VP, Planning

Outform Group•Chicago, IL

About The Position

The Vice President of Planning is the enterprise’s central orchestrator of workload visibility, project flow, and operational readiness across a highly complex, high-mix retail fixture business operating at scale. Reporting to the Chief Operating Officer and sitting at the intersection of Commercial, Development, Outsourced Manufacturing, and North American Operations, this role functions as the organization’s air-traffic controller—ensuring every project moves through the lifecycle with clarity, predictability, and disciplined adherence to standards. This executive leads the planning ecosystem for a $350M organization scaling to $500M, building the tools, governance, and cross-functional behaviors required to support rapid growth, tight timelines, and high customer expectations across multiple industries. The VP of Planning owns the enterprise’s timeline standards, project lifecycle gate tool, estimating function, and Account Program Management (APM) organization—ensuring that every job is accurately estimated, properly planned, risk-managed, and executed with speed and transparency. The company operates in a short-run, high-mix environment that designs and engineers fixtures in-house, outsources mass production (primarily to China and North American partners), and then brings components or finished goods into its domestic facilities for kitting, assembly, and pick-and-pack. The VP of Planning ensures that every project is routed to the right outsourced vendor based on capacity, capability, and load, and then strategically assigns the appropriate North American facility for downstream operations based on real-time enterprise visibility. The Estimating function under this role is not limited to cost calculation. The VP of Planning owns the margin integrity of the estimating process, ensuring that estimates reflect both actual production costs and client-perceived value. The Estimating team leverages market pricing data, historical cost archives, BOM information, vendor price sheets, and a perceived value framework (Commodity, Structured, Urgent, Complex) to generate pricing recommendations that maximize conversion rates and protect contribution margins. This strategic pricing intelligence—integrated with the AI Estimating Platform—is what differentiates Outform’s estimating function from a basic cost calculator. Partnering closely with Design, Development, Procurement, and Manufacturing, the VP develops and manages the progress of jobs, identifying risks along the way and partnering with the various teams to effectuate mitigation strategies, while building and scaling the planning infrastructure—systems, tools, processes, and talent—to enable predictable execution, reduce organizational friction, and ensure the company can absorb increasing volume and complexity without compromising speed, quality, or margin.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Operations Management, Business, or related field; MBA or advanced degree preferred.
12+ years of progressive experience in program management, planning, or operations leadership within custom-engineered, ETO (engineer-to-order), or job-shop manufacturing environments.
Proven experience managing multi-functional program delivery across development, procurement, manufacturing, and logistics in a matrixed organization.
Strong background in cost estimation, should-cost modeling, and pricing strategy for custom-manufactured products.
Proficiency in project management tools (Smartsheet, Monday.com, MS Project, or equivalent) and ERP systems (D365 preferred).
Experience with CRM systems (Sugar CRM or equivalent) and understanding of sales pipeline dynamics.
Demonstrated ability to build planning infrastructure and systems that scale with organizational growth.
Strong cross-functional influence, executive communication, and stakeholder management skills.
Experience operating in global environments with manufacturing in multiple regions (U.S., China, EMEA).
Willingness to travel up to 50% domestically and internationally.

Nice To Haves

Experience with perceived value pricing, blended margin models, or strategic pricing frameworks is highly desirable.
Familiarity with AI/ML applications in estimation, pricing, or operational planning is a strong plus.

