Syllabus — Construction Project Management

A 15-week undergraduate course

Course description. An introduction to the management of construction projects: delivery methods and contracts, risk allocation, estimating, scheduling, project controls, field operations, quality, safety, and closeout. Students carry a single project — the Willow Street Community Center — from bid through closeout, producing a complete project notebook.

Prerequisites. None beyond basic algebra. No prior construction coursework assumed.

Credit hours. 3 (two 75-minute sessions per week, or one 150-minute session).

Text. Construction Management: Building the Built World (free, CC BY-SA 4.0). Chapters assigned below; the remaining chapters are reference and are drawn on in the optional modules.

What this course covers, and what it deliberately does not

Fifteen weeks cannot cover 42 chapters honestly. This syllabus covers 27 and treats the rest as reference material students own permanently.

Covered: Parts I, III, and VI in full; the essential chapters of Parts IV and V; and the closeout and career chapters.

Not covered in class: - Part II (Chapters 8–10, means and methods). Assumed to be handled by a separate construction materials and methods course. If your program has no such course, this omission is serious — substitute the two-semester syllabus, or drop Chapters 30, 34, 36, and 39 from the schedule below and insert Part II at weeks 5–6. - Chapters 21, 22, 35–39 — equipment, temporary structures, BIM, sustainability, residential, heavy civil, and technology. These make excellent optional modules and term-paper topics. - Chapter 27 (lean) is assigned as reading and discussed briefly in week 12, not taught in depth.

Learning outcomes

By the end of this course a student will be able to:

1. Explain how delivery method and contract type allocate risk, and predict from a project's procurement structure which risks the contractor owns.
2. Read a set of construction documents — locate information across disciplines, apply the order of precedence, and systematically identify conflicts between drawings and specifications.
3. Perform a documented quantity takeoff and build a unit cost from first principles (crew composition, production rate, burdened labor rate, material, equipment).
4. Assemble a detailed estimate by CSI division, level subcontractor bids into a comparable bid tab, and defend the final number.
5. Build a CPM schedule and analyze it by hand — forward pass, backward pass, total and free float, critical path identification, and the effect of a duration change.
6. Produce and interpret a cost report, including a defensible cost-to-complete forecast.
7. Compute and interpret earned value metrics and state their limitations on a construction project.
8. Price and document a change order, including time and impact.
9. Perform a basic delay analysis distinguishing excusable, compensable, and concurrent delay.
10. Explain why safety is a property of the production system, and evaluate a schedule decision for its safety consequences.
11. Produce a complete project notebook for a real building project.

Assessment

On the project notebook. It is the spine of the course and it is graded twice: formatively each week (complete / incomplete / revise, with comments) and summatively at the end against the rubric in additional-assessments/rubrics.md. Weekly deliverables are due at the start of the first session of the following week. Late deliverables cascade — a student without a takeoff cannot build an estimate — so enforce this one early and visibly.

On the exams. Both are open-book and open-notebook. This is not generosity; the material is reference-dense and the skills are the point. Sample examinations are in additional-assessments/.

Weekly schedule

Week 1 — What this profession is

Read: Chapter 1; front matter (preface, how to use this book, learning paths) Deliverable: Willow Street project charter — role, stakeholder map, written success criteria Session focus: The lifecycle. The cast of a project and what each party wants. The $10,650 per calendar day figure, derived, because it recurs in nine later chapters. Discussion: Case Study 1-02 (the owner who self-managed a renovation) — itemize what construction management was worth. Instructor note: Spend real time on how to use the book. Students who skip the retrieval prompts and spaced reviews will underperform, and telling them so in week one works better than telling them in week nine.

Week 2 — The industry as a business

Read: Chapter 2 Deliverable: Market and project-type analysis for Willow Street Session focus: Thin margins and what they imply. The contractual tiering diagram. Why money moves slowly. Backlog, bonding capacity, and why growth kills contractors. Discussion: Case Study 2-01 (the contractor that grew from $80M to $240M and failed).

Week 3 — Delivery methods

Read: Chapter 3 · 🚪 threshold concept Deliverable: Delivery-method comparison memo Session focus: The master comparison table, built on the board with the class rather than presented. Then the threshold concept: the same building costs different amounts under different delivery methods because the risk premium moves. In-class: The 📋 Try it drill — three project profiles, recommend a delivery method. Instructor note: This is the first threshold concept and it sets the tone. Do not let the class leave believing one method is "best."

Week 4 — Contracts and risk allocation

Read: Chapter 4 · 🚪 threshold concept Deliverable: Contract-type risk map with dollar exposure Session focus: The four-way worked example — one scope priced as lump sum, GMP, cost-plus, and unit price, then re-run at 12% high quantities. The GMP threshold concept: a guaranteed maximum price guarantees the contractor's exposure, not the owner's cost. Discussion: Case Study 4-01 (the Northgate GMP conversion meeting).

Week 5 — Construction law

Read: Chapter 5 Deliverable: Legal-framework checklist and notice-deadline calendar Session focus: Liens and the payment security chain. Bonds versus insurance. Notice provisions. The dispute-resolution ladder. Instructor note: This is the week to insert your jurisdiction. The chapter hedges every deadline on purpose. A single session on your state's lien statute, licensing requirements, and prompt-payment act is the highest-value local content in the course. Invite a construction attorney if you can. Discussion: Case Study 5-01 (a good claim lost on a 21-day notice provision).

Week 6 — Risk management

Read: Chapter 6 · 🚪 threshold concept · 🪞 learning check-in Deliverable: Willow Street risk register (15 risks) with contingency sized two ways Session focus: The five risk responses applied to one risk. Expected monetary value. The contingency threshold concept: a reserve without a named risk attached is either fat or a lie. In-class: Build the risk register in teams, then compare — the differences between teams are the lesson.

