The first part of this article outlined program management challenges many school districts face as well as enemies of success. Here, we will discuss how to address and navigate those challenges.

The Solution
How, in the face of the chaos that may be introduced by dynamic factors to a program already in progress, can a program manager ensure successful results? The answer lies not in the process but in the personal characteristics of a new breed of program manager — exemplars of a new “Gold Standard” of program management that will be necessary to navigate the demands of the school modernization programs of the future.

Regardless of the clarity and soundness of the procedures and processes that may be delineated by professional standards such as those of the Project Management Institute
(PMI), it is the people who make the real difference in a program’s success or failure. Like a battlefield general, successful school modernization program managers today will have the personal characteristics necessary to adapt their tactics to continue the relentless pursuit of over-arching strategy, even as battlefield conditions rapidly shift and the many enemies of program outcomes maneuver and counter-attack. Professionals adhering to the Gold Standard of program management must be trusted advisors, innovators and, ultimately, leaders to achieve successful program outcomes.

Trusted Advisor
A program manager’s role is never to supplant the vision-setting and decision-making authority of the owner who may be — in the case of a school district — a superintendent, chief administrative officer or facilities director. Rather, a Gold Standard program manager must facilitate a process by which the owner establishes a clear but informed vision and makes decisions with confidence throughout the program life cycle.

A Gold Standard program manager will therefore strive, during the program-planning phase, to equip the owner with a thorough understanding of the universe of possible program outcomes and distill the owner’s strategic program goals into a written vision. Once that vision is established, the Gold Standard program manager will internalize and embrace it. Taking personal responsibility for the relentless execution of the owner’s vision is what empowers a program manager to make judgments and adapt tactics to the changing political, demographic and programmatic factors that will be sure to buffet the program.

Throughout the life of a program, the Gold Standard program manager will return consistently to this same cycle as major decisions are required: Define, for the owner, the universe of possible options; support with all relevant information and analysis of the feasibility the pros and cons of each option; and facilitate the owner’s decision, which the program manager can then implement. Clearly, this requires the program manager to rely not only on process, but also on a deep understanding of the school district’s political environment, its construction market and evolving trends in facility planning concepts.

Innovator
Armed with this solid foundation of industry knowledge and embracing the specific vision of the owner, the Gold Standard program manager must be emboldened to innovate. Is a unique new set of architectural program elements required to satisfy diverse stakeholders whose approval is critical to program success? Is a modification or combination of traditional project delivery methods necessary to respond to unique combinations of schedule, scope and budget drivers? Can budgets be optimized by addressing some modernization needs on a more economic, program-wide basis rather than project-by-project? While such alternatives must always be presented to and approved by the owner, the Gold Standard program manager will always proactively explore opportunities to overcome obstacles.

Leader
The focus of existing program management standards on process has resulted in a preponderance of professionals in the industry focused on paper-pushing, passive observation and reporting rather than on keying their own actions and motivating those of others to achieve strategic program goals. By contrast, Gold Standard program managers act as an extension of the owner and embrace the owner’s desired outcomes as their own. Such program managers view themselves as the driving force to ensure that the “train keeps running” and stays on track. Without a focused and committed hand, any program can and will be derailed by dynamic influences.

Conclusion
The reader might readily observe that Gold Standard program management, as described herein, calls for the demonstration of a particular set of personal characteristics and behaviors for which there are no professional standards or licenses. No form of certification implies that a program manager will be a trusted advisor, an innovator and a leader. These characteristics will, however, be the marks of the managers who deliver success in the increasingly dynamic environment of the future. Whether hired in-house by school districts or engaged on an outsourced basis, Gold Standard program managers may appear more expensive than their paper-pushing peers. But, at a few percentage points of the total cost of a program over which they can affect value at many multiples of their cost, a Gold Standard program manager may well be the best bargain in the business of education.

Chris Dunlavey, FAIA, is president of Brailsford & Dunlavey in Washington. Dunlavey specializes in managing the development of PK-12 schools, major sports venues and higher-education “quality-of-life” projects including recreation and athletic facilities, campus unions, and student or faculty and staff housing.

The post The Gold Standard in Program Management: Part 2 appeared first on School Construction News.

