals of the project might be. You must build a relationship network and know the vendors, the GCs, the estimators in those GCs. The important players you must know well enough to personalize your approach.


MANAGEMENT OF THE DEPARTMENTYou will be carrying the most technical load while being able to get work done through others. You will assign teams You will set up critical path schedules and staff-load those schedules. You will track and review work You will keep the process moving and insure throughput You will mentor less experienced staff You will manage the professional conduct in the department. You will provide an ear, advice and discipline when necessary. Department morale and reason in conduct are things you will maintain. You responsibility is smooth function, production and satisfied staff.You will upgrade the quality of the files, make sure assemblies and templates are added/updated and set performance standards for the group.You will review the work of the estimating department for quality, completeness. You will assure that the standard operational procedures that make the whole system work are adhered to. You will make sure files are clean, organized and up to date. The chief estimator and lead estimators are responsible for the administrative and job file control systems and the maintenance of the network. We would like standardized job files and would like to elevate the craftsmanship and discipline to the level that eliminates the needs for flags, highlighters and sticky notes hanging in every direction. Archival quality suggests files that others can come back to and interpret correctly in a standard way. We are good but not where we want to be in this regard. We use McCormick at this point. If you have been successful using a computer assisted estimating program, with some effort, you can master any of them.You will make sure that the network is maintained and the database entries, templates and etc. are built and updated.You will conduct operational reviews to collect construction circumstances input and insights. Getting operational buy in is always a plus and an insurance policy for overall success. You will help identify and assess risks in the job, and help decide how aggressively to pursue specific work.You will be a major contributor to decision regarding an approach strategy. A great chief gets to know the local competition and their strengths and even their backlogs and present levels of commitment taking that into consideration when putting the number on a job. A good chief knows the state of relationships between client and company and the degree to which design assist and intelligent alternatives may be sold after the award. Staffing and professional development are part of leadership responsibilities.


OTHER RESPONSIBILITIES

We all sell. The preconstruction folks are probably the front line, but we employ no formal sales force. The project managers sell. Division managers sell. Every successful executive sells. We are not talking about cold shoe leather salesmanship or banging the phones. We have been around for well more than half a century. We are well known and equally well respected. The issue is really expanding relationships, building friendships, and finding out what is available to us from those channels.

We try to be easy to work with, so much so that not calling us would seem foolish. This takes a personality and a willingness to humbly reach out to other folks. We offer no apologies asking for our staff to reach out to accommodate and support the clients: it is THE key to career success. We have assembled a very talented team of nice people with natural personal and professional consideration as inherent parts of their respective personalities and that will make it pleasant for you to work with us.

THE COMPANY

We are a large shop well in excess of 300 million in annual sales. Big is not necessarily good, but in our case you will have opportunity to work on projects you simply cannot find elsewhere. Because we engineer, build and commission, we make solid money on our projects and we share it. You know a bit about our interpersonal philosophy from the job description. We are a nice place to work. So, big, in our case, maps to cash positive, people positive, big opportunity, bleeding edge jobs and excitement in general.

Profitable for more than a half-century, operating with cash reserves and unlimited bonding, we have the work and are positioned to do it. We have historic capabilities from genuine high voltage distribution through systems integration for communications, A/V and security. We have a very diverse client base including heavy federal work, local government, state government and the full spectrum of commercial and industrial constructions including specialties like traffic and transit on the public works side. We have a well-trained and stable work force. We have developed strong training programs for the field and professional development. We utilize very tight computer controls for estimating and project management, including a full quantitative reporting system for electrical construction, and field financial accountants to support our project managers for larger projects. Our company is designed around growth, and is strategically positioned to do it moving forward. We have bricks and mortar locations all the way down the Eastern Seaboard.