Week 7 — Reading the documents

Read: Chapter 7 · 🚪 threshold concept Deliverable: Document-control setup and a 10-item discrepancy log Session focus: Order of precedence. The drawing set by discipline. CSI MasterFormat and SectionFormat. Division 01 as the most under-read expensive document in the set. In-class: The three-way corridor-rating conflict from the 📋 Try it drill. Students write the RFI. Read three aloud and critique them. Instructor note: If you can get a real (or redacted) drawing set and project manual in front of students this week, do it. Nothing substitutes for the physical experience of a 480-sheet set.

Week 8 — Preconstruction services, and the midterm

Read: Chapter 11 Deliverable: Conceptual estimate and value-engineering log (8 priced options) Session focus: Estimate classes and design completeness. Conceptual estimating methods. Adjusting historical data for time, location, and size. Genuine value engineering versus scope cutting. Midterm examination in the second session. Covers Chapters 1–7 and 11.

Week 9 — Estimating fundamentals

Read: Chapter 12 · 🚪 threshold concept Deliverable: Willow Street quantity takeoff with a basis-of-quantities page Session focus: Takeoff discipline. The unit-cost formula, built from scratch. The fully burdened labor rate. Markup versus margin — teach it, test it in class, and test it again on the final. In-class: The full unit-cost 📋 Try it drill, worked on the board line by line. Instructor note: Students believe they understand markup versus margin. Most do not. Give a two-question quiz at the start of the next session.

Week 10 — Detailed estimating

Read: Chapter 13 Deliverable: Detailed estimate by CSI division with bid tabs and markups Session focus: The estimate summary by division. General conditions built line by line and the derivation of a daily burn rate — this is where students first see theme 2 as arithmetic. Bid leveling. In-class: The bid-leveling drill — three non-comparable quotes leveled into a table. Run it as a bid-day simulation if you have the session length (see field-simulation-guide.md). Ethics: bid shopping and bid peddling. Do not skip this.

Week 11 — Scheduling

Read: Chapter 14 · 🚪 threshold concept Deliverable: Willow Street CPM schedule with both passes run by hand Session focus: WBS, activity definition, duration from quantity ÷ production rate, logic types, and then the forward and backward pass worked completely on the board. In-class: Students run a second network by hand, individually, with the instructor circulating. Do not let anyone leave until they can do it. Instructor note: This is the hardest week of the course. Budget both sessions for it, assign Appendix B problems 1–8 as extra practice, and expect to re-teach float in week 12.

Week 12 — Bidding, buyout, and making work ready

Read: Chapters 15 and 16; Chapter 27 (reading only) Deliverable: Bid/no-bid analysis and buyout log with scope sheets for 5 trades Session focus: The go/no-go decision as a weighted model. Scope sheets and the hunt for gaps between adjacent subcontracts. Back-scheduling long-lead items. A short treatment of pull planning, the constraint log, and percent plan complete. Discussion: The steel delay as a procurement failure — this is where students should see that the book's recurring 23-day slip was entirely preventable and entirely administrative.

Week 13 — Field operations, quality, and safety

Read: Chapters 19, 23, and 24 · 🚪 threshold concepts (19 and 24) Deliverable: Site-specific safety plan with 5 JHAs and 4 toolbox talks Session focus: You do not manage the work; you manage the people who contracted to do it. Quality is prevention, not inspection. And then, with real time given to it: safety is a property of the production system. Discussion: The scaffold near-miss investigation — specifically the argument over whether to write down finding three. Run it as a role-play (see field-simulation-guide.md). Instructor note: safety-teaching-guide.md before you teach this week.

Week 14 — Project controls

Read: Chapters 25, 28, 29, and 30 · 🚪 threshold concepts (25 and 28) Deliverable: Month-6 cost report with cost-to-complete forecast, schedule update with recovery plan, and earned value report Session focus: Cost-to-complete versus cost-to-date. The schedule update and float erosion. The acceleration decision on the steel delay, worked as a decision table — and then the safety impact review of that decision, which closes the loop with week 13. Instructor note: This is a heavy week. If you are behind, cut Chapter 30 (earned value) to reading and cover Chapters 28 and 29 properly. Do not cut Chapter 28.

Week 15 — Changes, payment, claims, closeout, and the career

Read: Chapters 31, 32, 33, 40, and 42 · 🚪 threshold concepts (31, 32, 33) Deliverable: Complete project notebook, assembled and submitted Session focus: The cost of a change is not the cost of the work. Cash flow is not profit. Entitlement, causation, and damages as three separate proofs. Closeout as a planned phase. Then the career conversation. Final examination in the second session. Instructor note: Reserve twenty minutes of the last session for the career chapter and treat it as a real conversation, not a wrap-up. Students have just done a lot of work and are about to enter this industry.

Optional modules

Each fits a single session and can replace a slack week or become a term-paper track.

Course policies worth stating explicitly

On the project notebook and collaboration. Students may work in pairs on the takeoff and the estimate (weeks 9–10) because that mirrors practice, but the schedule, the cost report, and the delay analysis must be individual work. Say which is which in advance.

On generative AI. Decide your policy and state it in week one. One approach that works: AI may be used freely for the exercise sets and for improving the writing in notebook deliverables, but every calculation must be shown by hand and the student must be able to explain any number in their notebook when asked. The exams are handwritten and closed-device.

On the numbers in the book. Remind students repeatedly that every unit cost, wage, productivity rate, and lead time in the text is illustrative. A student who leaves this course believing they know what concrete costs has learned something false.