Director of Operations

Director of Operations — Sterling Construction and Roofing

Kingfisher Recruiting has been hired to find a Director of Operations for Sterling Construction in Livonia, MI. This is an established growing construction company that is looking to hire its first Director of Operations. This is a new role that is foundational to grow the company

About Sterling Construction and Roofing

Sterling Construction and Roofing is a Metro Detroit construction and roofing company serving residential, commercial, multi-family, HOA/condominium, and public-sector clients. The role is based in Livonia, Michigan, with a target candidate commute of roughly 20 minutes. The company is seeking a senior operations leader who can translate the Owner/CEO’s vision, growth priorities, and financial expectations into disciplined daily execution.

Position Summary

The Director of Operations is the senior leader responsible for running the company’s day-to-day operating system. This person will free the Owner/CEO from routine operational management by building clear accountability, repeatable processes, reliable reporting, and a leadership cadence that keeps production, project delivery, customer experience, quality, safety, and profitability on track.

This is an executive operating role for someone with General Contractor construction operations experience — not an office manager, controller, bookkeeper, generic field-services operator, or transactional administrative position. The right person will be comfortable leading field and office leaders, solving cross-functional bottlenecks, making timely decisions, and creating an owner-light organization that runs with discipline.

Reporting Relationship

The Director of Operations reports directly to the Owner/CEO and provides leadership, direction, and accountability to production managers, project managers, field or crew leaders, office or administrative leaders as assigned, and other department leaders designated by the Owner.

Key Responsibilities

Operating Cadence and Leadership Accountability

• Lead a disciplined weekly leadership rhythm, including L10-style meetings or a similar operating cadence.
• Maintain a scorecard of key operational, financial, customer, people, safety, and systems metrics.
• Set weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual priorities with clear owners and follow-through.
• Resolve routine cross-departmental issues without unnecessary Owner intervention.
• Conduct recurring one-on-ones, performance reviews, and coaching sessions with direct reports.
• Provide the Owner/CEO concise executive reporting on results, forecast changes, material risks, decisions needed, and corrective actions.

Production and Project Delivery

• Own the project delivery operating system from production-ready handoff through closeout.
• Maintain a realistic production plan aligned with capacity, crews, subcontractors, materials, permits, inspections, equipment, customer commitments, and sequencing.
• Ensure every project has an accountable owner, current schedule, documented milestones, and timely constraint identification.
• Direct project, production, and field leaders to protect schedule, scope, quality, safety, communication, and margin.
• Establish recovery processes for delayed, over-budget, customer-sensitive, quality-sensitive, or otherwise at-risk jobs.
• Maintain a reliable closeout process covering customer communication, quality verification, documentation, billing readiness, warranty prevention, and lessons learned.

Financial and Operating Performance

• Monitor operational drivers of profitable execution, including revenue produced, backlog health, production capacity, gross profit, job-cost variance, labor/material efficiency, rework, warranty exposure, and operating forecast.
• Ensure leaders submit accurate production, job-cost, change-order, completion, and closeout information for reliable reporting.
• Identify margin leakage, waste, process failures, and recurring cost issues, then lead corrective action.
• Coordinate with accounting/controller functions on billing milestones, cash forecasting, collections risk, WIP reporting, and financial planning inputs.

Sales-to-Production Alignment

• Establish and enforce a production-ready handoff checklist between sales and production.
• Confirm scope, pricing, documentation, customer expectations, financing/payment requirements, permits, material selections, special conditions, and change-order status before jobs enter the production schedule.
• Maintain capacity, backlog, and sales-commitment discussions with sales leadership.
• Identify sales commitments that create avoidable capacity, margin, quality, customer, or scheduling risk.
• Create feedback loops from production and customer outcomes back into sales training, estimating assumptions, and process improvement.

Customer Experience and Quality

• Ensure customers receive timely, accurate, professional communication during production and closeout.
• Lead resolution of escalated operational customer issues within delegated authority.
• Establish response and escalation expectations for customer concerns, warranty callbacks, scope questions, schedule changes, and closeout issues.
• Monitor customer satisfaction, reviews, complaints, repeat issues, warranty callbacks, and quality trends.
• Require documented corrective action for recurring customer or quality failures.

