The Hire Is Made. Now the Real Work Begins.
In my experience working with universities, health systems, cultural institutions, and owners’ rep firms on senior facilities and construction leadership searches, I have seen a consistent pattern: organizations invest significant time and resources in finding the right VP of Facilities or Director of Construction, and then they largely leave that person to figure out the new environment on their own. The assumption is that a senior executive should be able to walk in and navigate. And technically, they can. But the cost of that assumption shows up nine to eighteen months later, when the leader has not yet built the relationships that would let them move capital decisions forward, when the team is still operating in the way it operated before the hire arrived, and when the institution’s senior leadership is quietly asking whether the search produced the right candidate.
The problem is almost never the candidate. It is the onboarding. In this post, I want to share what I have observed about what effective onboarding looks like for a new institutional facilities leader, why most organizations get it wrong, and what the first ninety days should actually accomplish.
Why Institutional Facilities Onboarding Is Different
The Environment Is More Complex Than It Appears from the Outside
A new VP of Facilities at a major research university or an academic medical center is entering an environment with a governance structure, a procurement system, a union contract landscape, a capital planning process, and a set of senior stakeholder relationships that took the previous incumbent years to understand. The physical portfolio is complex. The political landscape is more complex. The new leader may have the technical skills and the management depth to perform well, but they are starting from zero on institutional knowledge that is not written down anywhere and cannot be acquired by reading the org chart.
This is the dimension of institutional facilities leadership that I think about most in search conversations with clients. When I ask hiring authorities what their onboarding plan looks like, I most commonly hear: we will introduce them around, get them settled, and let them find their footing. That approach works in simpler environments. In a 200-building university campus with four active major capital projects, a deferred maintenance backlog measured in hundreds of millions, and twelve direct reports who have been at the institution for an average of eleven years, finding your footing takes longer than most organizations are patient enough to wait for.
The Stakeholder Map Is the Critical Asset
The single most valuable thing an organization can give a new institutional facilities or construction leader in their first thirty days is not an office or a budget briefing. It is a structured introduction to every stakeholder who will have influence over their success. That means the CFO who controls capital allocation, the deans or department heads whose space decisions create project demand, the general counsel whose sign-off gates every major contract, the facilities operations managers who have the institutional memory the new leader needs, and the board members or trustees who oversee capital program governance.
These introductions need to be structured, not casual. A meeting that lasts forty-five minutes where the new VP of Facilities sits across from the CFO and they exchange pleasantries does not build the relationship that will matter when the new leader needs to make a capital reallocation argument under time pressure. A structured introduction includes a briefing on the CFO’s priorities, a discussion of how capital decisions have been made in the past, and an explicit conversation about how the new leader and the CFO will work together going forward. That kind of introduction has to be designed. It does not happen on its own.
What the First Ninety Days Should Accomplish
Days One Through Thirty: Listen, Map, and Assess
The first month is not about demonstrating authority or making changes. It is about learning. A new institutional facilities leader who moves too quickly in the first thirty days, restructuring teams or redirecting capital priorities before they have a complete picture, will almost always create resistance that takes months to overcome. The first month is for structured listening: conversations with direct reports, walkthroughs of the physical portfolio, reviews of active capital projects, and introductions to every stakeholder on the map.
The output of the first thirty days should be a written assessment: here is what I understand about the portfolio, the team, the active projects, the deferred backlog, and the stakeholder landscape. Here are the three things I need to address first and why. That document, shared with the hiring authority, creates alignment before action begins. It is one of the most effective tools for building institutional trust in the early period of a new leadership relationship, and it is almost never produced unless someone asks for it explicitly.
Days Thirty Through Sixty: Build the Team Relationships That Drive Execution
The second month is about building the internal relationships that determine whether the facilities and construction team will execute well under new leadership. A VP of Facilities who has not yet built genuine working relationships with their Director of Operations, their Director of Engineering, and their senior project managers by day sixty is going to struggle to move capital projects forward in month four. These relationships take time, and they do not develop through org chart hierarchy alone. They develop through working together on problems, making decisions together, and demonstrating that the new leader’s judgment can be trusted.
One of the things I advise hiring organizations to do during this period is create structured opportunities for the new leader to work alongside their team on active projects, not just receive briefings on them. A VP of Facilities who walks a job site with the Director of Construction and the owner’s rep in month two understands the program differently than one who has only seen the project summary in a weekly report. That field knowledge matters for the credibility the new leader needs to lead the team effectively.
Days Sixty Through Ninety: Establish the Decision-Making Framework
By the end of the third month, a new institutional facilities leader should have clarity on how decisions get made, who is in the room, and what requires escalation to the executive team or the board. This is the governance dimension of onboarding that most organizations do not address explicitly. The new leader should know which capital decisions they have authority to make unilaterally, which require CFO sign-off, which go to the president or CEO, and which require board or trustee approval. They should understand the timeline and process for each decision tier.
Without this clarity, senior facilities leaders default to one of two failure modes: they escalate too much, creating delays and signaling to their team that they lack authority; or they act on decisions they did not have the standing to make, creating political problems with stakeholders who expected to be consulted. The decision-making framework needs to be explicit, written down, and agreed to by the hiring authority. It should be a deliverable of the onboarding process, not something the new leader is expected to figure out through trial and error.
What Most Organizations Actually Do
In my experience, most organizations provide a new institutional facilities leader with three things in their first month: a computer, a building access card, and a schedule of meetings with people the HR team thinks they should know. There is no structured stakeholder map. There is no written thirty-day assessment expectation. There is no explicit decision-making framework. The new leader is expected to be senior enough to navigate without a guide, and they usually are. But navigating without a guide in a complex institutional environment costs six to nine months of momentum that a well-designed onboarding process would have preserved.
The organizations I have seen handle this well share a common characteristic: the hiring authority treats the onboarding as a continuation of the search process, not as the end of it. They stay actively engaged with the new leader through the first ninety days. They ask for the written assessment at thirty days. They participate in the stakeholder introduction process rather than delegating it to HR. They establish the decision-making framework in the first week rather than letting it emerge over time. That level of intentionality in the first ninety days is the difference between a new leader who is operating at full effectiveness by month six and one who is still building the institutional foundation they need to perform by month twelve.
A Note on What Real8 Group Does After the Search Closes
At Real8 Group, we do not consider a search finished when the offer is accepted. We stay in contact with both the hiring authority and the new leader through the first ninety days. If something in the onboarding is not going well, we want to know about it early enough to help address it. The search produced a candidate we believe in. The onboarding is where that belief gets tested, and we think it is our responsibility to stay engaged through that period.
If you are planning a facilities or construction leadership search, or if you have recently made a senior hire and want to talk through onboarding design, I welcome the conversation. Visit real8group.com/team to learn more about our team, explore our approach at real8group.com/how-we-work, or reach out directly at real8group.com/contact.
Real8 Group is a specialized executive search firm serving the real estate, construction, engineering, and facilities operations sectors across the U.S.
