Cost Control Engineer

Orenda

New York, New York

Full Time

Posted March 25, 2026

$120k - $170k

Energy Storage

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Job Description

The Cost Control Engineer Governance at Orenda is responsible for maintaining and overseeing project budgets, ensuring cost assumptions are consistent and traceable, and managing change control processes throughout the preconstruction phase of renewable energy projects.

Key Responsibilities

Build and maintain the project-specific cost baseline to assess commercial viability.
Maintain a structured log of potential cost changes and recommend budget adjustments with clear rationale.
Develop and update standardized reference cost models and variance drivers.
Enforce explicit allowances for uncertainty with standardized confidence scoring.
Normalize contractor proposals into a standard BoQ cost structure for comparability.
Reconcile model outputs with quotes, bids, and awards, updating unit rates accordingly.
Maintain a clear audit trail for assumptions, sources, and model updates.
Flag gaps and unknowns in cost packages, documenting required follow-ups.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Construction Management, Quantity Surveying, or a related field.
Demonstrated ability to build and maintain unit-rate models and reconcile them to real market pricing.
At least 5 years of experience in cost engineering, estimating, project controls, or preconstruction for complex projects in energy, utility, industrial, or comparable sectors.
Strong command of scope definition, cost-code structures, and bid leveling normalization.
High standards for assumptions hygiene, traceability, and document control, with the ability to enforce standards without being the doer for every task.
Ability to write concise decision-grade readouts explaining what changed versus baseline, what is uncertain, and what requires escalation.
Strong proficiency with Excel Sheets.
Comfortable adopting project controls platforms such as Kahua, Procore, or equivalents, and structured document control practices.
Experience in building and maintaining project-specific cost baselines used to assess commercial viability, ensuring budgets are complete, internally consistent, and decision-grade.
Experience in maintaining a structured log of potential cost increases and decreases, and periodically recommending budget adjustments with clear rationale, traceability, and an audit trail.
Experience in building and maintaining standardized reference cost models by configuration and quantified variance drivers, including subsurface and site diligence inputs.
Ability to enforce explicit allowances for uncertainty with a standardized confidence scoring rubric as scope maturity increases.
Experience normalizing contractor proposals into a standard BoQ cost code structure for comparability and mapping into the budget model.
Ability to reconcile model outputs to quotes, bids, and awards, and update unit rates and variance logic accordingly.
Experience maintaining a library of common scope-change drivers and unit-rate deltas for rapid cost impact analysis.
Ability to document gaps and required follow-ups when cost packages are incomplete, flagging what is unknown and what is needed to close the gap.
Ability to maintain a clean audit trail for assumptions, sources, and model updates, including a change log for unit-rate and variance libraries.