Vice President, Preconstruction

** RETAINED ROLE FOR A CONFIDENTIAL CLIENT OF H&C**

Title: Vice President - Preconstruction

Location: Hawaii

Reporting to: President/CEO

This role exists to govern how work enters the business. The Vice President of Preconstruction is accountable for project conversion quality, commercial judgement, and decision-making before commitments are made. The objective is simple; ensure the business wins the right work, at the right terms, at the right time.

It is a senior leadership position focused on commercial awareness, systems, risk discipline, and long-term value creation in a privately held environment where arbitrary volume has no upside.

The business operates across complex, relationship-driven markets with a mix of private and public clients. Work is often secured through early engagement, negotiated pathways, and trusted client relationships rather than pure hard-bid volume.

This role sits at enterprise level, partnering closely with executive leadership and operations to improve decision quality upstream, protect margin, and ensure alignment between opportunity selection and operational capacity.

Market sector background is flexible. Commercial, mission critical, MEP, industrial, or adjacent sectors are all acceptable. What matters is judgement, leadership, and commercial discipline.

• Own final authority on whether opportunities are pursued, paused, restructured, or declined
• Establish and enforce clear go / no-go criteria tied to margin, risk, delivery capacity, and strategic fit
• Ensure early-access opportunities convert into disciplined, executable work
• Improve the quality of backlog, not just the size of it
• Demonstrate strong commercial acumen across private and public procurement environments
• Understand different delivery models, contract structures, and risk profiles
• Challenge poor assumptions early and protect the business from misaligned work
• Ensure pricing, scope, and delivery expectations are commercially sound before handover

• Lead and refine preconstruction systems, governance frameworks, and decision workflows
• Create consistency in how opportunities are evaluated across the business
• Build scalable processes that support sustainable growth without diluting standards
• Drive accountability for decision quality at all levels

• Lead and develop senior preconstruction, estimating, and commercial leaders
• Set expectations around judgement, discipline, and accountability
• Align teams around quality, not volume
• Adapt leadership style to a diverse, experienced workforce
• Provide executive-level presence in critical client discussions where early influence matters
• Support long-term client relationships without acting as a transactional salesperson
• Understand client drivers and ensure opportunities pursued align with mutual success
• Represent the business credibly with senior private and public stakeholders

• Senior leader with seller-doer background or equivalent commercial accountability
• Experience making enterprise-level decisions on work selection and risk
• Track record of leading large, experienced teams
• Demonstrated commercial judgement across complex projects
• Exposure to both private and public clients

• Commercially astute and disciplined
• Comfortable saying no to bad work
• Systems-oriented and process-driven
• Adaptable, credible, and calm under pressure
• Strong executive presence

This role is based in Hawaii. If you are not local to HA, relocation is mandatory and should be considered seriously. This is not a minor move. Candidates must be fully committed to relocating and embedding long-term.

• Real authority over what work enters the business
• Privately held environment where quality decisions matter
• Opportunity to step into a VP role focused on judgement, governance, and long-term value