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Job Type
Full-time
Description
POSITION SUMMARY
The Powerline Project Manager is responsible for planning, coordinating, executing, and closing powerline construction, maintenance, repair, and related electrical infrastructure projects. The position manages project scope, schedule, budget, labor, equipment, materials, subcontractors, customer communication, documentation, billing support, safety coordination, quality expectations, and change management from project award through final closeout.
The Project Manager serves as the primary business and operational point of contact for assigned projects and works closely with customers, estimators, operations leaders, foremen, field crews, safety personnel, accounting, vendors, and subcontractors. The role requires working knowledge of overhead and underground powerline operations, disciplined project controls, timely decision-making, and the ability to align customer expectations with approved scope, company capabilities, resource availability, and contractual requirements.
ESSENTIAL DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES
Project Handoff and Scope Review
- Participate in pre-award or post-award handoff meetings and review estimates, proposals, contracts, purchase orders, drawings, specifications, customer requirements, schedules, assumptions, exclusions, and pricing information.
- Confirm project scope, deliverables, milestones, access requirements, outage needs, customer-furnished items, testing requirements, billing terms, documentation, and closeout expectations before mobilization.
- Identify scope gaps, conflicting information, constructability concerns, schedule risks, unusual customer requirements, long-lead materials, permitting needs, and other issues requiring clarification.
- Establish the project file, cost codes, budget, schedule, communication plan, documentation requirements, approval path, and internal responsibilities.
- Coordinate kickoff meetings with customers and internal personnel to align expectations, contacts, reporting, safety, site access, change authorization, invoicing, and field execution.
Project Planning and Scheduling
- Develop and maintain project schedules, work plans, look-ahead schedules, milestone dates, resource plans, material plans, and mobilization requirements.
- Coordinate crews, foremen, equipment, trucks, tools, materials, subcontractors, inspections, outages, locates, permits, and customer activities needed to complete the work.
- Sequence work to account for access, energized systems, clearances, outages, weather, environmental conditions, customer operations, material availability, and dependencies with other contractors.
- Monitor daily and weekly progress against the approved schedule and adjust sequencing or resources within authority to address delays and changing field conditions.
- Communicate schedule changes, constraints, critical decisions, resource needs, and potential completion impacts promptly to customers and internal leadership.
- Maintain realistic forecasts and avoid committing labor, equipment, outages, completion dates, or accelerated work without confirming availability and required authorization.
Field Execution and Operational Coordination
- Provide project direction to assigned foremen and coordinate daily execution without replacing the foreman's responsibility for direct crew supervision and safe task performance.
- Conduct regular site visits to observe progress, verify alignment with scope and schedule, understand field conditions, resolve obstacles, and maintain customer relationships.
- Review daily reports, field tickets, time records, equipment use, production quantities, material consumption, photographs, delays, and other field information.
- Coordinate mobilization, staging, laydown areas, deliveries, equipment access, temporary facilities, traffic control, customer interfaces, and demobilization.
- Ensure field leaders receive current drawings, specifications, scope information, approved changes, customer instructions, and documentation requirements.
- Address resource conflicts, material shortages, equipment failures, access problems, coordination issues, and other project obstacles promptly and escalate matters beyond assigned authority.
Cost Control Forecasting and Financial Performance
- Establish and maintain the project budget using approved estimate information, cost codes, commitments, production assumptions, and contract terms.
- Monitor labor, overtime, equipment, material, subcontractor, travel, mobilization, and other project costs against budget and completed work.
- Review cost reports, committed costs, field production, earned revenue, work in progress, forecast-to-complete information, and projected margin regularly.
- Identify unfavorable trends, unplanned costs, productivity concerns, billing delays, or margin risk early and implement or recommend corrective actions.
- Approve or route project purchases, rentals, subcontractor invoices, employee expenses, and other costs according to assigned authority and documentation requirements.
- Prepare project financial updates, forecasts, variance explanations, and completion projections for leadership.
Change Management and Contract Administration
- Recognize work that differs from the approved scope, drawings, schedule assumptions, quantities, site conditions, or customer instructions and document the condition promptly.
- Ensure extra work is not performed without appropriate internal and customer authorization except when immediate action is required to protect people, property, or equipment.
- Prepare or coordinate requests for information, change requests, pricing support, time-impact information, field directives, notices, and supporting documentation.
- Track pending, approved, rejected, and completed changes and ensure approved changes are incorporated into project budget, schedule, field direction, billing, and closeout records.
- Maintain awareness of contract terms involving notice, schedule, payment, retainage, insurance, warranty, indemnity, delay, liquidated damages, and documentation and elevate legal or commercial concerns.
