Syllabus — Construction Project Management I and II
A two-semester undergraduate sequence
This is the syllabus the book was actually designed for. Fifteen weeks cannot cover 42 chapters honestly; thirty weeks can, and the progressive project has room to become what it is meant to be — a complete project record the student can put in front of an employer.
Credit hours. 3 + 3 (two 75-minute sessions per week each semester). Prerequisites. None for CPM I. CPM I is prerequisite to CPM II. Text. Construction Management: Building the Built World (free, CC BY-SA 4.0), complete.
The split, and why it falls where it does
Semester I — Planning the Work (Chapters 1–17). Semester II — Building the Work (Chapters 18–42).
The break at Chapter 17 is not arbitrary. Part III ends with everything that must be true before the first truck arrives; Part IV opens with the work moving from paper to people. It is also the natural break in the progressive project: Semester I's deliverable is a complete bid package — estimate, schedule, and go/no-go recommendation. Semester II's is the project notebook that runs from mobilization through closeout.
An alternative break after Chapter 21 exists and some programs prefer it because it front-loads the field content. The book supports it, but the project deliverables do not divide as cleanly.
SEMESTER I — Planning the Work
Learning outcomes
By the end of Semester I a student will be able to:
- Explain how delivery method and contract type allocate risk, and predict from a project's procurement structure which risks the contractor owns.
- Read a set of construction documents, apply the order of precedence, and systematically find conflicts between drawings and specifications.
- Describe how a building goes together well enough to estimate it, schedule it, and coordinate it.
- Build a risk register with named owners and a defensible contingency.
- Perform a documented quantity takeoff and build a unit cost from first principles.
- Assemble a detailed estimate by CSI division and level subcontractor bids.
- Build a CPM schedule and analyze it by hand — both passes, all floats, critical path.
- Make and defend a bid/no-bid decision, and write a scope sheet that closes gaps between trades.
Assessment
| Component | Weight |
|---|---|
| Project deliverables (17 weekly checkpoints) | 30% |
| Midterm examination (week 8) | 20% |
| Final examination (week 16) | 25% |
| Exercise sets (best 12 of 15) | 15% |
| Participation and case-study discussion | 10% |
Weekly schedule
| Week | Chapters | Focus | Deliverable |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | The profession, the lifecycle, the cast, the $10,650/day number | Project charter |
| 2 | 2 | Thin margins, contractual tiering, why money moves slowly | Market and player analysis |
| 3 | 3 🚪 | Delivery methods; risk allocation is the price | Delivery-method memo |
| 4 | 4 🚪 | Pricing structures; what a GMP does and does not guarantee | Contract risk map |
| 5 | 5 | Liens, bonds, insurance, notice, disputes — insert your jurisdiction here | Legal checklist and notice calendar |
| 6 | 6 🚪 🪞 | Risk register, expected value, contingency as a priced reserve | Risk register, contingency sized two ways |
| 7 | 7 🚪 | Reading the set; CSI; Division 01; the discrepancy hunt | Document control setup, 10-item discrepancy log |
| 8 | — | Midterm examination (Ch 1–7) | — |
| 9 | 8 | Earthwork, foundations, concrete, steel, framing | Structural narrative, earthwork quantities |
| 10 | 9 🪞 | Enclosure as a water-management system; the interior sequence | Enclosure narrative, envelope quantities |
| 11 | 10 🚪 | MEP, and why coordination sets the interior schedule | MEP narrative, six predicted conflicts |
| 12 | 11 | Conceptual estimating, escalation, real value engineering | Conceptual estimate, VE log |
| 13 | 12 🚪 🪞 | Takeoff discipline; the unit-cost formula; markup vs. margin | Quantity takeoff |
| 14 | 13 | The whole number: divisions, general conditions, bid leveling | Detailed estimate |
| 15 | 14 🚪 | CPM by hand: both passes, float, the critical path | CPM schedule |
| 16 | 15 🪞, 16, 17 | Go/no-go, scope sheets and buyout, mobilization — final | Bid package and buyout log |
Instructor notes for Semester I
- Week 5 is where you localize the course. Chapter 5 hedges every deadline deliberately. A session on your state's lien statute, licensing, and prompt-payment act is the highest-value local content in the sequence. Invite a construction attorney.
- Week 13 is the markup-versus-margin week. Students believe they understand it. Quiz them at the start of week 14.
- Week 15 is the hardest week of the year. Budget both sessions for CPM, assign Appendix B problems 1–8, and expect to re-teach free float in week 16.
- If your program has a separate materials-and-methods course, weeks 9–11 become reading and you gain three weeks. Spend them on estimating (two) and CPM (one).
SEMESTER II — Building the Work
Learning outcomes
By the end of Semester II a student will be able to:
- Plan and run a job site: logistics, material flow, and the daily rhythm.
- Manage subcontractors through the subcontract, the schedule, and coordination rather than authority.
- Measure labor productivity and forecast man-hours at completion.
