Friendship Technology Preparatory Academy
New School Program Management
In the summer of 2005, Building Hope: A Charter School Facilities Fund contracted Brailsford & Dunlavey once again, this time to perform a test fit analysis of a property located in Southwest Washington, DC. The purpose of the analysis was to determine the ability of the site to host a new campus for Friendship Public Charter Schools. At the time, Friendship was the District of Columbia's largest public charter school, utilizing five campuses to serve over 3,000 students in grades K-12. Friendship Technology Preparatory Academy was intended to continue the school system's goals of providing ". . . a world-class education that motivates students to achieve high academic standards, enjoy learning and develop as ethical, literate, well-rounded and self-sufficient citizens . . ."
In the winter of 2005, B&D was selected by Building Hope to serve as the program manager for the project implementation process. B&D's responsibilities included participation in the pre-qualification and selection of a project design team, pre-construction contractor, and all necessary consultants, as well as management of owner-held contracts. B&D's project management tracking system was used to create, maintain, and report key budget, schedule, communications, and quality control project variables. B&D also participated in design workshops with the users and provided detailed design review recommendations to help ensure the design met certain user requirements with regard to layout, size, and configuration of key program elements.
Working with the entire project team, B&D helped to devise a strategic approach to the permitting and regulatory approvals process which included developing both a set of building construction documents as well as a package detailing the foundation and grading scope of work. The separate packages would allow the project to initiate the site preparation and below-grade construction activities while the design team completed the remaining project documentation for submission to the District of Columbia's regulatory bodies.
As all projects possess a certain level
of risk, B&D is accustomed to identifying
and assessing these risks for its clients. In
the case of Friendship, in early 2006 B&D
identified risks that exceeded the project's
acceptable levels. Therefore, the project was
postponed until these issues could be resolved.
