The Work

As Program Director you run a community college district's entire construction program. Not one building. Every capital project the district has going at once, plus the ones that have not started yet.

Bond measures already pay for work in the ground, and a new $375 million measure passed in 2022, so there are at least five more years of building ahead. You decide what gets built and in what order, you keep the money and the calendar honest, and you are the person the district calls when something is going wrong.

Week to week that means setting the sequence and the budgets, choosing and directing the architects, checking the builders' numbers against your own, watching every schedule against the academic calendar, and telling the district early when a project starts to drift. You run the reporting that keeps all of it visible, so nobody finds out about a problem late.

A real part of the job is public. Bond money is taxpayer money, so you present to the governing board, you sit with the citizens oversight committee, and you take questions from faculty, students, and neighbors. This job needs someone who can stand in front of a room and explain plainly why a number changed.

And the campuses never close. Students are in class through all of it. Building around academic calendars, phased move-ins, and short summer windows is the craft of this job, not an obstacle to it.

What You Will Own

• The program. What gets built, in what order, for how much, and by when, across every project at the same time
• The money. Your own independent cost estimates, a hard look at what the builders say things cost, change order negotiations, and a forecast the district can rely on
• The schedule. Holding builders to it, catching slippage early, and working out how to recover it without shutting down a campus
• The architects and consultants. Helping choose them, giving them direction, and reconciling their work
• How each project gets delivered and bought, whether that is design-build with a guaranteed price or a traditional bid, and which one suits each job
• The reporting. Regular, honest status on the whole program and on every project in it
• The public face of the program: board meetings, the oversight committee, presentations, and community questions
• Getting projects finished and certified, including the state approval process, closeout documents, and handing the building over to campus staff

Requirements

What You Bring

• You have run a whole capital or bond program before, not just a string of projects. You can name the programs and what they cost
• You have built on a college or school campus. Community college is the strongest version of this, and the district will ask about your projects from the last five years specifically
• You know the DSA process end to end. DSA is the state office that approves public school and college construction, and getting a project certified through it is on you
• You are genuinely good with numbers: program schedules, budgets, cost estimates, and the software that holds it all
• You have worked both ways, design-build with a guaranteed price and traditional design-bid-build, and you know when to use which
• You can run several projects and several architects at once and keep decisions moving instead of stacking up
• You can present to a board and answer hard questions in public without getting defensive
• A bachelor's degree in architecture, engineering, or construction management

Preferred

• A California Architect or Professional Engineer license, or a CCM
• Facilities master planning, and advising on which projects go first
• Setting up how a program talks to its community, including a public website or newsletter
• Working with small, women owned, and disadvantaged business participation programs

The Details

On site, at a district facility or in the surrounding city. The college provides office space, or we do.

This is long work, not a short assignment. The contract runs three years to start and renews on good performance, and the program itself is funded for at least five more years.

Benefits

Compensation

Salary range: Starting at 200k

Benefits: health, dental, and vision at low cost; 401k; three weeks of PTO; and an ESOP (employee stock ownership) at no cost to you, with a 3% Safe Harbor contribution vested on day one.