Project Manager
2 - 5 years
Cedar City, UT
Full-time
Remote
1 month ago
About the role
Utah Steel is a heavy structural steel fabricator headquartered in Cedar City, UT, serving general contractors, EPCs, and owners across the western United States. We are expanding our Structural division into a new 250,000 sq ft facility, and we are hiring a Project Manager to own the full lifecycle of awarded structural steel projects.
The Project Manager is the single point of accountability between Utah Steel and the customer from contract handoff through final closeout. This role drives detailing, procurement, fabrication, logistics, and field erection support to deliver each project on schedule, on budget, and to AISC and AWS quality standards. The successful candidate is a disciplined operator who is equally comfortable reading connection details, negotiating a change order, walking a job site, and managing schedule risk inside our ERP and scheduling tools.
Key Responsibilities:
Project Lifecycle & Customer Ownership
Schedule & Production Coordination
Cost, Contract & Change Management
Documentation: Submittals, RFIs & Drawings
Quality, Safety & Compliance
Cross-Functional Coordination
Required Qualifications:
Experience
Education
Bachelor's degree in Construction Management, Civil or Structural Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, or a related discipline. Equivalent combination of trade experience, certifications, and progressive PM responsibility will be considered in lieu of a degree.
Technical Knowledge
Software & Systems
Personal Attributes
Preferred Qualifications
Physical Requirements & Work Environment
What Success Looks Like in the First 90 Days:
Compensation & Benefits:
Utah Steel offers a competitive base salary commensurate with experience, performance-based bonus eligibility, medical/dental/vision insurance, paid time off, and paid holidays. Specific offer terms will be discussed during the interview process.
Equal Employment Opportunity:
Utah Steel is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We evaluate qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law.
Work Authorization:
Applicants must be legally authorized to work in the United States on a full-time basis. Utah Steel does not currently sponsor employment visas for this position.
To Apply:
Submit a resume and a brief cover letter describing two structural steel projects you owned end-to-end — including project size, your role, the schedule and budget outcome, and the most difficult issue you had to resolve. Applications without a cover letter will still be considered, but the cover letter is the fastest way to advance.
The Project Manager is the single point of accountability between Utah Steel and the customer from contract handoff through final closeout. This role drives detailing, procurement, fabrication, logistics, and field erection support to deliver each project on schedule, on budget, and to AISC and AWS quality standards. The successful candidate is a disciplined operator who is equally comfortable reading connection details, negotiating a change order, walking a job site, and managing schedule risk inside our ERP and scheduling tools.
Key Responsibilities:
Project Lifecycle & Customer Ownership
- Serve as the primary point of contact for the customer — typically the GC project team, owner's representative, or EPC project manager — from contract handoff through closeout.
- Lead internal kickoff meetings; confirm scope, schedule, milestones, deliverables, and any contractual exclusions or assumptions inherited from estimating.
- Maintain a clean project record in our ERP and project management tools — including contracts, drawings, RFIs, submittals, change orders, and meeting minutes — so any stakeholder can reconstruct project status without verbal context.
- Drive a closeout discipline that includes punch list resolution, mill certs, weld documentation, lien waivers, retention release, and a documented lessons-learned debrief.
Schedule & Production Coordination
- Develop and maintain the project schedule using Gantt-based tools; align detailing release sequences, material procurement lead times, shop loading, paint/galvanizing, and shipping with field erection priorities.
- Partner with detailing, production control, and the shop floor to set realistic fabrication start dates and protect committed ship dates; identify slippage early and work the recovery plan.
- Coordinate logistics for outbound shipments, including oversized loads, permitting, and crane/erector readiness on the receiving end.
- Provide weekly status updates to leadership and the customer with a forward-looking risk view, not just a backward-looking percent-complete.
Cost, Contract & Change Management
- Read, interpret, and administer construction contracts (AIA A132/A133/A201, ConsensusDocs, and custom subcontract agreements); understand flow-down terms, indemnification, insurance requirements, retention, lien rights, and dispute resolution.
- dentify scope changes the moment they appear in correspondence, drawings, or the field — and convert them into priced, documented change orders before fabrication is impacted.
- Own the project budget against the estimate handoff; track committed cost vs. earned value; coordinate billing milestones, pay applications, and retention release with finance.
- Protect Utah Steel's contractual position on schedule impacts, owner-furnished items, and downstream coordination failures by other trades.
Documentation: Submittals, RFIs & Drawings
- Manage the submittal log: approved-for-construction drawings, ASIs, ESIs, bulletins, and revisions; ensure detailing and production are always working from the latest released set.
- Generate, log, and resolve RFIs with quantified schedule and cost impacts; escalate non-responses before they become claims.
- Read and interpret structural drawings, shop drawings, erection drawings, and connection details; identify constructability or scope conflicts before they reach the shop floor.
Quality, Safety & Compliance
- Ensure project execution conforms to the AISC 303 Code of Standard Practice, AISC 360, AWS D1.1, and any project-specific specifications.
- Coordinate with QC on weld procedures, NDT requirements, mill certifications, and the project quality plan.
