Construction, Infrastructure and Real Estate Executive Search

What to look for

• P&L and backlog ownership.
• Fluency in delivery methods such as CM-at-risk, design-build and GMP.
• Experience negotiating escalation and tariff clauses, which contracts increasingly include (Construction Dive, January 2026).
• A state contractor license where required, CCM, PMP, OSHA 30, and a PE for engineering-led firms.

Watch out for

• Titles inflated at small firms.
• "Megaproject experience" as one of many project managers.
• Can't walk through a job that lost money and what they changed.

What to look for

• Trade depth matched to your project type, such as MEP-heavy for mission critical work.
• Lookahead and pull planning.
• OSHA 30 at minimum and a strong safety record on their own jobs.
• References from subcontractors.

Watch out for

• Tenant-improvement-only candidates claiming ground-up experience.
• Job-hopping to chase per diem.
• Weak daily logs.
• Blaming others for schedule failures.

What to look for

• Commercial control: buyout, change orders, claims and cash flow.
• A plan for subcontractor default.
• Honest reporting to owners.
• PMP, CCM or LEED AP BD+C.

Watch out for

• Can't quantify margin fade or gain.
• Experience with only one delivery method.
• A project executive who has never carried several jobs at once.

What to look for

• Deals taken from entitlement through exit, with realized returns compared with the original pro forma.
• Lender and investor relationships.
• Power and entitlement strategy.

Watch out for

• Only low-rate 2020 to 2022 deals.
• An acquisitions or construction manager presenting as a developer.
• No deals they chose to kill.

What to look for

• Accuracy of estimates against final cost.
• Conceptual estimating from schematic design.
• Subcontractor pricing relationships.
• BIM-based takeoff.
• ASPE or AACE credentials.

Watch out for

• A high win rate paired with margin fade, which usually means they're buying work.
• No ownership of post-bid variance.

What to look for

• Capital planning.
• Maintenance and workplace management systems and building automation.
• Vendor management.
• CFM, FMP or SFP, and a PE for critical environments.

Watch out for

• Reactive maintenance only, with no capital budget.
• No critical-environment experience for data center, lab or healthcare roles.

What to look for

• Came up through the field and earned the respect of crews and foremen.
• Has scheduled multiple crews across project managers and regions, and kept them productive week to week.
• Sets production targets and tracks labor hours and equipment use against the estimate.
• Has built cross-training or field training programs.
• State DOT work, as prime or sub, and relationships with the customers in your market.
• A systems mind: scheduling, field reporting and the software that ties them together.

Watch out for

• Building-only or homebuilding-only careers presented as heavy civil.
• Owner-side or funder-side highway experience presented as field leadership.
• Operators who've never been held to production numbers.
• Big titles at very small companies.

What to look for

• Bid volume and hit rate on DOT and municipal work.
• Unit-price bidding and quantity takeoffs.
• Estimates checked against field actuals after the job.
• HCSS HeavyBid, B2W Estimate or similar tools.
• Has built or led an estimating team.

Watch out for

• Estimators who've only priced subcontracted building work.
• No feedback loop between estimates and field results.
• Can't explain a bid they lost.

What to look for

• Has run multiple crews and foremen at once.
• Work zone safety and traffic control, including MUTCD (the federal standard for traffic control devices).
• Working relationships with DOT inspectors.
• OSHA 30 at minimum.
• Can walk you through how they plan a week of crews, equipment and materials.

Watch out for

• Superintendents who've only supervised subcontractors.
• A safety record they won't discuss.
• Can't describe how they plan the week.