Cost Manager - Commercial Real Estate Construction

As a Cost Consultant at Turner & Townsend, you will be responsible for delivering cost planning and commercial management services across a range of workplace, retail, manufacturing, and technical projects for leading enterprise clients. Drawing on your contractor-side experience in estimating, bid evaluation, and change management, you will provide an informed owner’s perspective, establishing robust cost positions, challenging commercial assumptions, and delivering clear, evidence-based advice that supports effective decision-making. Working under the guidance of a Senior Cost Consultant or Director, you will progressively take ownership of project cost plans and commercial strategies, developing the expertise and confidence to manage the commercial position throughout the full project lifecycle. Responsibilities:  • Prepare cost estimates and cost plans from concept through close-out for tenant improvement, remodel, and new build projects, including quantity takeoffs in Bluebeam and pricing in CSI MasterFormat structures.  • Build and maintain parametric and hybrid cost models under senior direction, contributing clean, consistently coded data to the team's benchmarking library. • Lead bid leveling and GC and subcontractor bid analysis: qualify scope, normalize exclusions and allowances, and present a clear recommendation with the basis stated.  • Test contractor pricing against takeoff-based estimates, historical data, and market intelligence, and explain variances rather than accept them.  • Support value engineering by identifying scope and specification alternatives with quantified cost and schedule impact.  • Administer the commercial position on assigned projects: review change orders for entitlement, scope, and pricing against the contract documents and field conditions, and recommend approve, reject, or negotiate.  • Maintain the change, purchase order, and pay application registers, and reconcile pay applications to approved values and work in place.  • Prepare cashflow, accrual, and estimate-at-completion forecasts aligned to the project schedule, and flag commercial exposure early.  • Form and state a view on cost and risk with the reasoning visible: what the data supports, what it does not, and what you would need to be more certain.  • Present cost and risk positions to client project teams in an observational, evidence-first voice, and escalate to senior colleagues when a position needs to be held under challenge.  • Contribute project-level data and insight to portfolio capital planning and program reporting.  • Keep register-driven templates, WBS, and cost code structures clean and consistent so program-level reporting and AI tooling can rely on them.  • Identify repeatable analysis in your own work and, with senior colleagues, turn it into reusable templates and checklists.  • Document methods, assumptions, and lessons so your outputs are reproducible by others.  • Support onboarding and review for analysts, and model disciplined, well-organized delivery. • Apply client contract provisions and financial policies consistently, including SOX controls where applicable.    • Bachelor's degree in construction management, architectural engineering, quantity surveying, or a related field preferred, with three to six years of relevant experience. In lieu of a degree, a combination of experience and education will be considered.  • Hands-on experience in construction estimating and commercial administration, including quantity takeoffs, subcontractor bid leveling, subcontract and change order review, and submittal and procurement log management. Contractor-side experience on tenant improvement and renovation projects is directly relevant.  • Working knowledge of CSI MasterFormat, change order mechan