Senior Vice President, Operations (Prominent Construction Company)

20/20 Foresight has been exclusively retained to recruit a Senior Vice President to lead day-to-day operations for a national, privately owned commercial construction company based in Greater Los Angeles. This is a top leadership role, reporting directly into the President, with responsibility for driving performance, strategy, innovation, and process across the company's nine national offices. It is a high-impact position that blends hands-on execution with long-term company growth.

Company

With a 60-year history, our client is a leading national commercial construction company that has designed and built more than 121 million square feet of commercial, industrial, warehouse and distribution, retail, institutional, hospitality, casino, and recreational facilities across the country. The company specializes in design-build project delivery with a primary focus on concrete tilt-up warehouse construction, while also serving clients in the tenant improvement, retail, and hospitality sectors. Its multi-office platform allows it to operate across diverse markets and regulatory environments.

Position

The Senior Vice President serves as the President's right hand — a trusted senior leader who helps drive the management and direction of the company across all nine offices. This role carries two equally significant areas of focus.

The first is contract administration and legal coordination: serving as the company's primary internal resource for managing contractual relationships, negotiating agreements, and coordinating with outside counsel as needed. A strong command of construction contracts and construction law is essential to this function.

The second is a broad and evolving portfolio of special projects and operational responsibilities assigned by the President. A significant component of this is partnering with the President to build, implement, and maintain standard operating procedures across all nine offices, ensuring consistency, quality, and accountability throughout the organization. Beyond SOPs, this work may span operational, financial, organizational, or strategic subject matter and requires someone who brings sound judgment, leadership ability, and the capacity to move quickly on complex problems with limited direction.

This is not a narrowly defined position. The right candidate will be a versatile senior leader, equally comfortable negotiating a prime contract and leading a company-wide operational initiative.

Responsibilities

Leadership & Company Management

• Serve as a senior leadership resource to the President, providing counsel and support across company operations, strategic decisions, and organizational priorities
• Help drive consistency, standardization, and operational controls across all nine offices, ensuring company policies and practices are applied uniformly
• Act as a trusted liaison between the President and the broader organization, stepping in to represent, manage, or elevate matters as needed
• Identify and surface operational gaps, risks, or inefficiencies across the company and collaborate with the appropriate teams to address them

Contract Administration & Legal Coordination

• Lead negotiation of subcontract general terms with vendors and trade subcontractors, ensuring agreements are consistent with company risk standards and project requirements
• Negotiate third-party owner contracts, including prime contracts, design-build agreements, and related project delivery documents
• Negotiate and manage master consulting agreements with architects, engineers, and other project consultants
• Serve as the primary internal resource for project teams across all nine offices on contract interpretation, risk assessment, claims, and dispute resolution
• Coordinate with the company's outside counsel network — locally retained construction attorneys in each of the nine markets — when regional legal input or litigation support is needed
• Monitor construction law developments, lien laws, licensing requirements, and regulatory changes across all operating jurisdictions
• Proactively identify contractual risk or legal exposure across company operations and bring forward recommendations to the President

Standard Operating Procedures

• Work alongside the President to identify areas of the business where formal SOPs are needed, underdeveloped, or inconsistently followed across offices
• Lead the drafting, refinement, and documentation of SOPs across operational, administrative, legal, and project management functions
• Develop rollout and training plans to ensure new or updated SOPs are effectively communicated and adopted at each of the nine offices
• Establish a system for monitoring SOP compliance and adherence across the organization, surfacing gaps or deviations for corrective action
• Maintain and update the company's SOP library on an ongoing basis, ensuring procedures remain current as the business evolves, regulations change, or new offices are added
• Serve as the internal point of accountability for SOP consistency — the person who ensures that what is written on paper is actually being practiced in the field and in the office

Special Projects

• Own and execute high-priority initiatives assigned by the President, which will vary widely in subject matter and scope
• Projects may span organizational development, operational improvement, financial oversight, vendor or client relationships, office-level performance, or any other area of company business
• Examples may include managing the company's bonding program, overseeing a specific vendor relationship, leading an internal process improvement initiative, or addressing an emerging risk in a particular office or market
• Review company payroll with a focus on job costing accuracy — ensuring labor costs are correctly allocated to the appropriate projects, cost codes, and phases; identify and investigate mischarges or coding errors before they compound into material budget variances
• Collaborate with project managers and accounting to validate that payroll entries align with actual field activity and project budgets, and help establish consistent job costing standards across all nine offices

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree required; advanced degree in law, business, or a related field is a plus
• A Juris Doctor (JD) and/or active bar admission is not required but would be considered a meaningful added benefit
• Prior experience working closely with outside construction counsel or managing legal matters in a construction business is strongly preferred
• Thorough understanding of construction contract structures, including design‑build, GC/subcontractor, owner‑contractor, and consulting agreements
• Familiarity with AIA contract documents, ConsensusDocs, and negotiated construction agreement forms
• Working knowledge of construction claims, delay analysis, differing site conditions, and dispute resolution (litigation, arbitration, mediation)
• Understanding of construction lien law, bonding, licensing, and regulatory requirements — multi‑state experience is a strong plus
• Multi‑office or multi‑market experience strongly preferred
• Experience managing or coordinating outside counsel relationships across multiple jurisdictions is a plus
• Exposure to design‑build project delivery and concrete tilt‑up construction is an advantage

Personal Skills & Attributes

• Strong operational instincts — able to identify problems, build solutions, and implement changes across a decentralized structure
• Comfortable working in a privately held, entrepreneurial environment where priorities shift and the work is rarely neatly defined
• Operates with an ownership mindset — takes responsibility for outcomes, follows through without being managed, and treats the company's interests as their own
• Comfortable pushing back when risk outweighs reward — has the confidence and credibility to tell the President or a project team when a contract term, a deal, or a course of action isn't in the company's best interest, and can make that case clearly
• Clear communicator with both executives and field leadership — equally effective in a boardroom conversation and a job site discussion; able to translate complexity into language that resonates at every level of the organization
• Practical, decisive, and disciplined — doesn't over-complicate problems or stall on decisions; brings a bias toward action grounded in sound judgment
• Strong negotiator who can protect company interests while maintaining productive working relationships with owners, vendors, and consultants
• High degree of discretion and professionalism across sensitive business and contractual matters
• Self-directed, well-organized, and capable of operating without extensive administrative support