The posting
The Work
LACCD is spending bond money to cut energy use and carbon across its nine college campuses: solar, battery storage, microgrids, electric vehicle charging, new building controls, LED lighting, upgraded central plants, and swapping gas equipment for electric. The Sustainability Strike Team runs those projects. You are the person who keeps their money straight.
You work under the Sustainability Strike Team Lead, alongside the team's Cost Analyst and project managers. You help set up each new project with a budget, a funding check, and a cost estimate, then track it through design, construction, and closeout: forecasts, estimates to complete, change order requests, contract balances, invoices, and the monthly reconciliation. When the money looks like it will run short or a funding issue could hold up a contract, you see it first and say so.
This is a good seat for a cost analyst, project controls specialist, or project coordinator from a public capital program who is very strong in Excel and has worked in a project management system like Proliance or Trimble Unity. Energy or sustainability work helps, but it is not required.
What You Will Do
- Give day-to-day project coordination, cost management, and financial controls support to the Strike Team Cost Analyst, the project managers, and the Sustainability Strike Team
- Help set up new projects and write their white papers: financial documents, funding checks, early budgets, cost estimates, and reviews, following the program office's standard procedures
- Check project budgets, available funding, estimates, and forecasts with District staff, college project teams, the program office, and program controls
- Build and keep cost forecasts and estimates to complete, and track change order requests, commitments, and available funding
- Watch budgets, spending, contract balances, money set aside but not yet spent, and funding risks, so a shortfall shows up before it affects the project
- Do the monthly budget and cost reconciliations across more than one funding source
- Work with the schedulers on cash flow and on how schedule changes affect cost
- Review financial reports and progress data, and tell the project managers about material variances and risks
- Track contract periods of performance, contract balances, and remaining funding
- Coordinate invoice review and reconciliation with accounting so payments go out on time and correct
- Keep the program controls databases, dashboards, and financial reports accurate
- Keep project documents, records, correspondence, and reports organized and current
Requirements
What You Bring
- 5 recent years in engineering, project management, sustainability, project controls, cost management, or a related field (required for this role)
- A bachelor's degree in engineering, construction management, sustainability, or a related field. Another way to qualify: 4 more years of the same experience, 9 years in all, takes the place of the degree
- Advanced Excel: complex formulas, pivot tables, data analysis, financial models, budget tracking, and reports (required for this role)
- Microsoft Word, Outlook, and PowerPoint
- A large project management software system such as Proliance or Trimble Unity, or one like them (required for this role)
- Clear writing, careful analysis, good organization, and the ability to keep several projects and many people moving on your own
Preferred
- Capital projects inside a large public works or school construction program
- Cost management, forecasting, estimates to complete, and funding checks
- BuildLACCD or a similar program's financial controls, budgets, and project setup
- The DSA process (DSA is the state office that approves public school and college construction)
- Energy efficiency, renewable energy, electrification, or other sustainability projects
- Tableau or a similar tool for cost and performance reports
Benefits
Compensation
Salary range: $128,000 to $140,000 per year, based on experience.
Benefits: health, dental, and vision at low cost; 401k; three weeks of PTO; and an ESOP (employee stock ownership) at no cost to you, with a 3% Safe Harbor contribution vested on day one.
Why MAAS
MAAS has spent nearly 40 years earning the trust of 50+ educational institutions across California, managing over $10B in projects. That track record means the work here is stable, funded, and consequential. You are not chasing the next contract.
As a MAAS employee, you are also an owner. The company is 100% employee-owned through an ESOP, a retirement benefit provided at no cost to you, on top of your salary. MAAS is a profitable, well-run organization and our share price has more than doubled since the plan's inception, with continued growth year over year. Your ownership stake builds the longer you stay, and ESOP participants nationally tend to accumulate 2.5x more in retirement savings than employees at non-ESOP companies.
In an industry not known for prioritizing culture, 96% of MAAS employees say it is a great place to work, and 100% say people genuinely care about each other.