- Reinforce a safety-first culture in every shop walk, site visit, and supplier interaction; ensure Utah Steel personnel and subcontractors are properly trained, equipped, and authorized.
Cross-Functional Coordination
- Work daily across estimating, detailing, procurement, production, shipping, finance, and (when handed off) field operations; treat every internal handoff as a deliverable, not a hope.
- Mentor junior project coordinators and assistants; model documentation discipline, customer professionalism, and constructive problem-solving.
- Surface systemic issues — recurring detailing rework, supplier reliability, scheduling friction — back to leadership with a recommended fix, not just a complaint.
Required Qualifications:
Experience
- Seven (7) or more years of construction project management experience in structural steel fabrication and/or heavy industrial construction required.
- Three (3) or more years of hands-on Tekla Structures experience — including the ability to navigate models, interrogate connections, run reports, and coordinate detailing revisions with detailers.
- Demonstrated ownership of projects in the multi-million-dollar range, from contract through closeout, with verifiable schedule and budget outcomes.
Education
Bachelor's degree in Construction Management, Civil or Structural Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, or a related discipline. Equivalent combination of trade experience, certifications, and progressive PM responsibility will be considered in lieu of a degree.
Technical Knowledge
- Working command of the AISC 303 Code of Standard Practice and a clear understanding of the fabricator/erector scope split.
- Familiarity with AWS D1.1 welding code, NDT terminology, and mill certification requirements.
- Reading, interpreting, and red-lining structural drawings, shop drawings, and erection drawings.
- Solid working knowledge of construction contract law as it applies to subcontracts, flow-down clauses, change orders, claims, lien rights, and pay applications.
- Ability to build and maintain a project schedule using Gantt-based tools (e.g., MS Project, Primavera P6, GanttPRO, or equivalent).
Software & Systems
- Tekla Structures (model navigation and reporting).
- ERP/CRM proficiency — comfort owning data quality in a system of record (Acumatica, Procore, Viewpoint Vista, or comparable).
- Bluebeam Revu or equivalent for drawing markup and takeoff verification.
- Microsoft Office (Excel, Outlook, Teams, Word) at an intermediate-to-advanced level.
Personal Attributes
- Exceptional written and verbal communication; able to write a clear, defensible email to a GC's senior PM and a clear, actionable instruction to a shop foreman in the same hour.
- Detail orientation that holds up under deadline pressure; reads contracts, specs, and submittals carefully the first time.
- Strong self-management and time discipline; manages a portfolio of concurrent projects without dropping commitments.
- Genuine team orientation; shares credit, owns problems, and treats every coworker — from estimating to the shop floor — as a partner in the outcome.
- Problem-solver who works the issue rather than the blame; brings options, not just obstacles.
Preferred Qualifications
- PMP certification or active progression toward it.
- OSHA 30-Hour Construction certification (or willingness to obtain within 90 days).
- AISC Certified Fabricator environment experience.
- Prior experience in an AISC-certified or IAS AC172 quality program.
- Experience supporting field erection and crane planning, even where erection scope was contracted out.
- Familiarity with Odoo, Tekla, BuildingConnected, or comparable construction collaboration platforms.
- Spanish language ability is a plus given our shop and field workforce composition.
Physical Requirements & Work Environment
- This is an in-person role based at our Cedar City, UT facility. Remote work is not available for this position.
- Job site visits in active construction environments — uneven terrain, ladders, elevated work platforms, and exposure to weather, dust, and noise.
- Routine time on the shop floor with exposure to overhead crane operations, welding, grinding, and standard fabrication noise; required PPE will be provided.
- Ability to lift up to 50 lbs occasionally and to remain on feet for extended periods during shop walks and site visits.
- Valid driver's license and ability to travel up to ~20% — primarily regional job sites in Utah, Nevada, Arizona, Idaho, and Colorado.
What Success Looks Like in the First 90 Days:
- Fully ramped on Utah Steel's project handoff process from estimating, our ERP and detailing workflows, and our key customer accounts.
- Owning two or more active projects with clean, current data in the ERP — schedule, budget, RFI/submittal log, and change order log.
- First customer-facing weekly project report sent under your name, with no rework required from leadership.
- Identified at least one specific, fixable issue in our project execution process and proposed a concrete improvement.
Compensation & Benefits:
Utah Steel offers a competitive base salary commensurate with experience, performance-based bonus eligibility, medical/dental/vision insurance, paid time off, and paid holidays. Specific offer terms will be discussed during the interview process.
Equal Employment Opportunity:
Utah Steel is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We evaluate qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law.
Work Authorization:
Applicants must be legally authorized to work in the United States on a full-time basis. Utah Steel does not currently sponsor employment visas for this position.
To Apply:
Submit a resume and a brief cover letter describing two structural steel projects you owned end-to-end — including project size, your role, the schedule and budget outcome, and the most difficult issue you had to resolve. Applications without a cover letter will still be considered, but the cover letter is the fastest way to advance.
Skills
Staffing and RecruitingSoftware DevelopmentFabricated Metal ProductsManufacturingIT Services and IT Consulting