- Avoid waiving company rights, accepting unapproved terms, or making contractual commitments outside delegated authority.
Materials Equipment Vendors and Subcontractors
- Coordinate material takeoffs, submittals, approvals, procurement, fabrication, delivery, receiving, storage, issue, return, and reconciliation with responsible personnel.
- Monitor long-lead and critical materials and communicate potential shortages, substitutions, delivery changes, damage, or specification concerns before they affect field work.
- Coordinate project equipment, vehicles, trailers, specialized tools, rentals, maintenance, transport, inspections, and return dates.
- Solicit or assist with vendor and subcontractor proposals, evaluate scope and commercial alignment, and obtain required approval before commitment.
- Manage approved vendors and subcontractors for schedule, scope, quality, safety coordination, documentation, invoicing, and closeout obligations.
- Verify delivered materials and subcontracted work are supported by appropriate tickets, receipts, reports, quantities, approvals, and project coding.
Customer Communication and Relationship Management
- Serve as the primary company contact for assigned customers and maintain consistent, professional communication regarding progress, schedule, decisions, risks, documentation, and required customer actions.
- Lead or participate in project meetings, progress reviews, schedule discussions, site walks, outage coordination, and closeout meetings.
- Document customer direction, decisions, approvals, concerns, commitments, and meeting action items and distribute information to responsible parties.
- Address customer concerns promptly, distinguish valid scope obligations from additional requests, and involve leadership when resolution affects cost, schedule, risk, or contractual terms.
- Build long-term customer confidence through preparation, accuracy, responsiveness, transparency, and consistent follow-through.
- Identify potential follow-on work or customer needs and route business-development opportunities to the appropriate company representative.
Safety Environmental and Regulatory Coordination
- Partner with safety and operations personnel to ensure project planning and execution account for company, customer, site, and job-specific safety requirements.
- Confirm required training, qualifications, customer orientations, personal protective equipment, permits, inspections, traffic controls, and job planning requirements are addressed before work begins.
- Support appropriate planning for energized and de-energized work, minimum approach distances, grounding, switching, clearances, excavation, underground utilities, rigging, lifting, work at height, and public exposure as applicable.
- Participate in incident, near-miss, property-damage, utility-strike, quality, and environmental reviews and ensure assigned corrective actions and project documentation are completed.
- Exercise stop-work authority and support field personnel who stop work because scope, conditions, authorization, isolation, or safety controls are unclear.
- Do not direct technical switching, line-clearance, grounding, energized work, or other restricted electrical activity unless separately trained, qualified, and authorized.
Quality Control and Technical Documentation
- Establish project-specific quality expectations and inspection, test, hold-point, turnover, and documentation requirements with responsible operations and customer personnel.
- Verify work is performed using current approved drawings, specifications, materials, procedures, manufacturer information, and authorized changes.
- Coordinate required inspections, testing, torque records, grounding records, as-built information, redlines, photographs, material records, and customer turnover documentation.
- Review nonconforming work, punch-list items, failed inspections, damaged materials, or rework and coordinate timely correction and documentation.
- Ensure final project records accurately reflect completed work and that required customer acceptance, release, or energization documentation is obtained from authorized parties.
Billing and Project Administration
- Establish billing requirements and timelines and coordinate field tickets, quantities, time records, material documentation, change orders, progress information, and other invoice support.
- Review billing packages for accuracy, completeness, approved rates, contract alignment, customer signatures, cost coding, and supporting documentation before submission.
- Monitor unbilled work, rejected tickets, missing purchase orders, pending change orders, retainage, disputed invoices, and other issues that may delay payment.
- Coordinate with accounting and customers to resolve documentation or invoice questions and maintain accurate billing and collection status information.
- Maintain organized electronic and physical project files containing contracts, correspondence, schedules, budgets, changes, field reports, safety records, quality records, billing support, and closeout documents.
Project Closeout
- Develop and manage a closeout plan that addresses remaining work, punch lists, testing, final quantities, as-builts, material reconciliation, demobilization, warranties, billing, and customer documentation.
- Confirm company and rental equipment, unused materials, tools, temporary facilities, and project records are returned, transferred, or dispositioned appropriately.
- Obtain required customer acceptance, completion acknowledgment, final signatures, turnover records, and authorization for final billing.
- Close outstanding purchase orders, subcontract commitments, change items, invoices, and internal project actions and provide final cost and performance information.
- Conduct or participate in post-project review and document lessons learned, customer feedback, production information, estimate comparisons, and recommended process improvements.
Leadership and Team Development
- Set clear project expectations and provide direction, information, priorities, and timely decisions to foremen and supporting personnel.
