This role exists to close one gap. Design runs as a high-output engine. Estimating delivers a number. The two run separately, and when the price comes back over budget, Design is left to value-engineer it alone.
Sean's vision is two sides of one coin. Combined, Design and Estimating are the Solutions team: one cohesive package of the right design at the strategic price, handed to Business Development and Client Services ready to win. My job is to make that real.
Estimating is constantly at capacity, backing up the entire sales and design timeline. We have competent estimators and a process problem, not a people problem. The fix is reworked process, plus applying the AI tooling culture I've already built in Design to the Estimating team. That's where the capacity gain comes from before we ever talk headcount.
Move Estimating from a silo that delivers a number into a partner that co-owns the win. Closure rate becomes shared across Design, Estimating, and Business Development. And that goes both ways. Estimating brings value engineering upfront. Design and Business Development own giving Estimating clean inputs and minimizing late-stage churn. The pre-submission approval gate protects both sides: it confirms quality and buildability, and it keeps Estimating from absorbing variance it did not create.
Sean designed this role with a clear brief. What follows is how I understand each of the seven accountabilities this seat was built around, and how I intend to own each one.
The 90-day plan that follows is the execution of this. Every workstream maps to one of these seven accountabilities.
No month spent watching. Orientation is fast and runs alongside the work.
Design is solid. My work there is refinement and orchestration, not rebuild.
An additional estimator may be added, but only once the new process reveals the true capacity ceiling.
No silo owns the price. No silo owns the design. We own the win together.
The bigger seat does not mean Design loses its lead. Here is what moves and what stays.
| Accountability | Disposition |
|---|---|
| Design infrastructure, process, and proprietary tooling | Retain. I built it and continue to own and maintain it. Agentic upgrades planned for later this year. |
| Design data-tracking maintenance | Offload (partial). Hand off routine maintenance protocol; I retain oversight. |
| Design L10 and day-to-day team command | Clinton owns fully. He asked for more ownership and now runs point on team operations. He reports to me. |
| Cox Automotive design lead | Retain through the 2027 cycle. Aligned with Lance. Next cycle, evaluate bringing another designer in and shifting my role. |
| Booth design contribution | On-call. If volume warrants another designer of my level, I put the design hat back on, including as a design partner inside the new estimating process. |
None of these are tracked yet. Baselines come first. The directional targets in the table are where I'm aiming. Real numbers come once we have real data to work from.
| Scorecard KPI | Status |
|---|---|
| Time from design input to first concept | To Be MeasuredBaseline established by day 30. Directional target: 20% reduction by day 90. |
| % of first concepts within budget tolerance (-5% to +10%) | To Be Measured80% or higher by day 60, sustained at 85% or higher by day 90. |
| Number of revision cycles per deal | To Be MeasuredBaseline established by day 30. Directional target: measurable reduction by day 60. |
| Win rate on Tier 1 and Tier 2 opportunities | To Be MeasuredBaseline captured in Phase 1. Directional improvement tracked from Phase 2 onward. |
| Estimated vs. actual variance (rolling 90 days) | To Be MeasuredFirst rolling baseline established by day 45. |
| Throughput of active solutioning pipeline | To Be MeasuredTracked from week one. No ceiling defined — baseline informs the target. |
The shift: Estimators become strategic partners during concept development, not after. When a deal needs to hit a budget, estimating arrives with value-engineering options already identified, each with real savings attached. Designers make informed yes/no decisions, choosing the options that preserve the intent of the design.
The problem it solves: Every RFP we respond to gets a different approach. Response quality depends on who picks up the deal. There's no standard, just whoever is available doing it however they have always done it.
The shift: A tiered response model defines what each deal gets: the right resources, the right timeline, the right format. Tier 1 gets the full protocol. Tier 2 gets a calibrated version. Tier 3 gets a fast, effective template. Alternative bid strategies are ready to deploy when they give us a competitive edge.
Kicking off Monday, June 29, 2026. Phase 1 is a build phase, not an observation phase. By day 30 there is a working protocol on the floor and live numbers on the board. Phases 2 and 3 prove it on real deals and lock it in.
I'm in the middle of a series of conversations with Melissa to get the full picture on the pricing tool and how Estimating currently operates. It's going to take a few sessions. What comes out of those meetings will directly inform how this plays out. The phases below are my best thinking right now. I'm moving while those conversations are happening, not waiting on them to finish.
By day 30, two systems are running: the Value Engineering Protocol and the RFP Response System. A shared scorecard has real baselines. From week one, I am in the room on active Tier 1 opportunities. The context download runs alongside live deal work, not before it.
The competitive response model cannot wait until Phase 2. Steelhead needs a defined, tiered approach to RFPs now — one that sets standards, reduces variance in how we respond, and gives us a strategic edge on the deals that matter most.
All six move from "not measured" to "baselined." That is the Phase 1 win on the scorecard.
Phase 1 built the tools. Phase 2 proves they work under live conditions on opportunities that matter, and starts converting Estimating from a queue into a solutioning partner.
Every Tier 1 concept passes a structured review before it reaches the client. This gate confirms creative quality, budget alignment, and buildability simultaneously.
Early movement in budget-tolerance, revision cycles, and Estimating queue wait time. Win rate and variance are tracked but expected to move later as changes compound.
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Phase 3 locks what is working, names what is not, and produces the first real targets. Ninety days of baselines become the foundation for an honest forward-looking scorecard with Sean.
Targets set on all six. Demonstrated early movement on budget-tolerance, revision cycles, and Estimating queue wait time. Win rate and variance trending right with the systems now in place.
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Once confirmed, this refines two things only:
The input we need from the pricing session is the mode-switching rule: under which conditions a deal moves off the standard markup into competitive or wholesale pricing. Known triggers include whether the deal was pursued or inherited, deal scale, competitive pressure, and available vendor-discount headroom. This is what lets us finalize the budget-tolerance definition and calibrate how aggressively the VE Protocol targets cost.
The co-ownership reframe and the VE Protocol hold true regardless of the final pricing model, so this is a refinement, not a dependency that blocks the build.
Three friction points I've already accounted for.
The Estimating team is aligned on a personal level. The adjustment is to the process, not the relationship. The new workflow asks them to show up earlier in the deal cycle, which is a real change to how they operate day to day. I will introduce it on one deal first so the team experiences the model before it becomes the standard, not after.
The budget-tolerance definition and VE cost logic both depend on the pricing philosophy session with Lance and Sean. Until that's locked, parts of the protocol operate on assumptions. I've built the plan to hold regardless, but this is a sequencing risk that needs early attention.
The team knows my work. They haven't had me as their director before. Moving from colleague to direct supervisor changes the dynamic in ways that can't be worked around, only worked through. I'm not planning to assert the authority. I'm planning to earn it through the work, the same way I always have.
The points I want to align on.
With baselines in hand by end of Phase 1, what does realistic and ambitious look like to you for each metric?
Are we aligned that process and tooling come first, and a new estimator is a Phase 3 evidence-based decision?
Confirm the updated model so I can lock the budget-tolerance definition and VE cost logic.
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