Senior Director, Project Controls

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

1d•Hybrid

About The Position

5C Data Centers is a rapidly scaling data center developer building national execution capability across large, complex, power-driven campuses. We support hyperscale, AI/high-density, powered land, and multi-building data center programs from site development and power planning through construction delivery, commissioning, and customer turnover. As we build our Project Controls function from the ground up, we're looking for a Senior Director, Project Controls to create the standards, governance, tools, and lean team that give leadership reliable visibility into schedule, progress, risk, and portfolio execution health. This is a foundational, hands-on leadership role for someone who can bring order to ambiguity while supporting active projects in real time.

Requirements

15+ years of progressive experience in project controls, scheduling, construction management, program controls, or related delivery roles in data centers, mission-critical, industrial, power, or large capital projects.
Demonstrated experience building or materially improving project controls processes, teams, reporting standards, and governance models in complex project environments.
Strong technical knowledge of CPM scheduling, baseline development, critical path and float analysis, resource/cost loading, recovery planning, and change/time impact evaluation.
Experience leading schedulers, project controls managers, consultants, or cross-functional controls contributors across multiple concurrent projects or a large program.
Ability to create order in ambiguous, early-stage, rapidly scaling environments with limited existing process and high expectations for execution speed.
Working knowledge of cost control, cash flow, forecasting, earned value, contingency, procurement, risk management, and construction execution.
Experience developing executive reports, portfolio dashboards, and decision-oriented materials for senior leadership.
Strong stakeholder leadership skills, with the ability to influence cross-functional teams and executives without relying solely on direct authority.

Responsibilities

Build the Project Controls Function from the Ground Up: Create the Project Controls charter, service model, RACI, governance cadence, role definitions, staffing roadmap, consultant support model, standards, templates, and implementation plan for a lean organization. Establish practical processes for schedule development, baseline approval, update cycles, variance analysis, progress measurement, change impact review, recovery planning, and executive reporting. Operate hands-on during the early build-out by developing schedules, reviewing contractor updates, building dashboards, producing reports, and coaching project teams until resources and processes mature.
Portfolio and Mega-Campus Schedule Leadership: Define and manage the company schedule architecture across L1 executive milestones, L2 campus roadmaps, L3 project baselines, L4 contractor schedules, and L5 detailed work plans. Ensure schedules integrate land, permits, power delivery, utility interconnection, design, procurement, long-lead equipment, sitework, building construction, commissioning, controls, customer witness testing, turnover, and operations readiness. Review schedule quality, logic, critical path, float, constraints, calendars, sequencing, interfaces, and recovery assumptions to ensure schedules are credible decision-making tools rather than reporting artifacts.
Lead Project Controls Managers and Schedulers: Recruit, lead, coach, and scale a lean team of Project Controls Managers and Schedulers capable of supporting multiple high-value campuses through consistent standards and disciplined prioritization. Define expectations for project-level controls ownership, scheduler engagement, reporting quality, schedule update discipline, risk escalation, and cross-functional stakeholder support. Use a fit-for-purpose resourcing model that combines internal leaders, shared schedulers, contractor schedule requirements, consultant augmentation, and automated reporting where practical.
Baseline Management, Progress Measurement, and Forecasting: Establish baseline development, baseline approval, rebaseline, recovery schedule, and forecast update processes that protect commitment integrity while allowing the business to respond to legitimate changes. Create consistent progress measurement methods for engineering, procurement, permitting, sitework, construction, commissioning, controls, turnover, and customer delivery milestones. Drive forward-looking forecasting by requiring variance explanations, risk-adjusted milestone projections, recovery actions, accountable owners, and clear decision points.
Cost, Cash Flow, and Forecast Integration: Partner with Cost Control, Finance, Procurement, and Construction Delivery to connect schedule status with cash flow, commitments, cost-to-complete, contingency drawdown, procurement timing, and executive forecasts. Support earned value, productivity, trend, quantity, and progress-to-cost analysis where useful, without overbuilding systems beyond what the lean organization can maintain. Ensure schedule delays, procurement shifts, recovery plans, and change events are translated into financial, customer, capital deployment, and liquidity-readiness implications.
Risk, Issues, Change, and Time Impact Governance: Build a practical risk, issue, change, and decision-log framework that identifies schedule threats, documents assumptions, assigns owners, tracks mitigation actions, and escalates unresolved constraints. Establish time impact analysis, schedule fragnet, recovery schedule, delay analysis, and change-impact review standards for owner decisions, contractor changes, customer changes, and executive approvals. Partner with Legal, Commercial, Procurement, Construction, and Cost Control to reduce claims exposure, preserve contract rights, evaluate entitlement, and support fact-based negotiation.
Planning and Development (PLaD), Pre-Construction, and Readiness Integration: Engage early with Planning and Development (PLaD) and the Pre-Construction team so site diligence, power strategy, permitting, design readiness, procurement timing, early works, logistics, and construction sequencing are reflected in integrated milestone plans. Define project controls inputs required before major governance gates, funding requests, customer commitments, procurement releases, construction mobilization, commissioning windows, and turnover commitments. Support constructability, feasibility, and delivery planning reviews by validating schedule assumptions, critical path logic, constraints, risks, and readiness requirements.
Procurement, Vendor, and Commissioning Schedule Integration: Integrate long-lead equipment, off-site manufacturing, vendor data, factory testing, logistics, installation windows, energization, L1-L5/IST commissioning, controls validation, and turnover dependencies into baseline schedules. Partner with Procurement, Engineering, Controls, Commissioning & Quality, contractors, vendors, and integrators to identify decision dates, submittal needs, fabrication durations, delivery constraints, inspection points, and schedule risks. Ensure procurement and vendor delays are visible early enough for executives to make informed decisions on acceleration, resequencing, alternate sourcing, customer commitments, and contingency actions.
Executive Reporting, Governance, and Investor Readiness: Create concise weekly, monthly, and executive-level reporting that communicates milestone health, critical path, variance drivers, open decisions, recovery actions, risk exposure, and cross-functional accountability. Develop portfolio dashboards and governance materials suitable for executive leadership, board updates, investor diligence, lender diligence, customer discussions, and capital allocation decisions. Translate technical schedule and controls issues into plain business language focused on customer commitments, capital timing, schedule certainty, cost exposure, risk, and enterprise value.
Tools, Standards, Training, and Continuous Improvement: Select, configure, or rationalize project controls tools appropriate for a lean scaling organization, including CPM scheduling, reporting, dashboarding, risk tracking, document integration, and data governance needs. Create standard operating procedures, schedule specifications, reporting templates, KPI definitions, contractor requirements, data quality checks, and training materials that can scale across projects and regions. Establish a lessons-learned feedback loop from active projects, contractor performance, schedule misses, commissioning delays, utility constraints, and customer turnover into future planning and baseline assumptions.