General Manager

An established specialty-construction manufacturer and installer, respected for its craftsmanship and reliable execution, serves general contractors on commercial projects across a roughly 100-mile radius of Chattanooga, Tennessee. The business has a skilled team, a capable shop, and meaningful available production capacity.

The company has recently been acquired by a long-term-oriented investment group that is committing capital and resources to grow it — by building a professional sales and marketing capability, modernizing pricing and estimating, and expanding its reach — while preserving the quality, relationships, and reputation that built it. This is a build-and-grow venture not a turnaround and not a cost-cutting exercise.

We are investing in this business for the long term, and we intend to do this right. The person we hire will be the face of that commitment to our customers and to the regional construction community — a leader the general contractors and design firms in this market already know and trust, or who can quickly build strong and lasting relationships. Their credibility is how we demonstrate, from day one, that this business is in good hands.

This search follows more than 25 years under the company's founder-owner. The new ownership group intends to support a structured transition period during which the incoming leader works directly alongside the founder-owner to capture that knowledge before it leaves with him.

Key Responsibilities and Expectations

Full P&L ownership

. – Manage and monitor revenue and expense budgets and implement improvement to increase overall business results.

Build the sales function.

Formalize and expand the company's sales, marketing, and business-development capabilities

Dynamic pricing.

Move from flat pricing to strategic bidding that wins larger projects and fills capacity while maintaining bottom line profitability.

Day-to-day leadership of the business

– Ensure operational procedures are established, followed and continually improved up for maximum efficiency and productivity.

Deepen and expand GC relationships

across the region, ensuring the company is on the right bid lists and in the right plan rooms throughout the 100-mile radius.

Launch a specification strategy.

Build relationships with architects and designers to win higher-margin, specified work.

Steward reputation through the transition.

Reassure customers and partners that quality, reliability, lead time, and relationships continue — and improve on them.

Lead and build the team

— retain and develop existing talent, identify and hire for growth,, and maintain the culture that’s made the company successful

Institutionalize the founder-owner's knowledge.

Lead a structured knowledge-transfer process with the outgoing owner — capturing pricing and estimating logic, historical job-cost data, and key relationship introductions into documented practices and processes.

Qualifications

A proven commercial leader

who has grown a project-based, B2B business — with quantifiable revenue and margin results.

Credibility in the commercial construction community.

Established, respected relationships with general contractors and construction managers (and ideally architects and designers) in the greater Chattanooga region — or a track record and reputation that will earn that trust quickly.

Industry or close-adjacent experience.

Specialty-construction, building-products, or a closely related trade background, with fluency in GC bidding, bonding, AIA specifications, and construction schedules.

Pricing and estimating command.

Strong grasp of job costing and the difference between fixed and variable cost; able to lead a shift to contribution-margin-based bidding.

Financial and P&L acumen,

including working-capital management in a project business (work-in-process, progress billing, retainage).

Operational exposure

to the critical functions of a manufacturing and/or field-services business that produce safe, on-time, on-budget performance for customers

People leadership and growth management

to evolve a successful, profitable, founder-led business into a scalable company by learning the culture, earning the respect of the team, and leading them through the changes necessary for sustainable, profitable growth

Knowledge-transfer capability.

Ability to extract, document, and systematize undocumented operational knowledge into standard practices and processes.

Technical oversight.

Comfort overseeing the estimating/shop-drawing/detailing functions (submittals, RFIs, job documentation).

Compensation & Alignment Competitive base salary commensurate with experience, standard benefits, and performance bonus tied to profitable growth (EBITDA / contribution margin).

Confidential search. Company name withheld at this stage

The Company is an equal opportunity employer.

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