Senior Owner's Representative

Shell Mobility and Convenience USA•Houston, TX

About The Position

The Senior Owner’s Representative (SOR) is the senior field leadership role for the owner organization and provides multi-project oversight across projects executed by third-party general contractors. The SOR ensures standardized field governance, quality, safety, schedule visibility, and owner-furnished material coordination across a portfolio of active projects. In best-practice owner-side delivery models, the OR/SOR function protects the owner’s financial, technical, and operational interests across procurement, delivery, and closeout while providing independent oversight rather than direct construction execution. This role replaces the traditional General Superintendent function in a self-perform model by shifting field leadership from direct craft supervision to owner-side oversight, standard setting, field coaching, risk escalation, and contractor accountability. The SOR serves as the senior field authority for construction quality, site readiness, owner-furnished material interfaces, and execution risk across multiple projects or geographies.

Requirements

12–15+ years of progressive construction field experience with significant multi-project or regional leadership responsibility.
Prior experience as a General Superintendent, Senior Superintendent, Construction Manager, Field Operations Lead, or equivalent senior field role preferred.
Strong technical knowledge of site/civil work, underground systems, petroleum/fuel infrastructure, electrical systems, building construction, and multi-trade coordination.
Demonstrated ability to oversee field quality, safety, contractor performance, logistics, and schedule risk across multiple concurrent projects.
Experience managing or coordinating owner-furnished / contractor-installed materials, long-lead procurement interfaces, or project logistics programs preferred. OFCI leadership requires careful interface definition, schedule coordination, and risk management across procurement and installation.
Strong working knowledge of construction drawings, specifications, schedules, submittals, turnover requirements, and digital construction tools such as Procore.

Nice To Haves

Senior field leadership
Portfolio-level risk recognition
QA/QC program discipline
Supply chain and logistics governance
Contractor oversight and performance evaluation
Strong escalation judgment
Cross-functional communication
Process standardization and coaching
High credibility with PMs, contractors, and leadership

Responsibilities

Oversee field execution standards across multiple active projects, ensuring consistent owner expectations for quality, safety, reporting, schedule discipline, and contractor accountability.
Primarily focuses on complex projects while also playing a mentoring role to develop more junior Owner’s Representatives on smaller, less complex projects.
Conduct routine and targeted field visits to validate project status, challenge incomplete or inaccurate progress reporting, and identify emerging risk patterns across the portfolio.
Standardize owner-side field practices, including inspection protocols, reporting formats, milestone verification, punch discipline, and site escalation expectations. Owner’s reps add value by creating structure, accountability, and consistent oversight across complex capital projects.
Aides the Project Managers and Engineering Managers in developing and assuring project plans and contracting strategies prior to the completion of the Construction Readiness milestone and ensures quality site plans to be approved to commence construction at the Capital Investment Committee.
Direct, coach, and develop Owner’s Representatives assigned to projects or regions.
Provide technical guidance on issue recognition, escalation thresholds, contractor interaction, deficiency tracking, site documentation, and turnover readiness.
Ensure ORs are consistently applying company standards and not drifting into contractor means-and-methods control. Must understand and maintain the principals of mode 2 contracting.
Mentor the field oversight organization so it can scale as project volume expands.
Establish and enforce owner-side QA/QC expectations across all projects, including milestone inspections, hold points, acceptance criteria, and turnover standards.
Audit field inspection quality, deficiency closure discipline, and adherence to approved submittals, specifications, and brand requirements.
Lead responses to major quality failures, repeated non-conforming work, chronic punch list issues, and commissioning-readiness concerns.
Drive consistency in owner-side site safety expectations and escalation of significant HSSE concerns across all active projects.
Validate that OR teams are identifying and raising regulatory, environmental, and life-safety issues promptly and consistently.
Interface with HSSE, Project Management, and contractors on serious incidents, stop-work concerns, or repeated compliance failures.
Provide senior-level field assessment of general contractors and key subcontractors based on quality, schedule reliability, coordination effectiveness, responsiveness, and execution discipline.
Identify recurring contractor performance issues across regions or project types and recommend corrective actions, restrictions, or reassignment.
Support Project Managers and vendor strategy leaders with field-driven performance intelligence for contractor selection and governance.
Lead the field governance model for owner-provided / owner-furnished materials and equipment, ensuring clear interfaces between procurement, logistics, storage, installation, inspection, and turnover. OFCI introduces a separate owner-to-contractor interface that must be explicitly managed through clear responsibilities and handoffs.
Establish standards for owner-furnished material tracking, including long-lead item visibility, release dates, submittal approval dependency, site readiness, storage responsibility, receipt inspection, damage reporting, shortage escalation, and installation sequencing.
Review projects for supply chain exposure tied to long-lead equipment, constrained materials, imported equipment, proprietary systems, or owner-standardized asset packages. OFCI is often used to secure price advantages, standardization, and early procurement of long-lead items, but it shifts additional risk to the owner for the upstream supply chain.
Ensure OR teams are actively validating whether owner-furnished material delivery timing matches construction sequencing and whether early or late deliveries could impact schedule, storage costs, or damage exposure.
Partner with Procurement, Project Managers, and contractors to resolve systemic problems related to materials availability, incomplete shipments, field damage, missing components, and installation readiness.
Drive lessons learned and standard work for owner-provided materials so that supply chain issues do not erode the benefits of direct procurement.
Independently evaluate whether contractor schedules reflect realistic site conditions, predecessor logic, material availability, utility readiness, inspections, and commissioning constraints.
Identify systemic schedule threats across the portfolio, including recurring procurement failures, contractor understaffing, permit delays, utility coordination issues, design gaps, and owner-furnished material disruptions.
Escalate major risk exposures to leadership with recommended mitigation plans, recovery actions, or portfolio-level interventions.
Serve as the senior field counterpart to Project Management by providing independent field validation rather than replacing PM accountability.
Partner with Construction Controls to support progress validation, change visibility, documentation integrity, and closeout completeness.
Provide constructability, logistics, and field-readiness feedback to Preconstruction and Procurement before project mobilization or owner-furnished material release decisions.
Reinforce disciplined use of Procore or equivalent tools for issue logging, field reporting, inspections, photo management, and turnover support.
Produce regional/project health insights for leadership covering quality trends, repeat contractor deficiencies, supply chain risks, owner-furnished material exceptions, safety issues, and turnover readiness.
Recommend and implement standard operating practices for ORs regarding inspections, delivery readiness, owner-furnished material receiving, deficiency escalation, and field audit protocols.
Lead closeout reviews and lessons learned to improve capital delivery consistency across future projects.