Sr. Construction Project Leader Bentonville, AR

ABOUT THE ROLE

The successful candidate will perform in a Sr. Construction Project Leader role, initially focused on a single mega project, for the duration of its delivery. You may have been educated and/or trained as a design professional, but the core of your career has been spent leading construction — as a construction manager, preconstruction lead, or design manager for a builder — and you bring that experience back to the design table fluent in both languages.

Your initial assignment will be on a 2.0+ million square foot healthcare facility at Mayo Clinic’s campus.

This position requires consistent onsite presence at the project site in Rochester, MN Cannon Design provides a relocation and temporary relocation program to support on-site presence.

You will lead Cannon Design's preconstruction and construction-phase leadership on one of the firm's largest and most complex projects, where the proactive integration of design and construction expertise is imperative. This is not a document administration role but rather a process leadership role. You will be engaged during design with our team and the client’s construction manager and/or builder — evaluating the implementation of constructability, cost, and schedule activities, and positioning our team to succeed inside whichever delivery model the project carries, from traditional design-bid-build through fully integrated project delivery.

Once construction begins, you are the firm's senior voice in the field: protecting technical and design intent, protecting our commercial position, while astutely collaborating with the client’s construction manager and/or builder, and giving the client a leader who can sit across from their builder as a peer.

This position reports jointly to the Cannon Design Project Director for the assigned project and to the Executive Director of Operations - AEI. The Project Director sets day-to-day priorities, project staffing, and client engagement. The Executive Director of Operations owns standards of practice, performance evaluation, professional development, and the transfer of lessons learned across the firm's mega project portfolio.

Preconstruction and Delivery Readiness

• Join the project during design and in coordination with Project Technical Director, build the construction point of view into the documents before they are issued — construct ability, sequencing, phasing, site logistics, and trade availability.
• Lead internal construct-ability and coordination reviews at each design milestone, translating findings into actionable direction for the design team rather than a list of comments.
• Lead value engineering and target value design discussions, so scope decisions are made with cost consequences understood early rather than discovered late.
• Interrogate the schedule — CPM logic, long-lead procurement, permitting and regulatory approvals, trade partner onboarding, equipment procurement, commissioning and activation — and align the design delivery schedule to it.
• On integrated and progressive delivery models, participate in validation, target cost development, cluster team leadership, and the collaborative routines the multi-party agreement requires.
• Advise the Project Director on delivery model implications, bid packaging, early work packages, and what can safely be deferred, delegated, or carried as allowance.
• Support GMP development, bridging documents, and design-assist scopes where the project's delivery model requires them.
• Contribute to contractor pre-qualification, bid evaluation, risk assessment, and award recommendations.

Design Management Across the Construction Interface

• Serve as the translator between design and construction — anticipating where a builder…