Lead Construction Manager - Lease Delivery
12 Months Contract
New Albany, OH
Travel: Approximately 50% to support project sites across North America.
Role Overview
A highly qualified construction professional serving as the Owner's Representative for construction delivery across a portfolio of leased data center projects. The Lead Construction Manager carries owner-side accountability for cost and schedule certainty, directs supporting Construction Managers and contractor workforces, manages contractor, landlord, and cross-functional relationships, and establishes governance and best practices across the portfolio. This is a senior leadership role that extends beyond executing an individual project's scope and requires independent decision-making with minimal oversight.
Roles and Responsibilities
- Owner's Representation: Lead construction, commissioning, and turnover of data center fit-out projects across an assigned portfolio of leased properties, making field decisions independently and with minimal oversight.
- Portfolio Delivery: Maintain owner-side accountability for cost and schedule certainty across multiple projects and landlords. Serve as the escalation point for supporting Construction Managers and project teams.
- Construction Scope Management: Own construction scope across assigned sites, including retrofits of existing data halls and build-outs of new spaces across North America.
- Team Leadership: Lead and direct supporting Construction Managers, vendors, and contractor workforces. Establish expectations, mentor team members, and develop the broader construction delivery team.
- Stakeholder Management: Own relationships with General Contractors, landlords, designers, consultants, vendors, and cross-functional partners. Serve as the primary point of coordination and provide executive-level reporting.
- Commercial and Change Management: Lead the cost-change process, negotiate complex, landlord-driven change orders, and protect favorable pricing in partnership with cost and schedule teams.
- Contractor Performance: Drive recovery of underperforming contractors by identifying root causes, addressing scope clarity and kickoff alignment, resolving approval and sign-off issues, and implementing recovery plans to restore schedule performance.
- Process Improvement: Identify opportunities to improve efficiency through innovation, standardized processes, and accountability. Build alignment across cross-functional teams and implement proven solutions as portfolio-wide best practices.
- Project Planning and Scoping: Partner with internal customers and cross-functional teams to identify, sequence, and package work scopes for execution.
- Schedule Management: Own the creation and maintenance of project schedules with support from Project Controls and Scheduling. Manage schedule risks and drive reliable, predictable turnover dates.
- Budgeting and Forecasting: Support capital project budget development, prepare rough-order-of-magnitude (ROM) construction cost estimates, and manage monthly capital expenditure (CapEx) forecasting.
- Project Reporting: Analyze weekly project status reports covering financial performance, schedule, and quality, and develop action plans to address issues.
- Field Oversight: Conduct monthly work-in-place (WIP) walks to validate completed work for invoicing. Perform regular site walks with contractors, landlords, consultants, and cross-functional partners to verify progress and handover readiness.
- Live Data Center Work: Manage Methods of Procedure (MOPs) for retrofit and remediation work in live data centers. Coordinate activities among contractors, internal stakeholders, and third-party QA/QC teams.
- Project Closeout: Manage project closeout and turnover activities. Escalate significant strategic issues to senior leadership.
- Safety and Continuous Improvement: Promote collaboration, teamwork, continuous improvement, and a strong safety culture across all project sites.
Required and Preferred Qualifications
- Bachelor's degree in Construction Management, Civil, Electrical, or Mechanical Engineering, or equivalent qualifications; alternatively, 15+ years of professional experience across construction, operations, maintenance, and project planning.
- 15+ years of directly related experience in data center or critical infrastructure design and construction.
- Proven track record as an Owner's Representative or Senior Construction Project Manager on hyperscale data center or critical infrastructure programs.
- Demonstrated leadership of large contractor workforces and multi-site portfolios, with individual programs ranging from $300M to $1.5B+.
- Experience managing multiple projects simultaneously across different phases of construction.
- Strong background in mission-critical commissioning for retrofit projects and new leased data center build-outs.
- Experience negotiating complex, landlord-driven change orders and protecting cost and schedule certainty in leased facilities.
- General knowledge of electrical, mechanical, and connectivity systems.
- Strong understanding of critical path method (CPM) scheduling and Primavera P6.
- Senior certifications strongly preferred, including PMP, RMP, PCP, PBA, and OSHA 30.
- Proficiency in Microsoft Office applications, including Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.
Top Three Must-Have Technical Skills
1. Hyperscale / Mission-Critical Data Center Construction Management
Demonstrated experience leading large-scale data center construction projects, ideally with a major hyperscaler or comparable organization. Experience may include shell/core construction, fit-outs, and retrofits.
2. Integrated Schedule and Risk Management
Ability to own and drive Primavera P6/master schedules, forecast risks, and proactively manage timelines across multiple construction packages, trades, and workstreams.
3. Process and Documentation Discipline
Strong track record of establishing and enforcing construction processes and documentation standards, including Request for Information (RFI) management, submittals, inspection and test plans, and Site Inspection Plans (SIPs).
Good-to-Have Skills
- Constructability reviews and design-build delivery judgment, including identifying major design clashes and reviewing phasing plans and site logistics.
- Experience leading and mentoring other Construction Managers, contingent workers, and field staff.
- Familiarity with construction management tools and operating cadences such as Procore, Smartsheet, and Autodesk Construction Cloud (ACC).
- Experience with leased data center delivery, landlord interfaces, base-building coordination, and tenant improvement scopes.
- Safety program ownership or site-level safety oversight.
Business Context and Project Environment
The Lease Delivery team is responsible for bringing leased data center capacity online within aggressive timelines. The portfolio is expanding rapidly, with new leased sites, retrofits, and fit-outs running concurrently across multiple regions.
The Lead Construction Manager must operate independently as the Owner's Representative, manage end-to-end delivery of assigned scope packages, and provide leadership to the broader contingent construction team. This role allows senior leadership to focus on strategic portfolio priorities while the Lead Construction Manager manages day-to-day execution, contractor accountability, and delivery outcomes.
Typical Day in the Role
- Lead morning coordination meetings with the Construction Manager team, landlords, General Contractors, and subcontractors to establish priorities, remove blockers, and align on critical-path activities.
- Conduct site walks to verify progress against schedule, assess construction quality, and identify safety concerns.
- Lead contractor coordination meetings focused on deliverables, RFIs, submittals, and change orders.
- Review schedule updates, track risks, identify potential delays, and implement recovery plans.
- Coordinate with senior leadership on decisions that exceed delegated authority and provide concise project status updates.
- Maintain construction documentation, inspection records, logs, and audit-ready project files.
Performance Measures
- Schedule Adherence: Deliver scope packages on or ahead of baseline milestones.
- Risk Identification and Resolution: Proactively identify, escalate, and resolve risks before they affect schedule or delivery.
- Process Compliance and Documentation Quality: Maintain required construction records, timely RFI responses, and high inspection closeout rates.
- Team Leadership Effectiveness: Improve team productivity, clarify accountability, and reduce unnecessary escalations to senior leadership.
- Safety: Maintain a strong site safety program, with a target Total Case Incident Rate (TCIR/TRIR) not exceeding 0.35, and regularly report leading safety indicators and trends.
- Quality: Minimize punch-list items and rework to protect data hall turnover and provisioning timelines.
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Spectraforce Technologies
Oct 23, 2026