Director, Estimating

Halifax, NS | Hybrid

Hawthorne Recruitment is proud to partner with Crombie on the search for a Director, Estimating. A senior opportunity to bring rigour, capacity, and strategic cost intelligence to development across one of Canada's leading real estate platforms, at a moment when Crombie's pipeline is scaling.

About Crombie

Crombie is one of Canada's leading owners, operators, and developers of quality real estate, with a national footprint of roughly 310 properties and 19.4 million square feet. The portfolio spans grocery-anchored retail, retail-related industrial, and a growing mixed-use residential platform, supported by a longstanding relationship with Empire and Sobeys and a development pipeline measured in the billions.

Consistently voted one of Atlantic Canada's Top Employers, Crombie offers flexible, hybrid work, support for professional dues and education, and a competitive total compensation package, including comprehensive flex benefits, performance-based incentives, wellness reimbursements, vacation, and a defined contribution pension plan.

The Opportunity

Reporting to the Senior Director, Preconstruction, the Director, Estimating provides senior technical estimating leadership, strategic cost planning, and risk management across retail, office, industrial, and mixed-use residential projects nationally.

This is a role for someone who can set standards and still produce the work. Crombie's move into high-rise and mixed-use residential, anchored by the 19-storey Marlstone in downtown Halifax, raises the bar on cost certainty. The mandate is to strengthen estimating discipline, improve budget confidence, and build the long-term depth of the national estimating function.

Location & Travel

Based in Halifax, NS, on a hybrid schedule of three days in office (minimum) and two remote. This is a national role. Travel is occasional and as required, to property, consultant, and project sites. The active residential pipeline is currently concentrated in Atlantic Canada.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead senior estimating across the portfolio, preparing, reviewing, and validating Class D to Class A estimates and providing Schedule C documentation.
• Own scope-of-work definition and pre-development documentation, including Schedule C lease attachments and landlord obligations, holding consistency between contract documents and estimates.
• Strengthen rigour and process through cost monitoring, reporting systems, and consistent estimating procedures.
• Build and maintain cost intelligence through tender benchmarking, workload reporting, and historical cost databases, coordinating with third-party Quantity Surveyors and suppliers.
• Manage risk and market exposure, analysing tender-versus-budget variance, escalation, regional labour, and procurement timing.
• Provide specialized expertise in high-rise residential, mixed-use, and complex urban intensification cost planning.
• Partner across the business with Development, Design & Construction, Legal, Leasing, and Operations, and with external engineers, contractors, and consultants.
• Advance modernization through process improvement, digital tools, tender analytics, and modern estimating technology.
• Develop the function, mentoring estimating staff and building capacity, accountability, and succession depth.

The Ideal Candidate

• A senior estimating leader with 8 to 10+ years across estimating, quantity surveying, preconstruction, construction, or cost consulting. Strategic enough to sit at the leadership table and credible enough to own the work.
• Demonstrated experience preparing conceptual, elemental, divisional, Class D through A estimates and Schedule C documentation.
• High-rise residential and mixed-use construction estimating experience. This is essential, not an asset.
• Design-build, general contracting, and tendering experience are assets.
• Comfort writing scope-of-work and development documentation, and the temperament for the lease and Schedule C side of the role.
• Extensive knowledge of divisional and elemental cost budgeting formats.
• A degree or diploma in construction management, architectural or engineering technology, building science, quantity surveying, or a related field.
• A professional designation such as PQS, MRICS, CIQS, or CEC is a strong asset.
• Proficiency with industry tools, including Excel, On-Screen Take-Off, RS Means, Bluebeam, and cost database platforms.
• Sound judgment under incomplete design information and market uncertainty, with the instinct to build structure and mentor.

Interested?

If you want to shape cost certainty across a national development platform, we would welcome the conversation. Submit your resume through this posting. At Hawthorne Recruitment, we remain dedicated to making matches made meaningful.

Crombie values diversity and is committed to a diverse, equitable, inclusive, and collaborative culture. Candidates are invited to self-identify on their resume if they are a member of one of the following groups: visible minorities, persons with disabilities, Indigenous Peoples, women, and members of the LGBTQ2S+ community. If you require accommodation during any stage of the recruitment process, please let Hawthorne know.

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