Director, Preconstruction

Pivot Energy • Baltimore, MD

23h • $135,000 - $180,000 • Remote

About The Position

The Director, Preconstruction is a leadership role responsible for managing Pivot Energy’s preconstruction function across a portfolio of distributed generation, community solar, commercial solar, and energy storage projects. This role maintains strategic alignment, supports commercial direction, and governs preconstruction management from late-stage development through EPC execution and transition to project management. In addition to project and portfolio leadership responsibilities, the Director is accountable for developing a high-performing preconstruction team, managing scalable operating standards, reinforcing process consistency, developing talent, and ensuring alignment across Development, Engineering, Procurement, Finance, Legal, Compliance, Project Management, Construction Management, O&M, Asset Management, and other stakeholders as needed. The Director supports multiple concurrent programs and project portfolios while ensuring consistency in estimating methodologies, contract strategy, procurement coordination, budgeting discipline, risk management, schedule alignment, compliance integration, and execution readiness. The role serves as a key interface between leadership stakeholders and delivery teams and is expected to support enterprise-level project delivery maturity and operational performance. This position requires a sophisticated understanding of renewable energy project delivery models, EPC and commercial contracting structures, cost and schedule controls, job costing methodologies, ERP and project controls environments, portfolio risk management, organizational leadership, and program governance principles. The Director must balance strategic objectives with operational execution while driving predictable, scalable, and commercially sound project outcomes. The Director materially supports Pivot Energy’s eight focus areas throughout the preconstruction lifecycle: Stakeholder Management, Contract Management, Quality Management, Financial Management, Schedule Management, Compliance Management, Risk Management, and Document Management.

Requirements

• 7+ years of experience in renewable energy preconstruction, estimating, commercial management, project delivery, construction management, project controls, EPC management, or related infrastructure leadership roles.
• 3+ years of people leadership experience managing multidisciplinary teams project teams, or functional workstreams with accountability for performance outcomes.
• Experience with EPC contracting, procurement strategy, budgeting, estimating, Basis of Estimate documentation, schedule management, and project execution planning.
• Advanced understanding of solar PV and/or BESS project delivery including development-to-delivery handoff, permitting, engineering, procurement, construction readiness, and execution transition.
• Strong leadership, communication, commercial, analytical, financial, and decision-making skills.
• Experience supporting operational processes, governance frameworks, and scalable delivery standards, reporting routines, and cross-functional operating discipline.
• Strong analytical, commercial, and financial management capabilities.
• Ability to lead in high-growth, fast-paced environments with competing priorities, imperfect information, and changing business requirements.
• Strong communication skills; and ability to translate commercial, technical, and operational issues for different audiences.
• Ability to navigate organizational complexity while maintaining attention to detail and accountability for follow-through.
• High emotional intelligence and stakeholder management capability, and ability to lead through ambiguity and friction.
• Ability to prioritize effectively across competing portfolio demands.
• Strong process orientation balanced with practical execution focus.
• Ability to support a team and ensure organizational alignment.
• Strong problem-solving and decision-making capabilities grounded in facts, assumptions, risk, and business objectives.
• Commitment to continuous improvement and operational excellence, and scalable IPP delivery maturity.

Nice To Haves

• 5+ years of experience in solar and/or BESS preconstruction, estimating, commercial management, design coordination, project management, or construction management.
• Experience managing geographically focus team.
• Experience with Procore, MS Project, ERP systems, estimating platforms, BI/reporting tools, and project controls systems.
• Understanding of compliance drivers (e.g. prevailing wage/apprenticeship, domestic content, safety, quality).
• MBA, engineering degree, construction management degree, or related advanced professional credentials preferred.

