Keel Custom Homes

Residential Construction Project Manager -- Custom Homes

Midlothian, Virginia    $100,000 - $135,000    Full time, in the field

We build custom homes on our clients' own land across Central Virginia. Before you read another word about the job, read this.

PLEASE DO NOT APPLY IF

• You avoid conflict. This job is telling a framer his work is coming out, and saying it to his face on a Tuesday morning. If that sentence made you wince, the rest of this will not get easier.
• You need your day to go the way you planned it. Somebody will not show, an inspection will fail, and the weather will move everything. That is the job, not an interruption to it.
• You cannot tell the difference between a detail that matters and one that does not. We hold a high standard, and we will not stop a house over something that does not change the house.
• You are fast and likeable and the same three items are wrong on every home you build. Speed that produces a punch list is not speed.
• You cannot tell us your variance number. If you have never been held to a budget, or the estimate was always somebody else's problem, this will be a hard year.
• You run your jobs out of your truck. Keel runs on Buildertrend. The schedule in the system has to be the schedule on the ground.
• You manage people by volume. Job sites where the manager yells do not stay staffed, and our trade base is not a renewable resource.
• You only have one gear. Some subs need to be told and some need to be sold. You have to know which one is standing in front of you.
• You are waiting for someone to sequence your day. Nobody here will. You will arrive with a plan and drive it.
• You go quiet when the news is bad. Homeowners forgive a delay they hear about early. They do not forgive one they discover themselves.

IF YOU ARE STILL READING

All of our field labor is subcontracted, so this is a job about managing resources rather than swinging a hammer: sequencing trades, holding a 180-day schedule from kickoff to closing, controlling cost against an approved budget, keeping the site to a standard, and carrying the homeowner relationship the whole way through. You will run several homes at once, and you will be trusted to run them. Field problems get solved in the driveway, not in the office.

We are looking for a builder first. Someone who knows what good framing looks like, spots a cut corner from thirty feet, and can explain the fix without starting a fight. Someone who decides quickly and is usually right, because they have seen it before. Someone dependable in the plain sense of the word: when you say a house is dried in by Friday, it is dried in by Friday, or we heard about it Wednesday. Trades should want to work for you because your site is organized, your schedule is real, and they get paid when they perform. Homeowners should trust you because you answer the phone and tell the truth and do what you say you will do.

You have probably spent 3 to 6 years running custom or semi-custom homes, and you can talk about cycle time and variance the way other people talk about the weather. What you get in return is real ownership of your jobs, a company that does not second-guess a project manager who has earned the respect, and the Keel standard behind you: Service First, Always Do the Right Thing, Constant Pursuit of Excellence, and Have Fun. Those four are not wall art. The third one is why the punch list at closing is short, and the fourth is why people stay.

Keel is working on a ten-year target of 500 homes closed by 2035, and we are building the bench that gets us there. This seat is not a ceiling. The person who runs their homes well here is the person we promote.

WHAT THE JOB PAYS

A base of $100,000 to $135,000 depending on what you have run, plus:

• A bonus on every home you close
• Health insurance
• 401(k) with company match
• Paid time off
• Gas reimbursement
• Full technology suite

HOW TO APPLY

All applications go through our recruiting partner, Contractor Staffing Source, at keelcustomhomes.discovered.ai. Please apply there rather than contacting Keel directly -- every application gets read, and going around the process will not move you up the list. If this reads like your job description rather than a stretch, we would like to talk.