Associate Director, Project Delivery Lead, Pacific Northwest

Sidewalk Labs is an urban innovation company working to make cities more sustainable and affordable for all. We create products, invest in new companies, and help plan innovative places around the world. Since our founding in 2015, we’ve grown into an organization of over 100 employees based primarily in New York City. Our cross-disciplinary team consists of experts from real estate, urban planning, government, finance, technology, and engineering, among other backgrounds.

We’ve launched innovative companies addressing urban mobility, next-generation infrastructure, and community-based healthcare, and invested in startups working on everything from robotic furniture to digital electricity. We continue to work internally on projects such as factory-made mass timber construction that can improve housing affordability and sustainability, a digital master-planning tool designed to help developers and communities achieve shared objectives, and a new approach to all-electric neighborhoods.

With the potential to catalyze and scale new models for sustainable and affordable growth, our work is both exciting and complex. We are working to achieve something unprecedented — help us build it!

To date, we've incubated and invested in multiple companies focused on solving urban problems.  

We now seek to create an offsite construction company delivering high-quality mass timber buildings for more sustainable living and working. The company's end-to-end approach will combine craft design and advanced manufacturing to produce customizable building components with speed and certainty, which will then be combined with a delivery approach where we work with established construction leaders to deliver complete projects. It will be based in the Pacific Northwest. This company’s efforts will include:

• Using advanced digital manufacturing techniques to deliver a better product, faster, at a price point that is competitive with traditional construction techniques.
• Producing prefabricated mass timber components (floor cassettes, structural members, facade panels, and walls), which will be transported to a customer’s development site for assembly.
• Being a solutions provider that will work with best-in-class builders to deliver complete projects to developers with a goal of making a timber building the “easy” choice.

With the potential to catalyze and scale new models for inclusive growth, our work is both highly exciting and complex. We are working to achieve something unprecedented — help us build it!

This foundational role connects real estate developer customers (sourced through our Business Development team) with our building product and oversees the process to deliver completed projects to them. You will be a project delivery leader for the business, reporting to the Director of Delivery. This role will provide potential clients with a technical orientation to our factory-based building system and assess technical feasibility for our customer and buildings pipeline in the Pacific Northwest. Once a project is undertaken, this role will lead the project team through design and delivery. 

As an essential member of our startup team, you have an opportunity to shape the way we engage with developers and their technical teams, and to make critical connections between our clients, our product, our production process and our project delivery strategy. Over time, as you and the business  grow, this role will evolve to deliver new, better building typology into the market through our first buildings.

Your primary focus during the early months will be supporting our Business Development Lead in assessing project opportunities with developers of buildings that can be efficiently produced from our Factory Kit-of-Parts and leading feasibility and early design work. The Business Development Lead will be primarily focused on the business aspects of the project while you’ll be primarily focused on the design and delivery. As projects advance over time, your role will be to carry projects through design, fabrication, site delivery, and project close out.

Reviewing these early opportunities will also build our knowledge of what type of buildings our factory is most competitive at executing, as well as which developers and jurisdictions are most important for the factory to focus on.

The primary area of focus will be leading the delivery of a project, entailing:

• Creating the overall project approach and schedule with the Project Delivery team and establishing yourself as the Project point of contact for the developer.
• Establishing and managing the external design (A/E) and construction teams to make sure skilled resources are engaged appropriately and efficiently.
• Defining the Scope of Work for all entities involved in the project (developer, GC, design team(s), etc.) and ensuring its delivery.
• Coordinating internal teams (see below) to achieve project goals.
• Refining the project delivery process to improve efficiency for the next project.

A key element to your work will be maintaining strong coordination between all internal teams as we move projects from pitch to delivering the final building, including: 

• Business Development Team: analyzing project feasibility and fit for a client and site, and establishing working partnerships with clients.
• Product Team: architectural feasibility and application of specific timber components to fit the project needs.
• Production Team: coordinating project components, cost, schedules, production timelines, etc.
• Delivery Team: overseeing internal and external project consultants and contractors, and managing project approvals, budget, and schedule.
• Business Service Team: Coordinating input on financial, legal, and support services.

We believe the following is essential: 

• You are known as a strong project leader in the Pacific Northwest 

• You have 7+ years of experience in design, construction and overall project management across all phases of a project to deliver commercial and multi-family buildings.  
• Experience and connections in the regional design, construction and development market that lend credibility.
• You have a nuanced understanding of the problem you’re solving, e.g. thorough experience in the real estate or construction business, or as a client or supplier to them.
• You have a deep practical understanding of working with projects from the feasibility process to final construction completion for projects of 30,000 to 400,000 square feet.

• Hands-on practical experience with getting buildings built and delivered

• You have experience in project managing residential and commercial projects up to 400,000 square feet, including selection and management of A/E teams, building contractors, and a broad range of professional consultants.
• You have the organizational skills to create budget and schedules, manage junior staff and keep a multidisciplinary team working together to deliver building projects.
• You have entitlement experience, not to run an entitlement process, but to understand regional approach to entitlement workflow.
• You have completed buildings (including punch list items) and successfully commissioned and obtained certificates of occupancy so that they can be occupied in a timely manner.
• You have successfully guided development projects through government permitting and approval entities.
• You are software savvy on numerous design/construction software platforms (e.g. Revit, scheduling software, spreadsheets, etc.).

• Effective in building something new

• You have experience leading project innovations from concept to operation, working through all the stages and ambiguities along the way.
• You have strong communication skills to present projects to clients, investors and jurisdictional authorities to align them on projects plans, schedules, and costs.
• You are skilled at collaborating across diverse teams of experts to achieve a single goal.

Success in this role will result in smooth and predictable processes to assess project feasibility, a proven strategy for designing and delivering projects, a larger team to execute additional projects, and the establishment of our new business unit as a trusted and reliable business partner across multiple markets.  

After 3 months, you will have:

• Understood the Kit of Parts products, along with the buyout elements, and how they apply to different building typologies.
• Understood the manufacturing process of the Kit of Parts enough to explain the unique and value-add elements to potential developer clients and their technical teams.
• Understood the delivery strategies proposed by our business, including issues related to cost, schedule, site logistics and working with construction and installation partners.
• Developed an early project assessment tool — in collaboration with other team members — and applied it to multiple potential projects.
• Aligned on goals for reaching the first 1 million square feet of building construction with our Business Development and Delivery teams.

After 6 months you will have:

• Taken 10+ project opportunities through feasibility analysis
• Successfully collaborated with the Business Development Lead to obtain commitments for two development projects in the region.
• Established project teams — including internal and external resources — and started execution on the two development projects.
• Put us on track to coordinate with the Fabrication team the first 1 million square feet produced by the factory.

After 12 months you will:

• Be actively working with a team to deliver our first building, including helping to establish successful processes for advancing delivery work.
• Have supported Business Development Lead to identify 10 additional opportunities for projects, and obtain commitments for two additional development projects in the region.
• Have taken 5 of the above through feasibility analysis.
• Have refined the plan for working with developers, designers and builders to reach the first 1 million square feet goal, have outlined a plan to become the "go to" building solution for developers in the region, and be actively working to expand our market.

We are very excited to hear from you.

The community of the future is a place for everyone, and Sidewalk Labs is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We encourage individuals from underrepresented groups to apply. All employment is based on merit and business needs.