CREATING ENHANCED LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS FOR THE SAN BERNARDINO CITY UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT

URS Corporation, MLM Project Services and Primavera Systems partner to build new schools for a burgeoning Southern California community.

URS CORPORATION

URS Corporation is a global engineering, construction and technical services firm with headquarters in San Francisco, Calif., and offices throughout the Americas, Asia-Pacific and Europe. Its 57,000 employees provide services to the U.S. federal government; state and local government agencies; and private-industry clients, including Fortune 500 companies, worldwide.

The company's URS Division provides planning, design, and program and construction management (PM/CM) services for industries such as transportation and water resources infrastructure, healthcare complexes, government buildings and schools.

THE CHALLENGE: MANAGING THE INFORMATION

One of the URS Division's programs is the management of a $600+ million facilities capital improvement plan for the San Bernardino City Unified School District (SBCUSD). The SBCUSD, located in Southern California, is experiencing a growing need for new schools to accommodate a burgeoning population, and renovation and modernization of existing schools to meet the requirements of today's education standards -- a program that encompasses more than 120 individual projects.

The biggest challenge facing many capital programs is managing the information. "When the government agencies ask 'Where do we stand? What are the priorities? How much have we spent so far? How much do we have left?' we need to be able to account for every taxpayer dollar," says Craig L. Olsen, CCC, PSP, vice president URS Corporation.

THE SOLUTION: PROJECT AND CONSTRUCTION MANAGEMENT FROM URS AND MLM

In order to meet these challenges, the SBCUSD solicited for a program management team. URS won the contract, and today works hand-in-hand with the district staff to help them manage their program.

"Our expertise is in managing these kinds of programs, information and systems," says Olsen, who manages project controls and Primavera training for the URS Division. "That includes making sure that public money is being funded and allocated properly, design and construction is completed on time and on budget, and that the work of architects, engineers, and other consultants is properly coordinated and communicated."

Centralized data with Primavera solutions
URS utilizes Primavera solutions for most of its projects in the Southern California area, so it was the natural choice for the SBCUSD project.

URS chose two solutions: Primavera P6 for planning and scheduling, and Primavera Contract Manager for contract administration and cost control.

"The contract, cost and document control information for the San Bernardino school program is contained in Contract Manager," explains Olsen. "That's how we keep track of things like what we've budgeted, how much of the budget has been allocated, how much we have in signed contracts, how much we have in change orders, and what we have in terms of invoices or payments that have been approved."

A hosted system for greater efficiencies
In order to concentrate its efforts on its strengths - project and construction management and project controls - URS relies on system hosting and program technical support from Primavera partner MLM Project Services, Inc.

"Using MLM is cost effective, there's minimal downtime, and we can have rapid deployment," says Olsen. "We just give them our 'shopping list' of things that are important to us, and we're ready to go within a matter of days. When we encounter any technical bumps in the road, they take care of it immediately."

Mission Veijo, Calif.,-based MLM uses the Irvine Data Center, a highly secure, redundant-data facility with uninterruptible power and high speed Internet. MLM takes care of setting up all the required computers, servers and communications lines. The company installs the software and configures it according to the unique needs of URS's particular project.

"MLM's managed hosting has allowed the rapid and effectual deployment of Primavera planning/scheduling and contract management systems to the SBCUSD," says David Madding, MLM chief technology officer. And, says URS's Olsen, "Once the systems are set up, we have real-time information and centralized data where we can look at cost, schedule and documents in a multi-project, multi-user environment."

Comprehensive training program
Once the scope of the project has been established and MLM has set up the hosting equipment, URS conducts customized training for the program participants in how to best use Primavera solutions.

"Primavera continues to improve its solutions in directions that work for us. And that's key," says Olsen, adding that for the San Bernardino project, he trained 115 people on Contract Manager and about 40 people on P6. "That's a lot of people from all different backgrounds and with different skillsets. The nice thing about the way the solutions are designed is that it makes it easy for us to get people up to speed."

Olsen says that most of the people using the system aren't even aware that MLM is working in the background. "All they know is that they can go to the Internet, put in a user name - despite what part of the world they're in - and look things up, record documents, pull up contracts and more."

THE BENEFITS: WORKING IN A WORLD OF ORGANIZED INFORMATION

Today, the SBCUSD is the beneficiary of centralized project information. District management and staff, program and construction managers, architects and consultants, and other team members are all working from one comprehensive database. Real-time information is available programwide, and centralized data gives all stakeholders access to the information that is pertinent to their role in the project. This includes:

• costs - budgets, commitments, actuals and funding
• schedule - pre-construction, construction, through close-out
• documents - communications, contracts and logs

Focused user training from URS, which includes innovative guidebooks, hands-on computer labs and post-training support and mentoring, ensures that everyone who is a part of the program is knowledgeable about, and comfortable with, accessing the information they need via Primavera.

Keys to success
Olsen says that the keys to success include a new generation of Primavera solutions, hosting expertise from MLM, team participation, and most important, client buy-in and unwavering support. "The client management was advised of our management plan, including which systems we intended to use, how we were going to approach the projects, and our expectation that they were going to continue to fully support it," says Olsen.

A new confidence
"When Primavera says it can help an organization manage projects, it's true. We can go to the centralized systems, and quickly access information that tells me where we are on every project in terms of funding, budgets, contracts we've committed to and invoices we've approved for payment plus schedules and milestones.

"The bottom line is that this is bond money, taxpayer money that should be spent as efficiently as possible, to build as many schools as possible, and renovate as many schools as soon as we can," says Olsen. "Today, there is a new level of confidence in the decisions that are being made.

"When you're working in a world of organized information, the transformation is amazing."