Project Management as a Discipline for Public School Facility Project

In the United States, the need to build and manage public school facilities play an important role in achieving educational goals and objectives, however with many school districts in need of renovation or replacement of existing school facilities the public-school district's infrastructure budget and capital expenditures are impacted. Educational leaders and local government officials need to find an efficient and effective way to cover the cost of reconstructing existing public-school facilities and manage the building projects appropriately to ensure project management milestones and goals are achieved. The research questions in this study focused on the usage or lack of usage of project management personnel and project management practices associated with K-12 public school building projects in the state of Tennessee. This qualitative explanatory (multiple unit of analysis) case study explored and explained an effective and strategic project management discipline for grades K-12 public school building projects. A purposive sample included individuals that have managed or currently managing K-12 public school facility projects in Tennessee. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews from multiple school districts to gain an in-depth insight and understanding of how public-school districts utilize a full-time project professional for school building project efforts and the effectiveness of project management personnel in the school district. Study results suggested that project managers are full-time within their perspective school districts. The use of project managers helps the school district with effective planning and managing time, cost, and quality of a school building project with the capability to deliver the results. A recommendation is that the district personnel, collect data and keep track of common barriers for all types of school building projects, keep record of what barriers project managers experience during the process and formulate key learnings and best practices on how to overcome those common barriers specifically to their school district. A recommendation for future research is data driven research to explore and identify what is considered components of economy and outside forces as perceived barriers in a building project. A quantitative study of best practices on how to overcome these barriers would be beneficial and valuable to other school districts and district personnel.