Responsibilities

• Lead, mentor, and develop a growing team of Preconstruction Managers, Senior Preconstruction Managers, and related delivery personnel.
• Establish clear expectations for role ownership, communication, issue escalation, commercial rigor, documentation quality, and stakeholder responsiveness.
• Foster a culture of accountability, collaboration, continuous improvement, operational discipline, and commercial awareness.
• Promote leadership behaviors that reinforce transparency, ownership, consistency, documentation discipline, and proactive risk escalation.
• Own a defined preconstruction book of business across multiple concurrent project portfolios, geographies, technologies, contractors, and customer or financing requirements.
• Maintain reporting standards, project prioritization, portfolio controls, issue escalation, and operational controls that create predictability across the preconstruction function.
• Monitor portfolio-wide schedule, cost, procurement, interconnection, permitting, compliance, contractor, and commercial risks and escalate material issues to leadership.
• Resolve cross-functional blockers with Development, Procurement, Interconnection, Development Engineering, Legal, Finance, Compliance, Project Management, and Construction Management to keep projects moving through transition, EPCA execution, and execution readiness.
• Drive consistency in project contracting, estimating standards, and handoff procedures.
• Support portfolio-level procurement strategies, long-lead planning, preferred contractor engagement strategies, and market intelligence.
• Serve as a senior point of contact for internal leadership, external contractor partners, consultants, vendors, and strategic stakeholders during preconstruction.
• Align Development, Development Engineering, Interconnection, Procurement, Legal, Compliance, Finance, Project Management teams around project execution and delivery readiness.
• Ensure communication protocols, escalation pathways, Investment Committee visibility and governance processes are consistently followed.
• Promote alignment between development assumptions, commercial commitments, budget structures, procurement strategy, interconnection dependencies, compliance obligations, and execution planning.
• Resolve cross-functional friction early enough to preserve schedule, scope clarity, commercial position, transition timing, EPCA execution, and execution readiness.
• Ensure material blockers are framed with issue, cause, impact, options, owner, due date, recommendation, and decision required so leadership and governance forums can act without ambiguity.
• Oversee commercial contracting and pre-award execution activities across project portfolios.
• Support EPC negotiations, subcontracting strategy, owner-furnished versus contractor-furnished scope decisions, commercial risk allocation, and contract-exhibit completeness.
• Ensure established contract standards, fallback positions, negotiation frameworks, and approval workflows, and deviation logs are maintained.
• Ensure negotiated commercial terms transition cleanly into execution without loss of scope clarity, schedule obligation, compliance obligation, document context, or risk visibility.
• Drive consistency in commercial clarifications, assumptions, exclusions, allowances, contingency treatment, and risk registers.
• Escalate major commercial deviations and contractor exceptions, non-standard risk allocations, and unresolved legal or business positions.
• Maintain and support organizational standards for bid package quality, estimate completeness, constructability review, design basis clarity, and execution readiness.
• Ensure consistent application of QA/QC principles throughout the preconstruction lifecycle.
• Drive lessons-learned initiatives and continuous improvement programs across estimating, procurement, contracting, and project setup processes, including use of scorecards, issue trends, quality history, schedule performance, change behavior, and commercial discipline. Relationships with project management is crucial to the on going success of the contractor partnership program.
• Support contractor prequalification and performance evaluation processes.
• Ensure field execution feedback and O&M requirements are integrated into preconstruction workflows where they materially affect scope, budget, contract exhibits, or execution readiness.
• Support oversight of project cost intelligence and analytics, budget development, contingency strategy, procurement cost integration, and cost control methodologies.
• Collaborate with Procurement, Finance, Development, Engineering, and internal stakeholders to ensure owner-furnished equipment, subcontractor scope, vendor costs, and third-party services and internal owner costs are accurately incorporated into project budgets.
• Maintain strong Basis of Estimate discipline by ensuring all estimates clearly document scope basis, design basis, assumptions, exclusions, clarifications, contingencies, escalation assumptions, pricing sources, unresolved risks, and reconciliation between estimate versions as projects progress through preconstruction.
