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Sector Practice · Military Construction

Military Construction Recruiters

Appropriations-funded base modernization, SIOP dry docks, hypersonic and RDT&E facilities, barracks programs, and secure-facility fit-out — delivered under USACE and NAVFAC oversight. iRecruit.co’s military construction recruiters place the project managers, superintendents, quality and safety leaders, and executives — including cleared construction talent for secure scopes — who carry federal construction from award to turnover, from project engineer to executive.

MILCON · SIOP · RDT&E · barracks · secure fit-out
Qualified slates in 14–21 days on retained work
USACE RMS/QCS · EM 385-1-1 · Davis-Bacon fluent
Clearance-eligibility screening on secure programs
The Practice

A standalone federal practice built
for MILCON delivery

Military construction is its own discipline — annual appropriations instead of a developer’s pro forma, FAR-governed solicitations instead of a handshake GMP, three-phase quality control instead of a punch walk. iRecruit.co runs a dedicated military construction practice for the contractors and owner-side teams delivering MILCON and federal programs, recruiting against the live pipeline in our Military Construction Project Tracker — from the $19.7 billion FY26 MILCON program to the shipyard and Indo-Pacific buildouts that run into the 2030s.

$19.7B
FY26 military construction appropriation enacted across the services — up nearly 13% over FY25’s $17.5B program.
4 shipyards
The Navy’s SIOP recapitalization — Portsmouth, Norfolk, Pearl Harbor, and Puget Sound — carries multi-billion-dollar dock packages into the 2030s.
14–21 days
Qualified, verified slates on retained military construction searches — calibrated to award dates, NTP, and period-of-performance clocks.
EM 385-1-1
Safety and quality credentials verified against delivered federal scope — SSHO hours, CQM-C currency, RMS/QCS fluency — on every slate we present.
Base Modernization

Appropriations-funded base modernization

Multi-year MILCON packages that rebuild entire installations — Tyndall’s 44-project, $4.5 billion rebuild, Ellsworth’s $2 billion B-21 beddown, JBSA’s new basic-training campus. Program-scale work under AFCEC and USACE delivery, phased across fiscal years, where a slipped facility hands the next appropriation cycle a problem.

Shipyards

Shipyard infrastructure — SIOP

The Shipyard Infrastructure Optimization Program is some of the hardest heavy-civil work in the country: graving docks, superflood basins, waterfront utilities, and crane rail on active nuclear shipyards. Marine-civil PMs, dock superintendents, and CQC leaders who have delivered inside NAVFAC oversight are the scarcest profile in this market and the core of the bench we are assembling.

RDT&E

Hypersonic & RDT&E facilities

Test cells, evaluation labs, and research infrastructure at public installations — strategic-systems facilities like NSWC Crane’s Missile Technology Evaluation Facility. Specialty MEP density, commissioning discipline, and documentation rigor closer to a fab than a field office.

Quality of Life

Barracks & quality-of-life builds

Congress has pushed barracks to the front of the MILCON queue — from the Marine Corps’ $11 billion Barracks 2030 program to the 3D-printed transient barracks delivered at Fort Bliss. High-volume vertical construction on active installations, built to UFC standards with Davis-Bacon labor compliance.

Secure Facilities

SCIF & secure-facility fit-out

ICD 705-compliant SCIF construction, RF shielding, acoustic and access-control detailing, and the accreditation paperwork that decides turnover. This practice works hand-in-hand with our mission-critical construction practice — the same discipline, pointed at defense and intelligence programs.

Federal Delivery

USACE & NAVFAC delivery fluency

RMS/QCS daily reporting, submittal registers, three-phase CQC, EM 385-1-1 accident-prevention plans, certified payroll under Davis-Bacon. We screen for candidates who have actually carried these systems on delivered federal contracts — not resumes that mention them.

Roles

Military construction roles iRecruit.co fills

Every title below links to a dedicated hiring page for that role. The span is deliberate — iRecruit.co places from project engineer to executive, and most MILCON engagements involve a coordinated set of these roles on the same program: delivery leadership, field supervision, quality, safety, and controls.

Construction Project Manager — Federal

Owns award-to-closeout delivery on MILCON task orders — subcontracts, submittal registers, RFI discipline, and the government-furnished constraints a federal schedule lives with.

