Education · New ConstructionCompleted 2023

Charter Academy Campus

Nine hundred students were enrolled before ground was broken. Teachers had their keys a week before the first bell.

LocationBlythewood, SC

ClientConfidential

LocationBlythewood, SC

SectorEducation

Value$42M

Size95,000 sq ft

DeliveryDesign-Build

Duration15 months

StatusCompleted 2023

Why it mattered

Campuses run on dates that do not move: the first day of school, the start of term, the opening game. We plan backward from those days and tell boards early, and plainly, whether they will hold.

The challenge

A charter school network enrolled students for a new K-12 campus before construction started. The first day of school was fixed, and there was no other building to fall back on.

Fifteen months of design-build, a wet spring and a slow county permitting cycle left almost no float. The board needed to know early, and in plain terms, whether the date would hold.

Our role

Baseline Schedule Development Schedule Updates Milestone Planning

Schedule at a glance

The whole program, on one line.

Start to finish, as the schedule tells it. For work still in progress, the bar moves with today's data date.

StartApr 2022

Duration15 months

HandoverJul 2023

Progress—

Fix the finishRetire the unknowns earlyReport in plain languagePlan move-in as work

How we held the date

Our approach, phase by phase.

The same disciplined sequence we bring to every engagement, shaped around what this project needed most.

PHASE 01PHASE 02PHASE 03PHASE 04

PHASE 01Fix the finish

The academic calendar set as the immovable completion, with every milestone worked backward from it.

PHASE 02Retire the unknowns early

Ground conditions, permits and long-lead items confronted in the first sixty days, while there is still time to react.

PHASE 03Report in plain language

Monthly updates and one-page summaries written for boards, faculty and donors, not just for builders.

PHASE 04Plan move-in as work

Furniture, technology, labs and faculty move-in scheduled as a critical sequence of their own.

What changed

The difference we made

Measured the only way that matters: whether the date and the budget held.

Result 01A week to spare

Teachers moved in seven days ahead of the first day of school.

Result 02Rain planned for, not explained away

Weather days were modeled in the baseline, so the wet spring consumed contingency rather than the finish date.

Result 03One page for the board

Each month the board received a single-page schedule summary written for non-specialists.

Services engaged

What we brought to it

2.01.02Baseline Schedule Development

Approved baselines that capture scope, sequence and risk with precision: the fixed reference against which every future decision, dollar and day is judged.

2.01.06Schedule Updates

Disciplined periodic updates that capture verified progress, explain every movement and keep the schedule an instrument of command rather than a record of hope.

2.01.11Milestone Planning

Milestone frameworks that align contracts, payments, regulators and teams around the few dates that truly count, with early warning when any of them is at risk.

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