- Promote accountability, professional communication, teamwork, documentation, cost awareness, safety, quality, and customer service throughout the project.
- Coach field leaders on planning, production tracking, documentation, customer communication, change recognition, and problem escalation.
- Provide factual performance feedback to operations leadership and support employee development, training, recognition, and corrective follow-up within assigned authority.
- Coordinate across estimating, operations, safety, fleet, warehouse, procurement, accounting, Human Resources, and leadership to resolve project needs.
MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS
- High school diploma or GED required; associate or bachelor's degree in construction management, engineering technology, business, project management, electrical technology, or a related field is preferred.
- Five or more years of progressively responsible powerline, utility, electrical, industrial construction, or related project experience, including at least two years of project coordination, supervision, estimating, or project-management responsibility.
- Working knowledge of overhead and underground distribution, transmission, substations, utility construction, line maintenance, or related powerline operations appropriate to assigned projects.
- Demonstrated experience managing scope, schedules, budgets, crews, equipment, materials, subcontractors, changes, billing documentation, customer communication, and project closeout.
- Ability to read and apply contracts, proposals, estimates, drawings, specifications, schedules, reports, purchase orders, change documentation, and project cost information.
- Strong leadership, communication, planning, negotiation, documentation, financial analysis, problem-solving, organization, and time-management skills.
- Proficiency with Microsoft Outlook, Word, Excel, Teams, scheduling tools, and the ability to learn estimating, project-management, accounting, document-control, and customer systems.
- Valid driver's license with an acceptable driving record consistent with company requirements and the ability to travel to project locations.
PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS
- Project-management experience supporting oil and gas operators, electric utilities, municipalities, cooperatives, industrial facilities, renewable-energy projects, or major contractors.
- Experience with distribution or transmission construction, reconductoring, pole replacement, underground systems, substations, storm restoration, line extensions, facility power, or related work.
- Experience with unit-price, lump-sum, time-and-material, cost-plus, service, maintenance, outage, and emergency-response projects.
- Familiarity with project scheduling, cost reporting, earned-value or production tracking, change management, subcontract administration, and customer billing portals.
- Project Management Professional, construction-management, utility, electrical, safety, or related credentials relevant to assigned work.
KNOWLEDGE SKILLS AND ABILITIES
- Manage multiple projects, customers, schedules, budgets, field issues, documentation requirements, and deadlines without losing important details.
- Understand construction sequencing and field constraints well enough to ask effective questions, recognize risk, evaluate progress, and coordinate practical solutions.
- Interpret project financial information, identify trends, forecast outcomes, and explain cost, schedule, billing, and margin impacts clearly.
- Distinguish approved scope from additional work and preserve company rights through timely communication, documentation, and authorization.
- Build credibility with customers and field personnel by being prepared, responsive, accurate, consistent, and realistic about commitments.
- Make timely decisions within authority and escalate matters involving safety, legal exposure, customer conflict, significant cost, schedule impact, or contractual risk.
- Remain composed and effective during outages, emergencies, delays, customer pressure, changing priorities, and other demanding project conditions.
PHYSICAL AND WORK ENVIRONMENT REQUIREMENTS
This position works in office, vehicle, yard, warehouse, jobsite, utility, oil and gas, industrial, and outdoor environments throughout the company's service area.
- Work at a computer and communicate by telephone, video conference, email, text, and in person for extended periods.
- Drive frequently to project locations, customer meetings, company facilities, vendor locations, and other business destinations, including remote sites and overnight travel.
- Walk active jobsites and occasionally stand, bend, stoop, reach, climb stairs or ladders, and traverse uneven, muddy, gravel, elevated, or restricted-access surfaces.
- Work periodically outdoors in heat, cold, wind, dust, rain, noise, vehicle traffic, and proximity to energized electrical systems, moving equipment, excavations, lifting operations, and industrial hazards.
- Wear required personal protective equipment and comply with customer and site access requirements during operational visits.
- Maintain availability outside normal business hours when project schedules, outages, emergency work, customer needs, travel, or urgent issues require support.
SUPERVISORY RESPONSIBILITIES
The Powerline Project Manager provides project direction to assigned foremen, crews, subcontractors, vendors, and support personnel and is accountable for project execution within assigned authority. Direct personnel-management responsibilities may vary by organizational assignment. Unless specifically authorized, the position does not independently hire, terminate, set compensation, or issue formal discipline but provides performance feedback and recommendations to operations leadership.
DISCLAIMER
This job description summarizes the position's general duties and requirements and is not exhaustive. Management may modify duties or assign additional responsibilities to meet business, legal, safety, and operational needs. Employment remains subject to applicable company policies and requirements.
Standard Safety & Supply is an Equal Opportunity Employer.