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Superintendent — Federal Programs

Runs the field on active installations — badging and escort realities, phased turnover, outage windows, and production across trades inside base-access rules.

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QA/QC & CQC Manager

Three-phase control done right — preparatory, initial, follow-up — with RMS/QCS documentation, testing matrices, and turnover packages a government QA rep will actually sign.

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SSHO / Safety Manager

EM 385-1-1 site safety and health officers with the documented hours, activity hazard analyses, and USACE audit experience that federal safety programs demand.

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Project Controls Manager

Cost-loaded P6 schedules, earned value that survives an audit, progress payments against the schedule of values, and LD exposure forecasting on period-of-performance contracts.

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Estimator — Federal Bids

Davis-Bacon wage determinations, SF1442 packages, self-perform versus subcontract splits, and the bid-day math that wins best-value federal awards without buying the job.

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Federal Construction Project Manager

The dedicated federal PM profile — USACE and NAVFAC contract mechanics, RMS/QCS fluency, and modification and REA discipline — for contractors standing up MILCON program teams.

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Cleared Construction Superintendent

Field leadership for secure and access-controlled scopes — superintendents holding active clearances or verified eligibility, running trades inside SCIF and restricted-area protocols.

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How It Works

From scoping call to accepted offer

Whichever model fits your program, every military construction engagement runs on the same delivery discipline — clear scope up front, verified candidates, and full ownership of the process through offer and start.

01 · SCOPE

Scoping call

30 minutes with a federal practice lead. We map the roles, clearance and credential requirements, and geography against your award and NTP dates — and quote a concrete proposal, with pricing, within 48 hours.

02 · LAUNCH

Search launch

A dedicated recruiter from the military construction practice runs intake with your hiring managers and calibrates on the first candidates. Qualified slates in 14–21 days on retained engagements.

03 · DELIVER

Verified slates

Every candidate verified against delivered federal scope — agencies, contract vehicles, dollar values — plus EM 385-1-1 and CQM-C credentials, RMS/QCS fluency, and clearance status where the position requires it.

04 · CLOSE

Offer and start

Offers structured for federal reality — per-diem and rotation math on remote installations, badging and clearance-processing timelines built into start dates, and replacement guarantees on retained roles.

Standing up a MILCON program team?

30-minute scoping call — we map the roles, credentials, and clearance requirements against your period of performance, and quote a concrete proposal within 48 hours.

Engagement

How iRecruit.co’s military construction recruiting engagements work

Five models, each priced per solution. Retained search where certainty and confidentiality matter most; success-fee support where speed matters; RPO, embedded, and staffing models where volume changes the math. Most federal construction clients run two models in parallel across a program.

Executive

Executive Search

Retained search for VPs of federal programs, project executives, and directors of construction — confidential, calibrated, and guaranteed. The searches a program win or a recompete actually depends on.

Pricing — retained, 30% of first-year compensation, with replacement guarantee

Executive search →
Success-Fee

Recruiting Support

Success-fee search for federal PMs, superintendents, CQC managers, SSHOs, and engineers — full practice sourcing depth, and you pay on placement.

Pricing — 20% success fee, with no upfront fee on single roles

Recruiting support →
RPO

RPO

Full recruitment process outsourcing for program ramps and multi-site MILCON portfolios — one team, one process, every open req from field engineer to director.

Pricing — from a $15k service fee plus volume pricing

RPO recruiting →
Embedded

Embedded Recruiting

A dedicated recruiter or pod working inside your systems and standups, scaled to monthly hiring volume — built for sustained federal hiring across a program lifecycle.

Pricing — monthly volume-based fee + success fee at a reduced rate

Embedded recruiting →
Staffing

Construction Staffing

Contract and contract-to-hire coverage for surge scopes, closeout pushes, and funded-but-unfilled seats — deployed fast, badged, and productive.

Pricing — transparent hourly bill rates, scaled to volume and duration

Construction staffing →
Markets

Military construction recruiting where federal programs concentrate

MILCON follows the force posture, not the market cycle. These six concentrations anchor the practice — and we structure per-diem, rotation, and relocation packages for the remote installations in between, because the best federal superintendent is rarely 40 minutes from the gate.

