Carve-Out Stand-Alone Operations Authority — Field Services

The mandate

The sponsor closed the purchase of a national industrial testing division four months earlier than the operational separation plan anticipated after accepting a regulatory remedy. Its designated chief operating officer declined to transfer, yet dispatch, billing, fleet maintenance, procurement, safety reporting and customer master data still depend on twelve parent services with different exit dates and weak ownership inside the new company.

The interim must be available within ten days and will hold the stand-alone operations seat for eighteen months. Three days each week will be based in Chicago, with rotating hub visits and a Monday separation call; the permanent chief operating officer search begins in month nine, leaving up to twelve weeks inside the contract for a live transition once core TSAs are retired.

Handover is complete when all twelve operating TSAs have exited without a severity-one service or safety failure, work-order-to-cash is stable for three closes, technician utilisation and first-time completion meet board thresholds for eight weeks, and no critical process has an unnamed owner. The permanent executive must lead two operating reviews and accept the site, supplier, control, talent and residual-separation ledgers.

The interim may redesign operating spans, appoint temporary programme leads, choose processes within the approved target model, enforce service recovery, and commit transition spend or vendor contracts up to US$5 million within the separation budget. The board reserves permanent executive appointments, site closures, collective-bargaining changes, contracts beyond three years and budget movement above that threshold; the interim cannot amend purchase-agreement indemnities or extend a TSA alone.

Acquisition financing, tax structuring and the sponsor’s future buy-and-build thesis are outside the remit. The seat will provide operating evidence to those decisions but does not renegotiate transaction terms, launch adjacent services or redesign field-technician compensation beyond temporary separation controls.

Why this seat is open

An early close converted a planned transition into an immediate executive vacancy at the moment parent support became time-limited. Functional leaders can run their own domains but no one holds authority across customer delivery and the separation critical path. The sponsor needs a temporary COO-level operator who has lived through Day One and can leave rather than institutionalise a permanent integration office.

What you will own

• Re-baseline every operating TSA by dependency, service measure, replacement design, test evidence, cutover window, stranded cost and accountable executive.
• Establish a daily field-delivery control that connects technician capacity, certification, route, parts, customer access, safety and revenue release at work-order level.
• Decide the stand-alone process for dispatch, fleet, procurement, customer onboarding and operational master data, rejecting inherited complexity unsupported by the equity case.
• Sequence cutovers around customer risk and close calendars, with rehearsals, rollback criteria and named command authority for each transition weekend.
• Reconstruct work-order-to-cash ownership so completed field evidence produces an accurate invoice, collectible receivable and traceable margin without parent intervention.
• Reshape operating leadership and hub accountabilities through temporary appointments, capability decisions and explicit recommendations for the permanent organisation.
• Transfer the TSA archive, operating cadence, supplier obligations, separation controls, talent assessment and one-hundred-day successor agenda after two successor-led reviews.

Candidate qualifications

• Held COO, divisional president or enterprise operations authority through a private-equity carve-out with material transition-service dependencies.
• Personally exited customer-facing TSAs spanning at least three of dispatch, billing, procurement, IT, fleet or safety without hiding failures behind extension.
• Can evidence a stand-alone operating design that removed parent complexity while preserving regulated service continuity.
• Directed a distributed technical or field workforce where certification, route efficiency, parts availability and proof of completion determined revenue.
• Governed sponsor reporting with a defensible bridge from separation milestones to EBITDA, cash and customer risk.
• Completed an interim carve-out seat and handed live routines to a permanent operator rather than remaining as an undefined transformation layer.

Non-negotiables

• Can start within ten days, serve exclusively and maintain the Chicago and hub-travel pattern for the eighteen-month term.
• Has held executive decision rights in a completed carve-out, not solely transaction PMO, diligence or consulting workstream responsibility.
• Will recommend shutting down an unsafe or uncontrolled process even when doing so threatens a TSA exit date or investment-case milestone.
• Accepts a fixed-term assignment with no conversion or extension and will participate objectively in permanent-successor induction.

1. 49 words maximum. State your earliest Chicago start date and the most complex operating TSA you personally exited.
2. 49 words maximum. Describe one carve-out cutover you delayed, including the failed evidence and commercial consequence.
3. 49 words maximum. Which work-order events must reconcile before you would trust field-services revenue and margin after separation?