Senior Director, Cost Control

5C Data Centers USA, Inc.•Springfield, OH

5d•Hybrid

About The Position

5C Data Centers designs, builds, and delivers hyperscale and AI-ready data center campuses across the U.S., partnering with hyperscalers, developers, and colocation providers to bring mission-critical infrastructure online. We move fast without cutting corners on safety, quality, or cost discipline. The Senior Director, Cost Control leads project and portfolio cost control across development, pre-construction, procurement, construction, commissioning, and closeout. Reporting to the VP, Project Controls + Cost, this role establishes cost standards, maintains budgets and forecasts, quantifies risk, and delivers timely cost insight as the functional counterpart to the Senior Director, Project Controls.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree in a relevant discipline or equivalent experience; advanced spreadsheet and enterprise cost-system capability; ability to travel regularly to project and vendor locations.
10+ years of progressive construction cost control, cost engineering, quantity surveying, or commercial cost-management experience, including leadership responsibility.
Demonstrated control of complex, multi-hundred-million-dollar capital projects or portfolios; billion-dollar campus or portfolio experience preferred.
Experience in data centers, mission-critical facilities, advanced manufacturing, semiconductor, pharmaceutical, energy, utility, or similarly complex infrastructure; direct data center experience strongly preferred.
Advanced technical cost capability across budgets, commitments, ETC/EAC, variance, change pricing, contingency, cash flow, payment validation, and closeout.
Working knowledge of major delivery and contract models, with sufficient understanding of design, procurement, field execution, and commissioning to credibly challenge assumptions.
Strong ability to reconcile cost with schedule, progress, risk, and financial records, and present clear recommendations to executive leadership.

Nice To Haves

billion-dollar campus or portfolio experience preferred.
direct data center experience strongly preferred.

Responsibilities

Establish the operating model. Maintain cost policies, Cost Management Plans, coding, data definitions, reporting cadence, approval thresholds and escalation requirements within the Vice President's controls framework.
Align cost and schedule structures. Map the cost breakdown structure to the Project Controls WBS, procurement packages, contracts, project phases and capital categories using common status dates.
Enforce data quality. Require timely, complete and traceable support for budgets, commitments, forecasts, changes, contingency, cash flow and final account.
Validate budget completeness. Partner with Estimating, Development, Pre-Construction, Engineering and Procurement to confirm scope, market pricing, escalation, owner costs, allowances and risk-based contingency.
Create controlled budgets. Translate approved estimates and funding into documented control budgets with clear assumptions, exclusions, package ownership and funding sources.
Protect baseline integrity. Maintain original and current baselines and an audit trail for authorized transfers, supplemental funding, scope reallocations and rebaselines.
Maintain complete cost capture. Control commitments for general contractors, utilities, owner-furnished equipment, professional services, logistics, commissioning and other developer-direct scope.
Lead bottom-up forecasting. Maintain ETC and EAC based on remaining scope, pending change, productivity, schedule impacts supplied by Project Controls, escalation, claims exposure and closeout.
Reconcile and explain movement. Align actuals, accruals and commitments with Finance and identify the cause, impact, mitigation, owner and decision date for material forecast changes.
Own the cost component of change control. Maintain current and potential cost, funding, contingency impact, pricing basis, credits, commercial status and forecast treatment from identification through closeout.
Independently evaluate proposed cost. Review scope, quantities, rates, markups, general conditions, escalation, duplication, credits, entitlement and downstream commissioning impacts.
Protect the commercial record. Partner with Project Controls, Construction, Procurement, Commercial and Legal to classify cause, quantify exposure, preserve documentation and reduce claims risk.
Validate payment positions. Review schedules of value, pay applications, stored materials, retention and milestone claims against contract requirements and independently verified progress.
Reconcile cost to delivery. Compare amounts billed with work installed, procurement, quality, commissioning readiness and remaining cost; recommend approval, correction or withholding.
Quantify cost risk and opportunity. Translate the integrated risk register into cost ranges, expected exposure, mitigation cost, decision dates and forecast or contingency treatment.
Administer contingency and allowances. Maintain defensible methodology and complete records for drawdown, transfer, recovery, release, authorization and remaining balance.
Model material scenarios. Evaluate delay, acceleration, utilities, equipment, site conditions, labor, customer change and commissioning impacts using schedule analysis from Project Controls.
Align packages and awards to budget. Confirm scope boundaries, assumptions, exclusions, alternates, rates, escalation, logistics, commissioning responsibility and funding before award.
Track buyout and remaining exposure. Monitor variance, unawarded scope, gaps, overlap, long-lead equipment, freight, storage and owner-furnished-equipment interfaces; embed cost-reporting requirements in contracts.
Develop time-phased cash flow. Align cash requirements with the integrated schedule, contract terms, equipment milestones, utilities, construction progress, commissioning, retention and closeout.
Support funding and financial reconciliation. Distinguish timing variance from EAC movement and provide reliable inputs for accruals, capitalization, liquidity, funding and executive decisions while preserving project cost truth.
Own project and portfolio cost reporting. Present budget, commitments, actuals, accruals, change, ETC, EAC, variance, contingency, cash flow, cost risk and required decisions concisely.
Co-produce integrated controls views. Partner with the Senior Director, Project Controls to reconcile cost, schedule, progress, risk and change using a common data date while preserving source ownership.
Translate analysis into action. Identify systemic cost pressure and recommend decisions based on capital, delivery, customer, margin and enterprise implications.
Define cost-system requirements. Establish workflows, coding, permissions, cut-off logic, version control, audit trails and reporting across the PMIS, ERP and business-intelligence environment.
Improve quality and efficiency. Automate routine consolidation, create exception reporting and maintain historical cost, change, contingency and vendor-performance intelligence.
Lead and develop the Cost Control team. Coach the Senior Cost Manager and future resources; define staffing, roles, quality review, performance expectations and succession coverage.
Build an ownership culture. Set expectations for candor, field engagement, constructive challenge, data integrity and timely escalation rather than administrative reporting.
Improve enterprise cost literacy. Help project and functional leaders understand and act on budget, commitment, forecast, variance, contingency, cash flow and change information.
Drive final-account closeout. Resolve pending changes, open commitments, credits, retention, allowances, contingency and final forecast with Construction, Commercial, Procurement and Finance.
Return intelligence to the business. Produce a reconciled final cost record and feed estimate-to-actual, change-cause, schedule-cost and vendor lessons into future estimating, procurement and delivery decisions.