Executive Search Success Story: Building an Integration Leadership Team for a Private-Equity-Backed Residential Services Buy-and-Build With 45 Add-On Acquisitions

How JRG Partners executed a confidential, multi-role North American executive search strategy that equipped a private-equity-backed residential HVAC, plumbing, and electrical services platform with the integration, corporate development, shared services, technology, and talent leadership required to absorb 45 acquisitions, cut integration time by two-thirds, and convert a loose federation of local businesses into one scalable operating company.

The Challenge

A private equity sponsor had acquired 45 residential services businesses in four years, but the platform had never built an integration capability. Acquired companies kept their own names, systems, pricing, and processes; integration backlogs stretched past eighteen months; synergies underwritten in the deal models were not being realized; technician turnover spiked after each acquisition as owners departed; and the sponsor’s lenders had begun questioning whether the platform could absorb the 30 further acquisitions in its pipeline. The CEO was a strong operator but had been running integration personally. Executive leadership and the sponsor identified several critical vulnerabilities threatening the buy-and-build thesis:

• Forty-five acquisitions with no dedicated integration function or playbook
• Integration backlogs beyond eighteen months and unrealized deal-model synergies
• Dozens of field service, dispatch, and accounting systems with no common platform
• Finance and back-office functions duplicated across acquired companies
• Technician and manager turnover spiking after each acquisition as founders exited
• A pipeline of 30 further acquisitions the platform could not absorb at current capability

Recognizing that the thesis depended on integration capability the platform lacked, the sponsor and CEO engaged JRG Partners to recruit a Chief Integration Officer, Vice President of Corporate Development, Vice President of Shared Services & Finance Integration, Vice President of Technology & Systems Integration, and Vice President of Talent & Culture Integration. The company required an executive search partner with deep buy-and-build expertise and access to leaders who had integrated acquisitions at volume.

Why They Chose JRG Partners

Private Equity Buy & Build Integration Focus

JRG Partners maintains a dedicated practice recruiting integration, corporate development, and platform leadership for private-equity-backed buy-and-build strategies across services, healthcare, industrial, consumer, and technology sectors. This focus ensured an immediate understanding of integration playbooks, synergy capture, and the leadership profiles that scale consolidation platforms.

High-Volume Integration Experience

Our firm has extensive experience recruiting executives who have integrated dozens of acquisitions per year, with a clear understanding of standardized playbooks, systems migrations, and retention through ownership transitions.

Multi-Role Execution

Our team specializes in running coordinated integration, corporate development, shared services, technology, and talent searches in parallel, ensuring leaders are selected as a complementary unit aligned to a single integration model.

Our Executive Search Strategy

Phase 1 — Integration Model Alignment

Our consultants partnered directly with the sponsor’s operating partner, CEO, and board to review integration status, synergy gaps, systems landscape, turnover data, and the acquisition pipeline, defining five executive profiles aligned with a repeatable integration model.

Phase 2 — Talent Identification & Mapping

Our research team performed an extensive talent mapping initiative targeting integration, corporate development, shared services, technology, and talent executives at private-equity-backed consolidation platforms and multi-site services companies who had led documented high-volume integration programs. Over 420 executives were systematically assessed across these sectors.

Phase 3 — Candidate Engagement

Priority during outreach was given to leaders with a documented history of building integration playbooks and integration management offices, running acquisition sourcing and diligence at pace, consolidating back-office functions into shared services, migrating acquired companies onto common systems, and retaining technicians and managers through founder exits. Only candidates meeting these strict performance baselines advanced.

Phase 4 — Selection Process

Finalists presented integration models to the sponsor, CEO, and board, completed structured leadership assessments, and underwent reference verification focused on quantified integration speed, synergy, and retention outcomes.

Key Outcomes

• 420+ integration, corporate development, and multi-site services executive profiles mapped across North America.
• Successfully placed a synchronized leadership tier spanning integration, corporate development, shared services, technology, and talent within six months.
• Reduced time to full integration from eighteen months to under six.
• Delivered $38M in annual shared services synergies.
• Reduced post-acquisition turnover by 55%.
• Closed and integrated 28 further acquisitions in two years with an expanded lender facility.