• Ensure budgets are structured for execution and job-cost visibility by aligning scope and risk to appropriate cost codes, cost types, and work breakdown structures that reflect contract obligations and commercial risk.
• Drive value engineering initiatives and cost optimization strategies while maintaining quality, compliance, operability, revenue, financing, and schedule objectives.
• Coordinate with Finance to ensure cost forecasting accuracy, budget continuity, and cost reporting consistency.
• Ensure budget continuity from early-stage estimate through contract execution.
• Maintain project-level and portfolio-level scheduling standards, including visibility into development transition, bid issuance, proposal review, contract negotiation, permitting, procurement, interconnection, engineering, NTP readiness, and execution handoff.
• Manage the assigned book of business against transition and EPCA execution run-rate expectations, currently approximately three projects per week or the then-current approved business target.
• Ensure schedules are logic-driven, commercially aligned, resource-aware, and capable of supporting leadership decision-making, contractor accountability, Investment Committee visibility, and external commitment management.
• Ensure schedule alignment across development, engineering, procurement, permitting, interconnection, and construction readiness activities.
• Ensure contractors either utilize Pivot’s template or integrate their schedules into it in a manner that allows Pivot, as owner and IPP, to consistently monitor project progress and performance across the full project lifecycle.
• Identify systemic schedule risks and implement mitigation strategies across project portfolios.
• Drive schedule accountability with contractors, consultants, vendors, and internal stakeholders, including early escalation of missed commitments, delayed decisions, and external dependency risk.
• Ensure preconstruction activities align with applicable compliance obligations, incentive program requirements, labor standards, domestic content requirements, FEOC restrictions, safety expectations, quality requirements, and internal governance policies.
• Support implementation of evolving regulatory market, investor, tax, and internal policy requirements into project delivery standards, scope of work, Basis of Estimate assumptions, procurement strategy, and contract exhibits.
• Partner with Compliance, Legal, Finance, Procurement, and Project Management teams to establish repeatable controls and audit-ready documentation practices.
• Ensure compliance obligations are appropriately incorporated into contract exhibits, procurement workflows, contractor submittal requirements, execution planning, cost assumptions, and handoff packages, and procurement workflows. planning.
• Escalate compliance ambiguity or policy changes early when they may affect scope, cost, schedule, procurement strategy, risk allocation, or project economics.
• Serve as the primary preconstruction risk manager and processor of projects entering the execution pipeline.
• Support portfolio-level risk identification, escalation, mitigation planning, and governance processes.
• Maintain established risk management frameworks that support predictable execution outcomes and informed decision-making.
• Evaluate commercial, technical, schedule, procurement, interconnection, permitting, regulatory, compliance, contractor, stakeholder, and organizational risks across project portfolios.
• Ensure Investment Committee or appropriate governance stakeholders are notified when risks or unresolved issues threaten approved economics, schedule commitments, transition timing, EPCA execution, LNTP readiness, or execution viability.
• Ensure risk ownership, escalation pathways, and mitigation tracking are clearly documented and actively managed.
• Support strategic decisions regarding delivery methodology, contractor engagement models, procurement strategy, and commercial positioning.
• Anticipate second-order impacts of unresolved risk, including impact to financeability, revenue commitments, customer commitments, tax credit qualification, contractor accountability, and execution handoff.
• Support standardized document control procedures, naming conventions, approval workflows, and repository governance.
• Drive operational consistency across estimating files, bid packages, contract exhibits, handoff packages, and reporting systems.
• Promote disciplined documentation and traceability across all phases of preconstruction and project setup.
• Ensure finalized contract documents, supporting exhibits, execution assumptions, and decision records are organized and accessible to Project Management and downstream stakeholders.
• Champion continuous improvement initiatives that improve scalability, efficiency, reporting accuracy, AI-readiness, document quality, and execution quality.
