Approach to Capital Program Delivery

Our team will always advocate your academic mission by effectively managing your capital program, always putting your interests first, and achieving operational efficiency, transparency, cost savings, and best value for your investment, while maintaining business continuity and user safety.

Our comprehensive capital program delivery services will provide efficient, scalable solutions for all phases of projects based on your portfolio needs.  Following is a brief synopsis of our delivery approach by each project phase.

One of the most important aspects in financial planning for asset management is developing a multi-year Capital Plan. True alignment and integration of asset management with capital investments leads to more predictable and reliable outcomes – reduced operating costs, increased portfolio value and most importantly, the ability to provide favorable and competitive teaching environments for the ultimate stakeholders – the students.

We propose to develop a comprehensive capital plan (see attached flow chart that shows the process involved) for your portfolio. The assessment process will identify critical facility needs based on well-defined assessment criteria.  Based on best practices and lessons learned, we recommend a systems-based assessment approach versus an inventory-based approach.  

Our team of experts will work with your leadership team to develop facilities prioritization criteria.  This approach ensures functional equity and educational adequacy for all existing buildings and any future planned facilities.

Once the optimal scope and funding scenario is finalized, we will work with your team to support program funding including pre-bond planning.  Our team has extensive experience in supporting these public-interfacing and communication services.

The programmers/planners will be responsible for integrating input from all stakeholders into the capital planning and prioritization process, and for developing the short-term and long-term plans. In collaboration with your team, our controls team will be responsible for implementing a system that allows for efficient updating of the assessment data. The planning phase will also involve on-boarding any other services (through RFP/RFQ processes) that may be necessary for delivery of these projects.

At this stage, we will manage and support the work of the design teams, facilitating resolution of design issues and evaluating the design professionals’ performance with the objective of administering the design phase in an effective manner meeting scope, schedule, budget and quality requirements.  This phase involves implementation of the processes established in the programming phase. Multi-discipline design reviews increase the quality of the design and minimize changes during construction.

The Project Manager (PM) communicates continuously with the design team and other vendors to manage scope and schedule, and facilitate coordination. We conduct weekly progress review meetings/calls to manage progress of the design documents.  The PM communications with the school and Asset are continuous and relevant, sign-offs from required authorities are obtained as needed, and the entire process is documented. As providers of design services, we understand the importance of this phase to minimize change management risks through an effective QA/QC process.

During the design phase, our team focuses on verifying that the design produces the best possible value for CPS, that the construction documents are biddable and that they are ready for permitting.  Our understanding of the City of Chicago permitting processes will be a value-add.  Also, our extensive relationships with the construction contracting community will ensure increased participation during the construction solicitation phase, thereby providing competitive pricing.

Most importantly, we will recommend the appropriate project delivery strategy that is aligned with the project scope/budget/schedule requirements for the most effective outcome.  This includes strategic packaging of projects.  

Our construction team will work together to deliver exceptional projects completed on time and within budget, with an equal focus on the quality of the work product and job site safety, emphasizing more detailed schedule and cost control.  For renovation projects, one of the most critical missions is to minimize disruptions to the normal building operations during the construction phase through effective planning and continuous communication with all stakeholders.

Our project managers are responsible for verifying the correct amount of work and deliverables are completed before payment is processed.  In our experience, fair contract administration including change management and timely processing of invoices is one of the key drivers to maintain healthy relationships with the contracting community – this invariably provides a value-add in competitive pricing through increased bid participation for future projects.  

The hidden impacts of prolonged completion of projects are real, significant and avoidable. Therefore, we will continue our approach of beginning a project with the “end in mind” to lead to successful closeouts.  We will develop effective operations and controls procedures in collaboration with you, and manage implementation through project controls systems for standardized, efficient delivery and increased transparency.

We approach warranty management much the same as the closeout process, documenting and driving items to completion with urgency. We will conduct 11-month warranty walkthrough inspections.   As part of this phase, we also capture lessons learned and best practices to enrich future projects. 

This is an area of opportunity for long term cost savings, since transparency and knowledge of available warranties is key to administering these warranties and eliminating any maintenance costs on systems with active warranties.  Integration of this data with any existing Asset data is an option we can review with your team also.