Mike McMullen
Director of Construction/Operations
Mike has been lending his expertise to Sherwood since 1993, and has overseen the construction of nearly 400 unique homes for Sherwood clients. As Director of Operations, his responsibilities include developing and allocating construction budgets, purchasing, construction oversight, and customer service. Mike has recently lent his hand to, and excelled in, product development for Sherwood.
He enjoys building custom estate homes in the midst of some of Southern California’s most beautiful acreage, and has been recognized for his desire to protect California’s precious resources. Mike has helped Sherwood gain County and State recognition for its construction recycling program, which recycles 90 percent of Sherwood’s post construction materials.
Mike received a certificate for Light Construction and Development Management from UC Irvine. Mike’s invaluable experience includes work in Construction Management and General Contracting in Orange, Riverside and Ventura Counties.
A California native, Mike currently lives in Camarillo with his wife of 40 years. In his leisure time, Mike volunteers as a board member for the Camarillo Fiesta Association, which raises over $20K a year for local youth organizations. He also enjoys camping, tennis, playing music, his pets and entertaining at home with his family.
Role
Director of Construction / Operations
Mike’s official title in the construction process is that of “Director of Construction / Operations.” The formal position includes the shared responsibilities in management, product planning (house architecture and features), new product research (components used in the house construction) and estimating / purchasing. Mike brings to the development team, what is called “tacit” knowledge—knowledge that is at the opposing end of “formal knowledge”. Put simply, “knowledge that is difficult to transfer to another person by means of writing it down or verbalizing it.” The origin of the “numbers” are factored by Mike through his expert awareness and years of experience in the business. Essential awareness, since there is a never-ending line of service providers nudging their way through the gates just to ask Mike to put together a bid package.
Any budgetary oversight that turns on a relationship of numbers, data sets and their aggregation is likely to based on pivot tables and spreadsheets – but these are just tools of the trade—especially when dealing with numbers with 6 zeros behind them. Sometimes 7.
It follows that, in dealing with numbers and budgetary constraints of such multi-million dollar magnitudes, a particular business acumen is required. One that requires knowledge and experience with projects that scale with with the multiple of millions—not to mention the obvious requirement of a sound analytical accounting mind.
Above all, in the past, Mike held every position and served every role imaginable in the building construction industry.
In short, Mike deals with all of the day to day costs, the operations on the highest level, management of indirect / direct costs and the the awarding of contracts to the successful bidder.
But much more, Mike must masterly assess, analyze and see the numbers in the abstract—a trait that can be endowed only through years of finely tuned success and on the site experience.