• Advanced understanding of renewable energy project delivery methodologies, including Design-Bid-Build, Design-Build, Integrated Design-Build, CMAR, EPC, and hybrid delivery approaches.
• Strong commercial acumen related to EPC contracting, procurement strategy, construction sequencing, cost control, and risk allocation.
• Advanced understanding of estimating methodologies, Basis of Estimate discipline, forecasting principles, budget development, job costing systems, cost-code and cost-type structure, ERP platforms, project controls tools, and reporting environments.
• Strong understanding of job costing methodologies & systems, ERP platforms, project controls tools, and reporting environments.
• Ability to evaluate project constructability, execution readiness, design maturity, procurement risk, contractor performance, and commercial exposure across PV and BESS projects.
• Ability to support operational standards and scalable delivery processes across a growing organization.
• Ability to evaluate project constructability, execution readiness, procurement risk, and contractor performance.
• Ability to support commercial negotiations with an understanding of how T&Cs, SOW, specifications, assumptions, exclusions, schedule commitments, procurement strategy, cost codes, and cost types interact.
• Ability to enforce preconstruction operating processes, governance routines, issue escalation pathways, and run-rate discipline without creating unnecessary bureaucracy or slowing business-critical decisions.
• Ability to own a defined book of business and coordinate Development, Development Engineering, Interconnection, Procurement, Legal, Finance, Compliance, and Delivery stakeholders to preserve transition and EPCA execution momentum.
• Ability to distinguish project-specific issues from systemic issues that require operating model, process, template, governance, or leadership intervention.
• Lead through accountability, structure, clear communication, and sound judgment.
• Support team-member growth while ensuring alignment with organizational goals; role expectations, and business priorities.
• Protect relationships while protecting Pivot’s commercial operational, compliance, and financial interests.
• Balance strategic thinking with practical execution and timely decision-making.
• Drive clarity and alignment in fast-moving, ambiguous, and cross-functional environments.
• Escalate risk early and communicate difficult issues transparently; especially when facts are incomplete or stakeholder positions conflict.
• Ensure commercial decisions are aligned with approved standards; documented fallback positions, risk tolerance, and leadership approval thresholds.
• Promote operational discipline without creating unnecessary bureaucracy.
• Maintain professionalism during negotiations, escalations, and executive decision-making.
• Use standards, documentation, and decision records as leadership tools, not administrative exercises.
• Coach team members to convert blockers into clear issue statements, options, recommendations, owners, due dates, and decision paths.
• Projects consistently enter execution with aligned scope, validated assumptions, credible budgets, and executable schedules, documented risks, and clean handoff continuity.
• Assigned book of business maintains the approved transition and EPCA execution run rate, currently approximately three projects per week or the then-current business target, with blockers surfaced early enough for leadership action.
• Portfolio-level preconstruction activities remain predictable, scalable, commercially disciplined, and operationally controlled.
• Estimating accuracy, budget structure, forecasting visibility, and commercial alignment improve over time.
• Cross-functional stakeholders experience improved coordination, communication, and execution readiness.
• Contractor engagement, procurement planning, and commercial negotiations support favorable project outcomes.
• Team is effectively developed, retained, and positioned for long-term growth.
• Executive leadership receives timely, accurate, and actionable portfolio reporting, including risks, decisions needed, upcoming commitments, and projected outcomes.
• Risk identification and mitigation processes improve predictability and reduce execution surprises, change disputes, cost drift, schedule failures, and handoff loss.
• Handoff continuity from Development through Construction is preserved with minimal loss of information or commercial intent, compliance obligations, or approved assumptions.

Benefits

• Excellent health/dental/vision insurance benefits with up to 100% of premiums covered by the company
• Four weeks of vacation plus employment milestone bonus vacations
• Company paid life insurance and short- & long-term disability coverage
• Generous parental leave
• 401(k) matching (after vesting period)
• Work from home stipend for new employees
• Public transit reimbursement
• PTO for volunteering in the community
• Charitable donation matching up to $500/year
• Professional development and educational reimbursements

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Director