The City of Grand Rapids, Michigan—the second largest city in the state—located near Lake Michigan, has approximately 1+ million citizens in the city and surrounding areas and is the hometown of former U.S. President Gerald R. Ford. The city engineer is responsible for managing hundreds of capital projects that affect nearly 108 buildings or facilities owned by the city, 65 parks and cemeteries, and the upkeep of approximately 850 miles of streets within the city and surrounding areas. There are also many private development projects and partnerships affecting city assets that must also be tracked and managed.

Overall, the City of Grand Rapids Engineering Department acts in the capacity of a municipal Project Management Office (PMO) for the city’s capital projects and is fully charged with planning, scheduling, and bringing these capital projects in on-time and within the budget authorized by the City Commission. At any given time, there is $100,000,000 in active project work and $22,000,000 to $26,000,000 gets added in each year from the Five-Year Capital Plan or through private development. Some of the larger projects can take up to two construction seasons to complete.

The Engineering Department for the City of Grand Rapids, Michigan is responsible for managing design and construction projects authorized by the City Commission as part of its Five-Year Capital Plan. Additionally, the city manages many private development projects that either impact city assets or involve a public-private partnership.

With hundreds of projects in the pipeline each year, the forward-thinking city engineer felt it was the right time to implement a capital improvement PPM technology solution that would appropriately fit within the city’s current information system structure. Microsoft Project Online was chosen as the ideal solution along with SharePoint to create several highly customizable features for the city.

As the demand to manage more capital and private development projects slowly began to outpace the existing processes in place, City Engineer Mark DeClercq and his dedicated department of approximately forty people recognized a real need to begin consolidating and centralizing information to increase the visibility of projects along with all critical financial data. In doing so, the Engineering Department wanted to gain efficiencies and enhance communication with all partners in other city departments such as Fire, Parks and Recreation, Police, Water, and Sewer. The city engineer also desired to provide an accurate and real-time view into all the vital project work being managed by the department to high-level city stakeholders such as the Mayor’s Office and the Deputy City Manager.

Some of the more specific challenges facing the Engineering Department that required a PPM technology solution were the following:

• The need for a centralized repository of all critical project information with graphical indicators detailing the current health of all projects in the pipeline
• An automated workflow that could be used by all city departments to initiate a new capital project from the Five-Year Capital Plan
• An information source to gain a better understanding of resource utilization and capacity than what currently exists
• Integrated applications and business intelligence from various city business systems
• A methodical system for tracking construction change orders and submittals using lists and automated workflow

After a thorough analysis of all options, the city engineer—with the approval of the Grand Rapids City Commission—decided to engage EPM Solutions, a Microsoft Gold Partner with offices in Silicon Valley, to plan, implement, and customize an enterprise Project and Portfolio Management (PPM) system for the Engineering Department. The city engineer wanted a solution that would align well with the municipal technology structure already in place. Because the City of Grand Rapids already made judicious use of SharePoint and is a Microsoft Office 365 shop, it seemed like a logical next step for the city engineer to incorporate a Microsoft PPM technology solution that uses SharePoint as its foundation. Accordingly, the Engineering Department opted to go with Microsoft Project Online, the secure cloud-hosted solution to gain efficiencies in costs and to push back much of the system maintenance on Microsoft to unburden city resources.

After first conducting a limited test pilot, the City of Grand Rapids has expanded CIP-PPM to all its capital projects involving streets and facilities, along with private development projects and partnerships. Some of the realized benefits the city has gotten through its first phase deployment include the following:

A Holistic and Consolidated View of All Projects. With a fully functioning Project Center in place, the Engineering Department is now enjoying full visibility of all its projects with real-time indicators pertaining to project health for both schedule and budget. “It’s been very exciting to see everything come together in one place for the very first time with all pertinent and corresponding information,” remarked Jon Oeverman, the lead Project Manager with the city.

A Customized Workflow to Initiate New Capital Projects. One of the most sought-after benefits the Engineering Department had been looking forward to was an automated SharePoint workflow that would allow any city employee or partner, in any department, to initiate a request to start work on a new capital project that had been authorized by the City Commission. “Using SharePoint, EPM Solutions developed a fantastic form and workflow that allowed any of our important city partners to make a request for engineering services and have it automatically routed to the required review points for comments and approvals,” said Brandy Moeller, the Administrative Services Officer for the Engineering Department. “It really helped to make us much more efficient and effective in getting a capital project properly situated for the pipeline.”

A Better Understanding of Resource Utilization. Like many organizations seeking a PPM solution, the City Engineer of Grand Rapids wanted the engineering staff to be able to see the overall resource utilization impact of managing numerous projects for the city. Previously, this information had been very difficult to compile on demand. City Engineer Mark DeClercq noted “Up until this point, it had been a real challenge for my staff to get an immediate and real-time glimpse into the overall demand and capacity of our internal resources at any given moment. This has all changed with the implementation of Project Online. We can now get this data visually represented in an instant to make forecasting and planning decisions.” There was also a need to visually consolidate and display employee leave and vacation calendars to make scheduling and staff availability more accessible.

Integrated Applications and Business Intelligence. EPM Solutions developed a series of reports and dashboards from data compiled in Project Online and matched it to other information from vital city systems. Using a proprietary tool, the Integrator, to periodically download data, business intelligence was developed by combining information from existing databases such as A360, ARCGIS, Oracle, and Microsoft CRM. Multi-sourced dashboards and custom reports—with user controlled filtering—were designed for specific roles such as city executives and project managers. These custom integrations were ultimately more efficient for the City of Grand Rapids because they saved time in producing business intelligence with the added benefit of greater accuracy.

Ability to Track Change Orders and Submittals. With capital construction projects, there are usually many change order requests and submittal logs from vendors and contractors. Along with providing a Microsoft PPM solution for the overall management of projects and resources, EPM Solutions provided several custom and related SharePoint databases for tracking change orders and submittals for each of the projects. Change orders also has a detailed form and workflow for getting appropriate approvals all the way up the department chain to the city engineer. It has eliminated the paper system for doing this that previously existed and provides sophisticated databases for searching and archiving this important information.

Among the most valued features provided were capital improvement project customizations specifically designed to manage the city’s streets, facilities, private development, and grant management projects. These include a stringent review process for approving and funding projects; change order routing and management; submittal logs; workflow with progress alerts and gate approvals; vacation calendars, lessons learned; management of expiring events; as well as extensive application integration with existing business and financial systems to create multi-sourced dashboards and custom reports.

With the first phase of the implementation complete, the City of Grand Rapids Engineering Department is moving towards other custom add-on features developed by EPM Solutions that will further turbo-charge their efforts to manage capital improvement and construction projects such as other features for owner construction and financial management. This app makes Microsoft Project Online an ideal solution for managing capital improvement and construction projects at both the county and city levels.

Additionally, the Engineering Department may soon be expanding the use of Microsoft Project Online to other city departments that manage certain project types separately. “Doing so will be a real touchstone of success for the entire city,” said Sophia Zhou, CEO of EPM Solutions.

Project Management

Resource Management