PHM recruits for the builders — general contractors, construction managers, and design-build firms hiring the estimators who win the job, the superintendents who run the site, and the operations leaders who decide whether the year is profitable.
Canadian construction insolvencies rose about 30 per cent through 2024, to 886 filings, then eased back to 747 over the following year. The contractors who came through that built something in the process — real prequalification, credit checks, and a view on whether a trade will still be standing at month eight. It is not a line on a résumé, and every candidate will say they manage subtrades. The useful question is which ones they refused, and what happened to the ones they did not.
A weak estimate is not discovered at bid. It is discovered in month five, as margin, and by then the only remedies left are expensive ones.
Our general contractor recruiters press on the trades someone turned down as hard as the ones they bought, and assess estimating leadership on the accuracy of what has been bid and built, not the volume of it.
A contractor lives and dies on two things: what was priced, and what actually gets built. We recruit across both sides of that, and across the operations layer that connects them. A sample of the work and the projects we recruit for:
Recruiting for the owner’s side — managing the build on their behalf? That sits with our construction management team.
Retained-level rigour, on an exclusive basis, for a fee paid on the hire — no upfront retainer and the delivery risk on us. We also work standard contingency where a role suits it. How we engage →
Contractor hiring is unforgiving on timing — a superintendent is needed when the job breaks ground, not a quarter later. An exclusive mandate gets our full bandwidth, and we are driven to deliver inside the window the schedule actually allows.
Chief estimators, estimators, and preconstruction managers — the hires that determine which jobs you win and at what margin.
Superintendents, general superintendents, and project managers — accountable for schedule, trades, safety, and what the client sees.
Project directors, operations managers, and VPs — the layer that turns a pipeline of projects into a business.
Across preconstruction and estimating, project management, field supervision, project controls and administration, safety and quality, and operations leadership — from coordinators to VPs of Operations, in Canada and the USA.
Construction Management is the discipline; this page is for the firm. A general contractor is hiring across estimating, the field, and operations at once, often with self-perform trades and a bonding capacity to protect. If you are a GC, start here — the roles overlap, but the work does not.
Yes, and we treat them as genuinely different searches. Strong superintendents are rarely on job boards, move mostly on reputation and word of mouth, and are assessed on trades they have actually run rather than projects they have been near.
Exclusive contingency: the same process a retained firm runs, without the retainer. We are paid when the hire is made, so the risk of not delivering is ours.
That is usually the whole problem. Tell us when the job breaks ground and we will say whether the search is achievable in that window, and what widening the geography or seniority band would buy you. Better an unrealistic date named early than missed quietly.
Yes. We provide real-time compensation insight for the specific role, market, and project type — including the vehicle allowances, per-diems, and bonus structures that make contractor packages hard to compare on base salary alone.
An advisory conversation about the hire ahead of you — and where the right person is likely to come from. Not a commitment.