Core Federal Markets

Northern Virginia & DCPentagon, NCR agencies & the SCIF corridor
Norfolk & Hampton RoadsNNSY, NAVFAC MIDLANT & fleet concentration
HuntsvilleRedstone Arsenal & federal campus growth
San AntonioJBSA & the Air Force training enterprise
Colorado SpringsPeterson, Schriever & Space Force growth
Honolulu & GuamPearl Harbor SIOP & Indo-Pacific posture
FAQ

Military construction recruiting questions, answered

What does a military construction recruiter do?

A military construction recruiter sources, qualifies, and places the construction talent that delivers MILCON and federal programs — project managers, superintendents, CQC quality managers, SSHOs, project controls and estimating leaders, and the executives above them. The difference between specialist military construction recruiters and a generalist agency is what gets verified: delivered federal scope by agency and contract vehicle, credential stacks like EM 385-1-1 and CQM-C, RMS/QCS fluency, and references who watched the candidate carry a program through a government quality audit. iRecruit.co recruits across the full span, project engineer to executive.

How much do military construction recruiters charge?

Fees follow the engagement model. Retained executive search — VPs of federal programs, project executives, directors — runs on a retained fee of 30% of first-year compensation, paid in stages, with a replacement guarantee. Success-fee recruiting support for project managers, superintendents, and engineers runs at a 20% success fee, paid only on placement, with no upfront fee on single roles. For program ramps, RPO runs from a $15k service fee plus volume pricing, and embedded recruiting runs on a monthly volume-based fee + success fee at a reduced rate. A 30-minute scoping call gets you a concrete, per-role quote within 48 hours.

Do candidates need a security clearance to work on military construction?

It depends on the contract. Most MILCON work — barracks, hangars, roads, utilities — requires base access and badging but no clearance at all. Secure scopes like SCIF fit-out, certain RDT&E facilities, and some shipyard work carry position-specific requirements set by the government contract, ranging from a favorable background investigation to an active Secret clearance. Where a position lawfully requires it, we verify a candidate’s existing clearance level and investigation currency, or screen for the eligibility the contract specifies — and where it doesn’t, we don’t filter on it. That precision keeps qualified candidates moving and keeps hiring compliant.

What is EM 385-1-1 and why does it matter for hiring?

EM 385-1-1 is the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Safety and Health Requirements Manual — the safety standard that governs USACE and most NAVFAC construction contracts. It drives requirements a commercial safety program doesn’t have: a designated Site Safety and Health Officer with documented training hours, activity hazard analyses for every definable feature of work, and an accepted accident-prevention plan before mobilization. Hiring a safety manager without EM 385-1-1 experience onto a federal job means paying them to learn it on the government’s clock; we verify the hours, the AHAs, and the audit history before a resume reaches you.

What experience matters most on USACE and NAVFAC programs?

Contract-system fluency. Federal delivery runs on systems commercial work never touches: RMS/QCS for daily reporting and pay estimates, three-phase CQC — preparatory, initial, follow-up — submittal registers with government review clocks, Davis-Bacon certified payroll, and modification and REA discipline when conditions change. A superintendent or PM who has carried those systems on a delivered federal contract is productive in week one. We screen for the systems, the agencies, and the delivered dollar values — not keyword matches.

Do you recruit for SCIF and secure-facility construction?

Yes — SCIF and ICD 705 fit-out is a core scope of the practice. The practice screens for superintendents, PMs, and QC leads who have delivered accredited spaces — RF shielding, acoustic isolation, access-control detailing, and the documentation trail accreditation depends on — plus the cleared or clearance-eligible field leadership that restricted sites require. If your portfolio spans data centers and defense programs, this practice and our mission-critical construction practice share one bench.

Start a military construction recruiting engagement

30-minute scoping call. We map the roles, the credentials, the clearance requirements, and the engagement model that fits your program — and quote a concrete proposal within 48 hours.

Building a career in federal construction?

iRecruit.co places project engineers through executives across MILCON, shipyard, RDT&E, and secure-facility programs nationwide. Submit your resume to be matched to confidential roles across the searches we run.

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