Preconstruction Specialist - ADUs
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AI Summary
The Preconstruction Specialist manages the client relationship and project process from the signed Preconstruction Agreement to the final construction contract. This includes driving design, managing selections, maintaining budget accuracy, and documenting all client decisions.
Benefits:
- 401(k)
- Bonus based on performance
- Competitive salary
- Health insurance
- Paid time off
Job description:
This is not a sales job and it is not an estimating job.
This is the seat in the middle of the process — the part where a client makes 100 hundred decisions, a third of them move the budget, and somebody has to catch every single one, get it priced, document it, and tell the client what it did to their number before the end of the week. Nothing gets lost. Nothing gets remembered wrong three months later when it shows up in a change order.
If you are already doing exactly this at a custom or semi-custom builder, this posting is for you. If you have not held this specific seat, please do not apply — this is not a role someone grows into, and we are not going to be the company that teaches it.
About BuildX
BuildX designs and builds custom and semi-custom accessory dwelling units. Our clients are homeowners — not developers, not institutions. They are spending their own money on what is often the second-largest purchase of their lives, and most of them are living on the property while we build.
We run preconstruction as a paid, contracted phase. Clients sign a Preconstruction Agreement and a budget range is already established before this role picks up the file. We are planning roughly 40 units next year. Today our project managers are carrying the preconstruction process on top of running construction, and it is not sustainable. We are hiring one person to own it.
The role in one sentence
You are the client's point person and the process owner from the signed Preconstruction Agreement to the signed construction contract — driving design, running selections, keeping the budget current as the client makes decisions, documenting everything, and delivering a complete, accurate contract package that the project manager has reviewed and approved.
Where you pick the file up
Before you touch a project, three things are already done: the client has signed the Preconstruction Agreement, a preliminary budget range was set during pre-discovery, and site feasibility and jurisdictional questions have been handled. You are not starting from a blank page and you are not pricing the job from scratch.
What you inherit is a client with a budget range, a set of decisions to make, and a project that has to get to a signed construction contract without anything falling through the cracks.
What you own
• The client relationship through preconstruction. You are their primary point of contact from PCA signature to contract signature. Every question, every decision, every update comes through you. Part of the reason this role exists is to take that load off our project managers.
• Design management. Drive the design process with our designers and architects. Read and mark up plans, keep revision cycles moving on schedule, and make sure what gets drawn reflects what the client actually decided.
• Consultant coordination. Structural, energy, survey, and any other consultant on the project — scheduled, chased, and delivering on time. When something is sitting, you are the one who knows about it before anyone asks.
• Selections and specifications. Guide the client through every selection — cabinets, tile, fixtures, flooring, finishes, appliances. Coordinate directly with finish vendors and showrooms where needed. Produce a complete, unambiguous selection schedule and specification that leaves nothing open to interpretation at contract.
• Allowance reconciliation. The budget arrives with allowances. Your job is to turn those allowances into real, priced selections and reconcile the difference — line by line, documented, with the client informed every step.
• Budget maintenance and client budget reporting. You do not build the original budget. You keep it accurate as the project evolves, and you deliver a written weekly update to the client: here is where you started, here is what your selections and changes have done to that number, here is where you stand today. Every week, without being asked.
• Change capture and pricing. Every client change and custom feature request gets logged, scoped, priced in conjunction with the project manager, presented to the client, and documented with a decision. Nothing verbal, nothing assumed, nothing carried in someone's head.
• Schedule of the preconstruction process itself. You keep the project moving through the preconstruction cycle to a construction-ready document set. Stalled projects are your problem to solve.
• Contract preparation. Assemble the full construction contract package — drawings, specification, selection schedule, allowances, exclusions, scope, and payment schedule. The project manager reviews and signs off on plans, selections, and budget before anything goes to the client.
• Handoff and signing. Turn the approved package over to operations, participate in the contract signing with the project manager, and deliver a file so complete that nobody is discovering anything in week two of construction.
What you do not own
We are being specific about this because the wrong candidate will assume otherwise:
• You do not sell. Lead generation, the initial client meeting, and getting the Preconstruction Agreement signed happen before you.
• You do not set the original budget or price the job. That is established before the PCA and maintained by the project manager. You update it based on selections and changes.
• You do not handle site feasibility, setbacks, easements, or utilities.
• You do not do jurisdictional or code research.
• You do not manage trade partners or subcontractors. Your vendor contact is limited to finish and selection vendors — cabinet shops, tile suppliers, showrooms, and similar.
• You do not run value engineering on your own. When the budget needs to come down, you work that with the project manager.
Who we are looking for
• Five or more years doing this specific job — preconstruction, selections, and client management for a custom or semi-custom residential builder. Not adjacent to it. Doing it. We will verify with references.
• Attention to detail that borders on uncomfortable. This role lives or dies on whether every client decision is captured, priced, and documented. One missed selection becomes a change order, an argument, and a client who tells their neighbors.
• You read plans fluently — floor plans, elevations, sections, and details — and you catch the conflict between what is drawn and what the client actually chose.
• You can sit with a homeowner and walk them through a selection schedule and a budget update without losing them, and without letting them talk themselves into something nobody wrote down.
• You are comfortable telling a client their choices have added $22,000 to their project, the same week they made them, rather than at contract.
• You write clearly and you write everything down. A large share of this job is written communication a homeowner will re-read and possibly forward to an attorney.
• You work well alongside a project manager. You are the point of contact, not the sole decision-maker, and the two roles have to run tightly together.
• You are organized enough to carry 8 to 12 active projects, each with its own client, design cycle, and selection schedule, without dropping any of them.
• You are proficient with construction management software, plan markup tools such as Bluebeam, and spreadsheets. We run JobTread; familiarity is a strong plus.
Nice to have
• ADU experience specifically.
• Experience at a builder where preconstruction was a paid, contracted phase rather than free presales work.
• Interior design or selections background.
• Experience with contract packages in the $400K–$600K range for private homeowners.
The workload, stated plainly
Roughly 3 to 4 new preconstruction projects start each month. You will typically carry 8 to 12 active files at once, each with a homeowner who expects to reach you. This is a full plate for one person and we are not going to pretend otherwise.
What we require before we will schedule an interview
Send all three:
1. A resume showing at least five years in this exact role at a custom or semi-custom residential builder, with dates, companies, and the volume and price range of projects you carried.
2. Two or three work samples that show how you document. A selection schedule, an allowance reconciliation, a client change log, a weekly budget update you sent to a client, or a contract package you assembled. Redact client names, addresses, and anything a former employer would consider confidential — we care about the structure and completeness of your work, not whose project it was. If confidentiality prevents you from sharing anything, say so and we will substitute a paid exercise.
3. A short note — a few paragraphs — describing how you track client selections and changes across a dozen active projects at once, and what your weekly client update actually looks like.
Incomplete applications will not be reviewed. We would rather read twenty complete submissions than two hundred resumes.
Flexible work from home options available.
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