Managing Director executive search is the appointment of the leader of a business with its own profit and loss: a region of a national contractor, a division, a specialist business or a whole company. It is retained, discreet and handled personally, from brief to placement, and the shortlist is usually three names rather than six.
Managing Director Executive Search
A business with its own P&L, and a board to answer to.
The brief I usually receive
A regional Managing Director is retiring or moving up, and the group wants an external view alongside the internal succession. A privately owned contractor has reached the size where the founder needs a Managing Director to run the business day to day. A specialist subcontractor has been acquired and the new owner wants a leader who has run a business inside a group before. Or a region has underperformed and the board wants someone who has turned one round.
The first conversation is about the business, not the person: the order book, the margin, the team beneath the role and what the board will hold the appointment to in year one. That is what the brief and the assessment are written from.
The shortlist is three names, and every one is known to the market
A Managing Director search is short on names and long on discretion.
Every approach is made personally, and nobody hears about the search who does not need to.
What I assess
Every Managing Director on a shortlist has run a business of comparable scale and shape. The assessment tests the record on margin and cash through a full cycle, the quality of the leadership team the person built and what happened to it after they left, the judgement on which work to chase and which to decline, and the relationship with a board or an owner. References are taken at board level. Where the board has agreed success criteria for year one, the assessment is written against them.
The written appraisal that comes with each name covers capability, motivation and risk, and it names the reservations as well as the strengths.
Where the role sits
Managing Director appointments arrive from main contractors' regions and divisions, civil engineering and infrastructure businesses, housebuilders, building services and specialist contractors, and the consultancies serving them. Chief Executive, Chief Operating Officer and group board appointments sit under board appointments, and the planning that precedes many of these searches under succession planning.
How the search runs
Brief, market map, direct approach, assessment and a managed offer. A Managing Director search adds a structured assessment against the board's own success criteria and references at board level. The stages are set out on the method page.
Common questions
What does a construction Managing Director search involve?
A confidential, retained search for the leader of a business unit with its own profit and loss: a region, a division or a whole company. The target list is short, every approach is made personally, and the assessment tests the record of running a comparable business rather than a comparable project.
What does a construction Managing Director earn?
A regional Managing Director at a Tier 1 or large Tier 2 contractor typically sits between £175,000 and £250,000 base plus bonus, car and pension, and divisional and group roles above that, with total packages on the largest businesses well past £300,000. I benchmark every brief against the live market before the search starts.
Should the appointment be internal?
Sometimes, and I will say so. Part of every Managing Director brief is an honest view of whether the Operations Director or Commercial Director already in the business is the right answer, and what the market offers by comparison. Succession planning is set out under services.
How is a Managing Director search kept confidential?
The search is mapped and approached by me alone, the client is named only once a person has agreed to a conversation, and the shortlist is handled through the chair or chief executive rather than through the business. Where the incumbent is still in post, the timetable is built around that.
Start a conversation
If you are appointing a Managing Director, planning a succession or weighing an internal promotion against the market, I would welcome the chance to talk. No hard sell, no obligation.