- Build a site-specific safety plan, write a JHA, and evaluate a schedule decision for its safety consequences.
- Run a submittal log built by back-scheduling, write an RFI that gets a usable answer, and keep a project record that survives a dispute.
- Produce a cost report with a defensible cost-to-complete forecast, update a CPM schedule, and compute and interpret earned value.
- Price and document a change order including impact and time.
- Build a schedule of values, prepare a pay application, and model project cash flow.
- Perform a delay analysis addressing entitlement, causation, concurrency, and damages.
- Plan and execute closeout as a scheduled phase.
Assessment
| Component | Weight |
|---|---|
| Project notebook (25 checkpoints, assembled and presented) | 35% |
| Midterm examination (week 8) | 18% |
| Final examination (week 16) | 22% |
| Exercise sets (best 12 of 15) | 15% |
| Participation, case studies, and field simulations | 10% |
Weekly schedule
| Week | Chapters | Focus | Deliverable |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 18 🪞 | Removing the reasons people stand still; material flow; crane time | Site logistics in operation |
| 2 | 19 🚪 | Managing companies that do not work for you; the subcontractor's view | Subcontractor management plan |
| 3 | 20 | Burdened rates, productivity factor, what actually moves productivity | Labor plan |
| 4 | 21 🪞, 22 | Equipment as a schedule decision; formwork, shoring, scaffolding | Equipment and temporary-structures plans |
| 5 | 23 | Quality is prevention; ITPs, hold points, NCRs, continuous punch | Quality management plan |
| 6 | 24 🚪 🪞 | Safety as a property of the production system | Site-specific safety plan, 5 JHAs |
| 7 | 25 🚪, 26 | Submittal logs back-scheduled; RFIs; the daily report's impact statement | Submittal log, 3 RFIs, 5 daily reports |
| 8 | — | Midterm examination (Ch 18–26) | — |
| 9 | 27 🚪 🪞 | Constraints, pull planning, PPC and reasons for variance | Six-week look-ahead, constraint log |
| 10 | 28 🚪 | Cost codes, the five columns, cost-to-complete | Month-6 cost report |
| 11 | 29 | Updates, float erosion, TIA, crashing, the acceleration decision | Schedule update and recovery plan |
| 12 | 30 🪞 | PV, EV, AC; the indices; all four EACs; where EVM misleads | Earned value report |
| 13 | 31 🚪, 32 🚪 | Change orders and impact; SOV, pay application, retention, cash flow | Three change orders; SOV and pay app #6 |
| 14 | 33 🚪 🪞, 34 | Entitlement, causation, damages; the WIP schedule and why firms fail | Delay analysis; WIP entry |
| 15 | 35, 36 🪞, 39 | BIM as coordination; energy code and certification; technology, judged | BIM execution plan; sustainability plan |
| 16 | 40, 41, 42 🪞 | Closeout as a phase; leading people; the career — final | Complete project notebook, presented |
Instructor notes for Semester II
- Read
safety-teaching-guide.mdbefore week 6. If the class leaves believing safety is a compliance topic owned by the safety department, the course has failed regardless of exam scores. Run the scaffold near-miss investigation as a role-play — specifically the argument over whether to write down finding three. - Weeks 10–12 are the analytical core and the part employers care about most. Do not compress them. If you are behind, cut Chapter 35 or 39 from week 15, never Chapter 28.
- Chapters 37 and 38 (residential and heavy civil) are dropped from the schedule above to make room. Assign them as reading and use them as term-paper tracks — or swap one in for week 15 if your program serves those markets.
- Week 16 is presentations. Give each student fifteen minutes to walk their notebook. It is the best assessment instrument in the sequence and the closest thing to a job interview most of them will have had.
Running the project across two semesters
The single most common failure mode is letting Semester I's deliverables drift, because Semester II's depend on them arithmetically. A student without a takeoff cannot build an estimate; without an estimate, no schedule of values; without a schedule, no update, no earned value, no delay analysis.
Three practices that prevent it:
- Grade deliverables complete/incomplete/revise weekly, with comments, and enforce it from week two. Summative grading happens at the end against the rubric.
- Publish a "known-good" version of the Semester I deliverables at the start of Semester II, so a student whose estimate was weak can still do the controls work on sound numbers. This is not charity — it is how a real project works, and it prevents one bad week from destroying a year.
- Require the notebook to be assembled twice — a mid-Semester-II checkpoint and the final — so the assembly problem surfaces early rather than the night before presentations.
Rubrics are in additional-assessments/rubrics.md.
Substituting a local project
Replacing the Willow Street Community Center with a real local project is a genuine improvement if you can get a drawing set and a project manual. The chapter Project Checkpoints describe the deliverable, not the building, so they transfer without editing. Appendix K is the only file you must replace.
If you do this, get the documents before the term starts, redact anything the owner needs redacted, and confirm the project is complete enough that students can be told what actually happened.