Team Leadership and Talent Development

• Build a leadership team capable of performing without daily Owner intervention.
• Maintain clear role scorecards, responsibilities, authority boundaries, and performance expectations.
• Participate in hiring, onboarding, training, coaching, succession planning, performance management, and termination recommendations.
• Address poor performance, conflict, conduct concerns, and leadership gaps directly and promptly.
• Develop managers so routine decisions are made at the appropriate level rather than pushed upward.

Systems, Data, and Continuous Improvement

• Standardize workflows, SOPs, checklists, handoffs, dashboards, meetings, and escalation procedures.
• Require accurate use of CRM, project-management, and reporting systems.
• Eliminate duplicate effort, unnecessary manual work, information gaps, and recurring bottlenecks.
• Prioritize automation and system improvements that improve visibility, accountability, speed, quality, and customer experience.
• Ensure process changes are documented, trained, adopted, measured, and improved.

Compliance, Safety, and Risk Management

• Ensure operational leaders maintain required safety, licensing, insurance, permit, labor, contract, and project-documentation practices.
• Maintain a visible safety and quality culture with timely reporting, investigation, corrective action, and coaching.
• Escalate serious safety incidents, fraud/theft, property damage, threatened litigation, regulatory matters, warranty exposure, insurance claims, or material brand risk promptly to the Owner.
• Ensure responsible leaders track permits, inspections, contractual requirements, prevailing-wage/government-project requirements, and other compliance obligations.

First 90-Day Expectations

Days 1–30

• Complete an initial operating assessment.
• Establish KPI baseline and dashboard.
• Map the sales-to-production-to-closeout workflow.
• Identify recurring Owner operational interventions.
• Clarify decision rights and escalation paths.
• Begin the weekly leadership cadence.

Days 31–60

• Implement a production-ready handoff checklist.
• Publish leader scorecards.
• Establish schedule and capacity reviews.
• Assign accountable owners for recurring bottlenecks.
• Present a written operating-improvement plan with priorities, owners, dates, and expected outcomes.

Days 61–90

• Demonstrate an owner-light operating rhythm.
• Provide reliable weekly executive reporting.
• Show measurable improvement or a documented recovery plan for critical bottlenecks.
• Lead the first formal leader scorecard reviews.
• Present the next 90-day operating priorities.

Ideal Candidate Profile

• Senior operations leader with General Contractor construction operations experience.
• Proven ability to lead production, project delivery, field teams, project managers, subcontractors, and cross-functional operating cadence.
• Strong understanding of subcontractors, invoicing/billing readiness, permits/inspections, scheduling, capacity planning, vendor/material coordination, job-cost control, margin protection, quality, safety, customer escalation, and closeout.
• Comfortable building dashboards, scorecards, SOPs, leadership meeting rhythms, and accountability systems.
• Able to work closely with an Owner/CEO while independently owning routine operational decisions.
• Direct, accountable, values-driven leader who can address hard issues respectfully and promptly.

Key Performance Areas

• Revenue produced versus plan and backlog health.
• Gross profit, job-cost variance, and margin leakage correction.
• Job cycle time, production-ready backlog, schedule stability, and on-time completion.
• Billing readiness, WIP coordination, and collections-risk reduction from operational delays.
• Customer satisfaction, complaint resolution, review trends, warranty callbacks, and quality performance.
• Safety incidents, near misses, training completion, permit/licensing/compliance exceptions, and corrective-action closure.
• Leadership scorecard attainment, retention, manager development, and performance review completion.
• CRM/project-system data accuracy, SOP adoption, dashboard quality, and continuous improvement.

Compensation and Benefits

• Base salary range: $100,000–$120,000.
• Health insurance
• Paid time off
• Incentive opportunity, allowances, vehicle/phone/technology provisions, and delegated authority levels are to be finalized during the interview process.