Project Manager, Renovations & Capital Improvements

About the Role

We are seeking a Project Manager, Renovations & Capital Improvements (Internal title: Specialist, Renovations & Capital Projects) to join our Renovations & Facilities team. This role delivers Success Academy's New York City renovation and capital program, roughly 25 to 60 projects a year across 59 schools, combining a recurring lifecycle program in flooring, painting, lockers and partitions, and cooling with school opening, expansion, and flip capital.

This role owns project delivery, not site management. Day-to-day facilities management at each school, including vendor service, building condition, and school-level escalations, sits with the Facilities team. This role plans, procures, and delivers the project program, then hands each completed project over to that team with the documentation and maintenance requirements needed to operate it.

This is a high-count, moderate-value program, which makes it a systems problem more than a heroics problem. Success depends on standardized scopes, term contracts, a repeatable bid-and-award process, disciplined change control, and a closeout that actually happens.

Key Responsibilities

• Own the annual project list from scope development through construction, punch list, closeout, and turnover to operations.
• Build and hold the summer calendar, including sequencing, access windows, long-lead items, and the dates past which a project cannot start and still finish before scholars return.
• Develop standardized scopes and specifications for recurring work types so each project is not designed from scratch.
• Run competitive procurement, bid leveling, exclusion review, and award recommendations within approved policy.
• Review drawings, specifications, scopes, estimates, and change requests for technical completeness, constructability, operational impact, and alignment with approved standards.
• Coordinate architects, engineers, contractors, school leaders, agency partners, and internal teams so decisions are timely and work is sequenced to protect life safety and continuity of instruction.
• Require documented scope, pricing, technical justification, and schedule impact before any change-order commitment, and route unbudgeted scope through a separate approval rather than the contingency line.
• Track cost, schedule, quality, risk, and dependencies across the whole program, maintaining credible baselines, a rolling forecast, and decision-ready reporting.
• Inspect work in progress and verify completed work is safe, functional, documented, and ready for school use before final acceptance.
• Confirm each completed project hands over with as-built information, warranties, operations and maintenance material, and preventive-maintenance requirements the operations team can execute.
• Hold contractors to contract requirements, schedule commitments, workmanship, and timely resolution of defects, and maintain a qualified contractor bench with performance tracked across projects.

Skills / Qualifications

• Demonstrated delivery of a high-count construction or renovation program, meaning many concurrent projects rather than a few large ones.
• Experience delivering work in occupied buildings within fixed access windows, ideally schools.
• Ability to read and challenge drawings, specifications, estimates, schedules, bids, and change orders.
• Command of project budgets, forecasting, procurement, bid leveling, change control, closeout, and warranty administration.
• Practical knowledge of core building systems, including HVAC, electrical, plumbing, controls, fire and life safety, accessibility, and envelope.
• Experience standardizing scopes or specifications so repeat work is not redesigned every time.
• Strong field judgment, willingness to inspect conditions directly, and disciplined documentation.
• Clear communication with school leaders, contractors, and internal partners, and the credibility to hold a contractor to a commitment.
• Experience with term contracts, job-order contracting, or similar mechanisms that reduce procurement time on repetitive work is preferred.
• Credentials are valued but do not substitute for a record of delivering the work.

Work Expectations

• This is a New York City-based, field-oriented role requiring regular presence across the schools.
• The heaviest load falls in summer and school-break windows, including occasional evening and weekend work during active construction.