Andy Sheehan
Channel Lead, Hospitality
Channel Lead, Hospitality
Every hospitality project I’ve worked on started the same way: a PIP, a bid set, a deadline, and a vision that needed to become real numbers. Long before I was ever in a room with an owner talking strategy, I was in a spreadsheet, counting doors, measuring corridors, and figuring out what a scope of work actually costs to build. That’s where I learned this business. It’s also where I learned what a real partner to a hospitality client looks like.
Today I carry two titles at Haynes Group: Senior Estimator and Hospitality Channel Lead. On paper, those can read like two different jobs. In practice, they’re the same job wearing two hats. Everything I do as Channel Lead, building relationships with owners and operators, guiding clients through a Property Improvement Plan, positioning Haynes Group as a true partner instead of just another bidder, only carries weight because of the years I’ve spent underneath the hood dissecting the numbers.
Here’s what estimating teaches you that relationship building alone never will.
It teaches you that scope is never just what’s written down. A PIP might say something as simple as expand the fitness room. That’s one line, but it’s never just one line: is that wall load-bearing, what does a bigger room with more cardio equipment do to the HVAC load and the sprinkler coverage, where does the storage space it’s eating into go? That’s the cascade a single PIP decision sets off, and the job is to trace every piece of it without losing the project underneath it. None of it is written down anywhere. It’s what an estimator has to work out before a single number gets attached to it. Catch it at the bid stage and it’s a line item. Miss it and it’s a change order that shows up mid-construction, when the hotel is occupied and revenue is on the line.
It teaches you to speak two languages at once. On one side is brand standards and owner economics. On the other is subcontractor pricing, trade sequencing, and what’s actually achievable on a job site. A lot of construction partners are fluent in one and translate the other. An estimator has to be fluent in both, every day, because a number that doesn’t hold up against real trade pricing isn’t a number. It’s a guess.
And it teaches you that phasing an occupied hotel isn’t just a scheduling exercise. It’s a financial one. When I help a client sequence a guestroom renovation floor by floor, or figure out how many rooms can go out of order in a given week without gutting occupancy, that plan is only as good as the cost and labor assumptions sitting underneath it. I’ve built enough of those schedules from the estimate up to know exactly where they break.
That’s the value I try to bring to every client relationship as Channel Lead. Not just showing up early and staying close, though that matters too. It’s showing up with the ability to actually price what we’re talking about, in real time, with real numbers, instead of promises that get sorted out later. Clients don’t remember the meetings where everyone agreed on a vision. They remember whether the number they were quoted held up through the last day of punch list.
I didn’t move into this role to get away from the spreadsheet. I moved into it because the spreadsheet is exactly what clients need more of, delivered by someone who’s also willing to sit across the table and own the outcome.