The Challenge

School construction or modernization is nothing new; nor are large-scale programs. A mature industry of fundamentally capable program managers exists, including in-house staff in some school district facilities offices and private program-management firms. Some of the latter, in fact, are massive companies, employing legions of credentialed management professionals at various levels of experience and ranging in backgrounds from architecture and planning to engineering and construction management. There is, however, no single professional certification credential needed or available for program management across the U.S. and thus no universal or legally required standards of practice. Instead, the industry generally looks to standards set by related fields such as state licensure in architecture or engineering, or certification by the Construction Management Association of America (CMAA) or, perhaps most appropriately, certification by the Project Management Institute (PMI).

PMI, while focusing most directly on the activities required of a program manager (ranging from the establishment of project goals and stakeholder engagement to the tracking of scopes, schedules and budgets), is not specific to the field of facilities development. PMI’s Project Management Professional (PMP) certification is intended to be equally applicable to endeavors as diverse as information technology software development, commercial marketing campaigns or even space flight. PMP certification carries with it no certain knowledge of the facility design and construction industries as a whole, let alone the nuances within the K-12 education sector. More importantly, while the approaches to program management proscribed by PMI and similar standards emphasize careful planning and highly routinized tracking and management of program metrics toward desired outcomes, they offer little insight into how programs must respond over their lifespan to significant changes in fundamental drivers.

“A program manager today has to balance so many forces external to the building program with the fundamental needs of the educational mission and the constraints of the existing facilities,” said Brian Hanlon, former director of Washington, D.C.’s Department of General Services with responsibility for a $4 billion, 10-year comprehensive modernization of D.C. Public Schools. “Every one of those factors is a constant source of discovery or change.”

Today, school modernization encompasses more changing dynamics and unfamiliar terrain than ever before. The most obvious challenges lie in the “nuts and bolts” of school-modernization needs. Major urban school districts suffer from an excess of aging buildings (ranging from 70 to more than 100 years old), resulting in both enormous backlogs of deferred maintenance needs and major deficiencies relative to modern building codes, which in turn translate to risks in the health, safety and welfare of students, teachers and staff. Meanwhile, districts in urban, suburban and even rural locations are experiencing extraordinary capacity challenges in the form of increasing over-enrollment, under-enrollment or even disparities in both trends across the same district. These facility-based needs are exponentially compounded by the rapidly changing influences on the usual facility design and construction processes.

The Enemies of Success

First and foremost, the enemy of success is politics — to which no public school district is immune and which profoundly affects even private schools in often unpredictable ways. The scoping and prioritization of projects, the equitable allocation of capital funding, the relative importance placed on student-learning needs versus other program goals (such as the economic inclusion of local businesses and workers) and many other elements are inevitable determinants of today’s school modernization program. These elements are not only inherently complex but dynamic and certain to evolve and change over the course of a school-modernization program.

Many cities are experiencing an influx of young millennials, while others continue to suffer population loss that began with the decline of America’s industrial base in the 1960s and ’70s. Other districts, particularly in suburban locations, are booming with not only domestic population growth, but also the added influx of immigrant groups that bring with them cultural and language implications for K-12 education. Demographic changes in some districts are occurring so rapidly that the reality planned for at the outset of a single bond program can be drastically altered by that program’s end.

Perhaps most profound, however, are underlying shifts in educational theory and pedagogy. The teaching approaches that are moving to the forefront of 21st century learning — outcome-based, experiential, inter-disciplinary and collaborative — are so profoundly different from those of the past that most districts’ entire physical plants are inadequate to serve future educational needs. Simply put, it is of only modest benefit to a school district to restore to like-new condition a school building that was built 100, 70 or even 30 years ago, when the modernized school will still deliver only the traditional classroom experience rather than the project-focused, collaborative, technologically innovative spaces needed today and tomorrow.

Chris Dunlavey, FAIA, is president of Brailsford & Dunlavey in Washington. Dunlavey specializes in managing the development of PK-12 schools, major sports venues and higher-education “quality-of-life” projects including recreation and athletic facilities, campus unions, and student or faculty and staff housing.
Read Part 2 of this article, which shares helpful program management solutions, available on July 20 at www.schoolconstructionnews.com.

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