Director – Design Management

Role Overview

• Drive projects from inception through customer or business turnover, with heavy focus and leadership in the preconstruction and design phases of projects.
• The Design Managers assume project lead role at design hand-off meeting from land enablement team and shifts overall project leadership to the Construction Manager (CM) at GC mobilization.
• Main point of contact for design management team in particular campus or geographic region.
• Works hand-in-hand with the regional Director, Construction Management to ensure performance certainty across all projects.
• Direct the day-to-day design management operations and long-term strategic direction of projects.
• Provide guidance and leadership throughout the entire lifecycle of projects, ensuring they are meeting or exceeding company expectations.
• Develop and maintain deep-rooted industry relationships with leaders in the contracting community including design partners, AHJ’s, general contractors and trade partners.
• Create effective tools to empower and incentivize design and contracting partners to innovate approaches and solutions for project delivery and specific challenges.
• Coordination/communication with the land enablement group to ensure success with offsite improvements, early permitting, easements and environmental studies for all sites in the geographical region.
• Collaborates with Director, Design Management peers in other regions to maintain consistency across all regions/projects.
• Assists regional Director, Construction Management in collaborating/coordinating with other construction directors across all regions/projects.
• Assist to interview, hire, and assure effective training and development of new and existing staff.
• Reports status, successes, challenges, and plans of action to management team and company on a timely basis.
• Develop, manage and be accountable for achievement of key departmental metrics.
• Leads, evaluates, holds accountable and develops the regional Design Management team members in the following: Coordination/creation of project risk registers from land enablement phase through project completion/turnover to Aligned Operations Project design management: Coordinating onboarding of third-party design team and creation of design schedule to support project needs.
• Overseeing management of external third-party design team through project completion/turnover to Aligned Operations.
• Driving review and management of design deliverables; including stakeholder review and comment cycles.
• Holding design teams accountable to design progression and design gating.
• Working with SMEs, Operations, and CMs to ensure design compliance with Aligned Design Efficiency Capture (DEC).
• Identifying design variances, tracks them and manages acquisition of necessary approvals, as required.
• Enforcing design team’s accountability to Aligned’s Cost Control Log (CCL) and Complies, Deviates, Excludes (CDE) matrices.
• Operating in lockstep with the CM on each project to ensure proper communications/escalations and regular reporting to all internal and external parties and leadership/management.
• Creating, managing and updating project metrics in Smartsheets (project dashboards) for each project.
• Owning or directing all administrative duties related to design management process.
• Assisting CM with building and maintaining budget/cost models/all phase budgets for each project, specifically around design costs and timelines.
• Working with CM to prepare and present all funding requests.
• Coordinating with CM to prepare and present quarterly project updates for leadership.
• In conjunction with CM, supports day-to-day program activities and initiatives (engage with architects, consultants, equipment providers, GCs, etc. Coordinate all project activities with building Operations while promoting safety and compliance initiatives and requirements on site).
• Performs as the primary support role to the CM from GC mobilization to turnover to Operations.
• Integrating with the sales and solutions engineering teams during the revenue generation process to meet with customers and ensure technical deliverables are met.
• Interfacing with customer through fit-out design, construction and integration; accountable to successful delivery of customer contracts.
• Managing the project with the business in mind and works to ensure project is meeting directives of CRC/SLT/Board.
• Operating with a constant mindset of continuous improvement, creativity, efficiency and innovation.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Construction Management, Engineering or equivalent
• 12+ years progressive experience in successfully managing commercial construction project design programs, with data center experience required
• Mechanical/Electrical background preferred
• Deep network of leaders within the data center design and construction community
• Ability to navigate AHJ’s within a particular region with depth of understanding of the positions within local zoning, permitting and inspection authorities.
• Thorough understanding of various project delivery methods including IPD, Design-Build, and Design-Bid-Build.
• Basic understanding of various contract methods including lump sum, CM at risk, open book GMP, etc
• Advanced experience in Excel, Smartsheets and/or AutoCAD
• Strong written and verbal communication skills
• Ability to multi-task, with strong time and change management/organizational skills
• Track record of mentoring and developing teams and individuals to take on new challenges and career opportunities
• Ability to always maintain discretion and confidentiality
• Ability to understand and follow clear directions and meet specific deadlines with reporting, communication and project schedules
• Team player across the organization
• Ability to interpret construction drawings and specifications
• Knowledge of construction cost estimating methods and development of scopes of work.
• Ability to understand construction project scopes.
• Able to monitor and interpret design and schedule changes and forecast their impact on overall project costs
• May travel at times up to 25%

Benefits

• Health Coverage : Medical, dental, and vision insurance
• Health Savings and Flexible Spending Accounts: HSA with employer contribution for eligible participants. FSA's offered for health and dependent care to increase tax savings.
• Retirement Savings : 401(k) plan with company match
• Paid Time Off and Holiday Pay : Includes sick and safe leave as required by Maryland law
• Company-Sponsored Insurance : Short-Term Disability, Life Insurance, and Long-Term Disability (with medical election)
• Optional Benefits : Voluntary life, critical illness, legal, and additional disability coverage
• Wellness Programs : Employee assistance program (EAP), Wellhub gym membership, and other wellness initiatives