Background
A private equity sponsor engaged Advastar on behalf of a mechanical contracting platform it had assembled through three acquisitions over eighteen months. The platform had grown quickly by acquisition and was being run by the founder of the original business, who had asked for operational support as the combined entity outgrew his direct span of control.
The Challenge
The platform needed a chief operating officer who had integrated acquired businesses before, and most construction executives simply have not. Candidates with strong operational records typically built them inside a single company, where the systems, culture and reporting were already settled. The sponsor also required someone comfortable with an equity story and with the reporting discipline that private equity ownership brings, neither of which is common in contractors of this size. Two leaders from the acquired businesses believed they were candidates, which made the process politically sensitive as well as commercially important.
The Solution
Advastar and the sponsor agreed at kickoff that integration experience would take priority over sector familiarity, a deliberate trade-off that narrowed the search considerably but avoided a hire who would struggle with the actual work. Equity participation was modeled with the sponsor before any candidate was approached, so the offer could be described accurately in the first conversation rather than negotiated late. The two internal candidates were assessed through the same process as the external slate, giving the sponsor and the founder a defensible comparison and giving both leaders a fair hearing rather than a decision made about them.
The Outcome
A chief operating officer with prior buy-and-build integration experience was appointed and began during the platform’s fourth acquisition. Both internal candidates remained with the business, one taking an expanded regional role that emerged from the assessment process. The sponsor has used the same assessment approach on subsequent platform hires.