Responsibilities

Enterprise Planning & Project Flow
Orchestrate project flow across Commercial, Design, Development, outsourced manufacturing, and North American operations.
Maintain a single source of truth for enterprise workload and capacity.
Ensure predictable execution through disciplined planning and prioritization.
Anticipate bottlenecks and collaboratively adjust routing before they impact timelines.
Develop and update standard workback schedules for each vertical and project type, against which actual projects are measured to provide variance visibility and support integrated prioritization.
Own the enterprise program planning function.
Ensure every client program has a structured GANTT plan with milestones, dependencies, critical path identification, and risk flags.
Proactively identify and manage delivery risks.
Develop risk mitigation plans for schedule threats, material delays, engineering changes, capacity constraints, and client-driven timeline shifts.
Timeline Standards & Lifecycle Governance
Establish and enforce enterprise timeline standards across all functional pods.
Own and continuously improve the project lifecycle gate tool with defined entry and exit criteria per gate.
Ensure real-time visibility into job status, risks, and dependencies.
Drive consistent planning behaviors and accountability across teams.
Establish and enforce a standardized planning cadence: kickoff meetings, weekly status reviews, milestone gates, and escalation protocols.
Capacity-Based Routing
Partnering with Development and Procurement, direct project routing into outsourced vendors based on load, capability, cost, historical OTIF performance, and known capacity constraints.
Partnering with Development and Manufacturing, assign North American facilities for kitting, assembly, and pick-and-pack based on capacity and readiness.
Maintain forward-looking visibility into vendor and facility constraints.
Optimize routing decisions to protect timelines and margin.
Note: Planning recommends routing based on capacity, load, and historical performance. Procurement executes the commercial relationship and PO. Manufacturing owns production execution at the assigned facility.
Client-Facing Coordination & Commercial Support
Support the Commercial team as the operational voice in client-facing program discussions.
Provide delivery timelines, feasibility assessments, and program status updates to clients in partnership with Account Directors.
Ensure client expectations are managed proactively—providing early warning on potential delays, alternatives, and recovery plans.
Partner with Commercial leadership to align program planning with client priorities, contract milestones, and revenue recognition timelines.
Ensure the APM team operates as a trusted extension of the Commercial team in client relationships—professional, responsive, and solutions-oriented.
Estimating Leadership & Pricing Intelligence
Lead and scale the Estimating function to support rapid growth and speed-to-market.
Implement robust estimating methodologies, tools, and data structures.
Improve accuracy, throughput, and repeatability of estimates.
Ensure estimates incorporate both cost-based logic (materials, labor, technology, freight, tariffs, tooling, installation) and perceived value logic (Commodity, Structured, Urgent, Complex classification from Sugar CRM).
Protect the company from margin dilution by establishing pricing guardrails, margin floors, and escalation protocols when estimates fall below target thresholds.
Target contribution margin ranges: 45–60% standard, up to 65% for high-value complex projects.
Implement blended margin logic that allocates variable markups across materials, technology, and services to achieve target overall margins while reflecting client-perceived value.
Create and maintain target price optimization capabilities—enabling the Commercial team to explore trade-offs between cost, quality, and timeline when clients provide budget constraints.
Ensure the Estimating team maintains and continuously improves the cost database—including historical job data, vendor price sheets, BOM information, market pricing benchmarks, freight rates, tariff schedules, and HS code references.
Establish a should-cost methodology for key categories in partnership with Procurement and provide pricing benchmarks to the Commercial team.
Integrate estimating outputs into planning, costing, and commercial decisions.
Drive adoption and use of AI and other tools to further augment and enhance the scalability and capabilities of the Estimating function, including the AI Estimating Platform with its two-engine architecture (Cost Engine and Value Engine).
Margin Protection & Commercial Viability
Serve as the margin integrity gatekeeper in the estimating process.
Ensure every estimate reflects Outform’s target contribution margin ranges.
Establish a structured review process for estimates below margin thresholds, requiring COO or Commercial leadership approval for exceptions.
Track and report margin performance: quoted margin vs. actual margin by client, project type, and vertical.
Identify and address systematic margin erosion patterns.
Partner with Finance to ensure estimating assumptions align with financial targets, cost structures, and profitability expectations.
Monitor competitive pricing dynamics and adjust estimating frameworks to maintain Outform’s competitive position while protecting margins.
Account Program Management (APM) Oversight
Ensure APMs drive disciplined timeline management and proactive risk escalation.
Strengthen communication between Commercial, Development, and Operations.
Oversee billing accuracy and timely financial handoffs.
Build a culture of structured updates, early warnings, and customer-focused execution.
Drive adoption and use of AI and other tools to further augment and enhance the scalability and capabilities of the APM function.
Enterprise Visibility & Reporting
Deliver concise executive-level reporting on job status, risks, and capacity.
Provide forward-looking insights that inform operational and commercial decisions.
Establish dashboards and KPIs that drive alignment and accountability.
Ensure leadership has clear visibility into readiness, constraints, and priorities.
Scalable Systems, Tools & Processes
Build the planning infrastructure required to scale from $350M to $500M+.
Implement tools and governance that improve predictability and reduce friction.
Standardize planning workflows across pods and facilities.
Develop talent and leadership depth across Planning, Estimating, and APM.
Develop and maintain a RACI matrix linking Planning, Estimating, cross-functional alignment, and Planning KPIs.
Cross-Functional Alignment
Align Commercial, Development, Procurement, and Operations around shared priorities.
Ensure seamless handoffs and synchronized execution across the lifecycle.
Drive enterprise-level decision-making based on data and capacity realities.
Serve as the organization’s air-traffic controller, balancing speed and control.