Lead Scheduler - Data Center Due Diligence and Preconstruction

Job Description

Turner & Townsend is seeking a Lead Scheduler to own the schedule review discipline for a confidential hyperscale data center client, both setting the standard other reviewers work to and carrying a portfolio of independent schedule reviews yourself. You will test whether developer-provided delivery dates are realistic, and you will decide what a rigorous review looks like for everyone doing that work alongside you.

This is a working lead role: part senior reviewer, part team lead. On your own deals, you review developer schedules from the ground up, test critical path and delivery dates, and flag plainly what the data does not support, the same work as everyone on your team. Beyond your own deals, you set the method: what a complete schedule review covers, what evidence standard it has to meet, and how findings get checked before they reach a client. You decide where the team's time goes based on risk and urgency, and you are the second set of eyes on the higher-stakes findings.

This is not a delivery role, and it does not replace the Program Manager's ownership of the overall risk picture on any deal. You and your team provide the schedule evidence; the Program Manager builds the risk picture from it and carries it to the client's deal team. It is also not a purely managerial role: you keep a real caseload of your own, current on the same tools and standards you are asking your team to meet.

This role works closely with Program Managers across your region and with the leads of the other review disciplines. The preferred locations are San Francisco or Northern Virginia. Remote can be considered for the right candidate.  

Responsibilities

• Schedule review: Assess developer construction schedules from the ground up: logic, critical path and near-critical activity credibility, float, and sequencing. Confirm whether the delivery date, power connection, and commissioning and testing timelines are actually realistic, against the client's and our team's benchmarks.
• Supply chain and resourcing: Review the equipment and staffing plan behind a schedule, including long lead equipment orders and resource loading, and confirm whether the labor and materials backing the dates are firm commitments or assumptions.
• Evidence discipline: Be precise about what is known versus what is assumed. State plainly whether a number or date is confirmed, estimated, or simply what the developer has claimed, and hold your team to the same standard.
• Risk identification: Flag the risks a clean-looking schedule hides: long lead equipment, permitting, utility connections, seasonal weather, and compressed commissioning windows.
• Trend and variance analysis: Track how each schedule moves from one review to the next, not just a single point-in-time snapshot, and flag material variances and their likely cause.
• Acceleration analysis: Where a date is at risk, assess what could actually recover time, and which options are real versus cosmetic.
• Delivery handover: At construction start, make sure a clear schedule record, what was confirmed, what was assumed, and what is still an open risk, is handed to the onsite construction team on every deal your team touches.
• Setting the standard: Define what a complete, defensible schedule review looks like: the checklist, the depth of testing, and the level of evidence required, and hold every review on the team to it.
• Team allocation: Decide where the team's time goes across a shifting set of deals, based on where the risk and urgency are highest, and resolve it when demand outpaces capacity.
• Quality control: Review your team's higher-stakes findings before they reach a client, catching gaps or unsupported claims before anyone else does.
• Benchmarking: Build and maintain the library of schedule benchmarks, typical durations for long lead equipment, permitting, energization, and commissioning, that the whole team reviews against, so judgment calls are grounded in real data rather than memory.
• Training and development: Bring new reviewers up to the team's standard, and develop the judgment of less experienced schedule reviewers over time.
• Process improvement: Build and refine the templates, tools, and checklists the schedule discipline runs on as the portfolio and the team grow.

SOX control responsibilities may be part of this role, which are to be adhered to where applicable.

Qualifications

• 10 - 15 years of planning and scheduling experience, data center or other mission-critical facility delivery strongly preferred.
• Preferably located in/near San Francisco, CA or Northern VA but will consider remote candidates as well as long as they are able to travel occasionally for site visits and team collaboration.
• Demonstrated ability to independently review and challenge someone else's development and construction schedule, not just build one.
• Prior experience training, mentoring, or reviewing the work of other schedule or planning professionals.
• Working fluency in P6 or equivalent scheduling software, including logic, critical path, and float credibility.
• Familiarity with earned value management (EVM) or similar progress-measurement methods, to independently sanity-check a developer's reported percent complete against actual schedule progress.
• Practical knowledge of long lead equipment timelines, utility and energization sequencing, permitting, and commissioning and testing durations in complex facility construction.
• Understanding of acceleration levers in data center construction, and the judgment to tell a real one from a cosmetic one.
• Comfortable delivering a difficult finding to a developer directly, professionally, and on a deadline, and comfortable holding a colleague's work to that same standard.
• Able to work from incomplete or dated information and state the caveats plainly, rather than waiting for a perfect dataset.
• Proven ability to manage competing priorities across multiple concurrent projects, and across a team's workload, not just your own.
• Strong written communication. Findings need to be usable by people who were not in the review, and feed directly into the client-facing due diligence report.
• AACE PSP or PMI-SP certification is a plus, not required.
• Technologically proficient, including MS Suite and Google Workspace in addition to scheduling software.

Project/Program Specifications

• Market sector experience: Data center development, mission critical facilities, or complex technical and hyperscale buildings strongly preferred.
• Program specific responsibilities: Independent schedule review across a portfolio of concurrent pre-lease diligence deals, plus ownership of the review method, benchmarks, and quality standard for the wider schedule review team.
• Software specific requirements: P6 or equivalent scheduling software, MS Suite, and Google Workspace.
• Travel: Minimal, approximately 3 days per month, plus occasional site visits and team collaboration.

Additional Information

The salary range for this role is $170,000 - $210,000. This range reflects the company's good faith estimate of the base salary for this position at the time of the posting. Final compensation will be determined based on factors including experience, skills, qualifications, and internal equity. In addition to base salary, employees may be eligible for bonuses and a comprehensive benefits package.

*On-site presence and requirements may change depending on our client's needs.

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Turner & Townsend is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees and actively encourage applications from all sectors of the community.

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