DIFFERENTIATION

Internal engineering resources (P.E. EE, EE, RCDD/NTS, Cisco certified network engineers at all levels, heavy IT folks) exceed in numbers and quality present in most of the local, dedicated engineering companies. Large specialty departments are part of our offerings and those specialties include communications, integrated electronic security, A/V and a range of power specialties including very sophistical critical power design / build capabilities. Complete functional groups with very high-level security clearances for federal specialties are on hand. Our present contractual backlog exceeds half a billion dollars.

It is reasonable to call us business model pioneers. We sell our services in more unique ways than anybody in the business. There is every engagement model you have seen to date plus work taken from a mission basis, where we take a clients desire to do a job and define the process, workflow and the entire facility. We go as far as to pick out the furniture for specialized tasks. We have been successful in part because we have been business innovators.

THE COMPANY CULTURE:

We provide the clients stronger technical acumen, a one stop shop and very efficient field performance. We are looking for people who build their own personal “practices” by providing service excellence and “no headaches” interface for their clients. Clients for the Chief Estimator are internal, external and even supply line.

We are looking to you for passionate and inspired leadership, high energy and the desire to build a high morale team that still allows for individual achievement and recognition. As Chief Estimator you will interface routinely with the managers that lead and control the entire company.

We are more a 50-hour environment than a 40-hour environment as the workweek goes. For the Chief Estimator, there will honestly be those harsh deadlines, and there will be half-Saturdays if the work cannot be wrapped up during the week. You will actually be the person to control the work flow and if you are a great manager, the impact will be modest. For high performance people, this is a place that you can stay grow and be secure until retirement. We have been a hard charging performance environment for more than fifty years and clients expect and respect that. We reflect value.

We are the most successful integrated electrical design and construction company in our region on any and every level. We are the biggest in annual sales, we are the most consistently invited back, we are respected and served by all vendors, we can finance and bond any constructions it makes business sense for us to pursue. The company size and continuous growth assures room for a progressive career. The absence of nepotism means a level playing field. The multiple locations allow for not only location flexibility, but also unique job configurations for estimators, which can include mentoring and training positions in multiple locations. The private nature of the company allows it to make long-term decisions that are the right decisions for the maintenance of a good local reputation. The private nature of the company and its character allow an employee to build a career, and count on a fair evaluation of the past contributions made. A minimum of politics. Good policy decisions are not artificially expedited by the calendar quarter’s end as they are in public companies. This is a company with a community perspective not an accountant's perspective. Most of us have figured out that you cannot force design build work to fall into place on tidy intervals with total certainty. Wall Street has yet to accept or reasonably deal with this. We offer clients bundled services for all facets of electrical infrastructure, this versatility making us a compelling source.

We hire character, talent, passion and skills. In the end, we all find people doing things and performing at one level or another on the basis of how they FEEL. In dealing with others, and across the departmental lines, the company insists that people in the various departments understand the responsibilities, difficulties and loads imposed on others and other groups. We are a genuine and successful example of the value of professional empathy or consideration. Building strong teams that work well with one another for the long haul depends upon this type of understanding.

We have the best tools for doing the work, and managing the work. As resources are developed that will improve quality or productivity, they are rapidly embraced. That can be jobsite tools, heavy equipment, hand tools, software tools, or enterprise management systems.

PAY AND BENEFITS

$125,000.00 to 175,000.00 base salary and we are willing to discuss that along with bonus goals. Great medical dental (100% employee), truly nominal for children, 401K with match, profit sharing on top of the 401K, long and short-term disability. Mileage, cell phone and business expenses are part of the package. We will move a right fit person. We are in a region of the country that is physically beautiful, temperate, has a cultural base, higher educational facilities, great hospitals and great recreation of every conceivable sort heading in every proximal direction from here. We also have an unbreakable local economy.

CONTACT INFORMATION

Any cover letter, resume or project list should be emailed to:
EMAIL: powerhero@hughes.net
SUBJECT LINE: OURCHIEF

CONFIDENTIALITY: We have a consultant with more than 10 years service to us available to review your input and answer questions. Very simple rule: Nothing whatsoever moves forward without your specific consent.