Project Manager, Mass Timber Factory

Who are we?

Sidewalk Labs is an urban innovation company that tackles cities' greatest challenges. We create products and solutions, invest in new companies, and help developers build more sustainable, innovative, and equitable places around the world. Our ambitious vision requires us to push ourselves beyond conventional thinking, and we work hard in pursuit of our mission. Our cross-disciplinary team consists of experts from real estate, urban planning, government, finance, technology, and engineering, among other backgrounds.

Our urban innovations include Delve (a generative design product that empowers real estate teams to design better, faster, with less risk), Mesa (an easy-install kit for commercial buildings that cuts energy costs, improves tenant comfort, and simplifies building operations), Pebble (a low-cost vehicle sensor to help manage parking and curb space), and Affordable Electrification (a new way to manage home energy use to meet a customer’s monthly budget). We're also developing an offsite construction company that can deliver high-quality mass timber buildings for more sustainable living and working.

With the potential to radically improve quality of life in cities for all, our work is both exciting and complex. We are working to achieve something unprecedented — help us build it!

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 better buildings, 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 timber buildings the “easy” choice.

What is the role?

You will be responsible for managing our building delivery projects throughout the entire cycle of a project. In the early stages of a project, you will work with the Project Delivery and Business Development Leads to support our engagement with clients and to gather and organize project information that will inform the internal decision-making process. During the design phase, you will manage the day-to-day work of our consultant teams (architectural design, structural engineering, MEP, code analysis, energy, fire and life safety, etc.) as they provide design assistance or design lead services on our projects. In this capacity, you’ll oversee design deliverables, budgets, and schedules, and take the lead in coordination of our consultant teams with internal resources. During the construction phase, you’ll work with our construction management and installation partners, managing project delivery budgets and schedules, and coordination with our production team.

As a key member of our startup team, you have an opportunity to shape the way we organize projects, help to develop and test tools for project management, and refine our approach to delivering quality results for clients. This role will require engagement with a wide range of professionals across the life of a project, with the goal of advancing the aspects of the project that are the direct responsibility of the factory team.

Your primary areas of focus during the early months will be supporting our Project Delivery Lead in assessing project opportunities with developers of buildings that can be efficiently produced from our Factory Kit-of-Parts and working with other members of the Delivery team to support ongoing projects. As projects advance over time, your role will be to work with both internal teams and external consultant teams to advance projects through design, fabrication, site delivery, and close out.

The primary area of focus will be project management across the life cycle of a building project, entailing:

• During the early engagement phase: organizing and providing background materials on our system for early client engagement meetings, including details on market, price, system capabilities, and previous projects.
• During the early assessment phase: working with the Project Delivery Lead and internal team members to manage the work necessary to assess potential projects in early feasibility stages, and deliver a clear assessment of the value of a project.
• During the design phase: working with the Project Delivery Lead and internal team members to define project needs and create a project management plan, and then take ownership of that plan, including coordinating with clients and their design teams, overseeing our consultants, and working with internal teams to align on design, schedule, scope, budget and process.
• During the construction phase: managing the process for selecting installation partners, working with site managers, and coordinating production schedules with the fabrication team.
• Throughout a project, you will be responsible for helping to develop and manage key documents and information, including project goals, designs, schedules, budgets and the overall process for advancing work.

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 and structural 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.

What We Expect

We believe the following is essential:

• You have 2-5 years of experience working on increasingly complex design and construction projects
  • You have worked on a variety of building types, including multi-family residential and mixed-use commercial.
  • You have worked on projects that are larger than 50,000 square feet.
  • You have worked on projects throughout their life-cycle, including interactions with owners, consultant teams, builders and suppliers.
  • You have experience with facilitating bids from suppliers and subcontractors on different contract types (e.g. purchase orders, professional service agreements, etc.).
  • You have experience with managing project budgets and financials, overseeing project buyout and tracking change orders through a project's progress.
  • You have experience developing a project schedule, and tracking a project schedule through design, permit, procurement, construction, and close-out.
• Strong Organizational, Communication and Project Management Skills
  • You have experience organizing processes, and managing teams of professionals across the life-cycle of a project — from concept to construction, working through all the stages and ambiguities along the way.
  • You have strong written, oral, and visual communication skills to advance key project issues with clients, consultants, jurisdictional authorities, builders, suppliers and others.
  • You have experience creating and overseeing critical management tools/documents for a project, including budgets, schedules, org charts, process flow diagrams, RACI charts, etc.
  • You are skilled at collaborating across diverse teams of experts to achieve a single goal.

What You Will Accomplish

Success in this role will result in smooth and predictable processes to manage the key information and outcomes for a project across its entire life cycle.

After 3 months, you will:

• Understand the Kit of Parts product, along with the buyout elements, and how they apply to different building typologies.
• Understand the manufacturing process of the Kit of Parts enough to map out the key interactions between manufacturing and delivery teams as part of the project management process.
• Understand the delivery strategies proposed by our business, including issues related to cost, schedule, site logistics, and working with construction and installation partners, and started to build processes and documents to support these delivery strategies
• Have supported the development of an early project assessment tool — in collaboration with other team members — and applied it to multiple potential projects.
• Have started work as a project manager, or assisting the project manager, on a minimum of two projects.
• Have started to engage with potential CM and project installation partners to define roles and responsibilities in project delivery.

After 6 months you will have:

• Taken 6+ project opportunities through feasibility analysis and 2-3 through concept design
• Refined project management processes and documents, and developed ‘buy-in’ and full participation across the factory team regarding roles and responsibilities for project delivery
• Helped to shape the content of our early engagement materials, including use of data from ongoing projects to update and inform business development materials

After 12 months you will:

• Be actively working with an internal and external team to manage the delivery of our first buildings, including oversight of all key project delivery tools tools and organizational documents
• Have worked with the Delivery Team and across the business to establish successful processes for advancing delivery work

We are very excited to hear from you.

Sidewalk Labs is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We actively seek applicants from underrepresented communities. Even if you are not 100% sure you are right for the role, please apply and we will be happy to consider your application. All employment is based on merit and business need, and we respond to each application we receive.