SYLLABUS: CREATIVE PROJECT MANAGEMENT

California College of the Arts • Department of Architecture • Spring 2011 • Instructor Peter Anderson

 Course Title      

  BT: Integrated Project Delivery / CREATIVE PROJECT MANAGEMENT

 Section Number

  ARCHT-540-04 (undergraduates) MARCH-640-04 (graduate students)

  Course Description 

  This 3 credit seminar course will explore emerging concepts of project management and project delivery in the architecture and construction industry. Working together as a team, the seminar group will plan all aspects of a project delivery system for bringing a "school-in-a-box" to communities in remote global locations. Through this applied case study, seminar members will participate in the project realization from the point of view of information modeling, physical modeling, scheduling, budgeting, communication, documentation, and project management. Through readings, presentations, and field trips, the students will become familiar with the structures and vocabularies of Integrated Project Delivery and Building Information Modeling, and make a valuable contribution to global humanitarian relief actions. There are no specific prerequisites except for enthusiasm, and we hope to have a broad range of background skills and interests to fill out the various team requirements. This would be an excellent follow-up course for students who took the Fall Building Information Modeling course, allowing direct application of skills learned, but there are plenty of team participation opportunities for students with other skills and interests.

Semester Topic and Research Themes

Our semester project will focus on the development of a program of Primary Schools for a small group of remote islands of the west coast of Africa, in the Bijagos Archipelago, which is part of Guinea Bissau, a former Portuguese Colony. Our project partner is a Non Governmental Organization called the Orebok foundation, which is a non-profit based in Lisbon, Portugal, and Bissau, the capital city of Guinea Bissau. This organization seeks to bring physical school infrastructure to these islands, along with all of the relevant curricular and operational infrastructure needed to operate the schools. Our team will assist with a full range of project support functions, including assistance with the design and planning of the physical facilities, and the Project Management and planning for the implementation process. We will also be working closely with Architecture for Humanity  to coordinate our project with a series of initiatives the organization is coordinating under the name “Indigenous Studios”. Run by Architecture for Humanity’s Director of Education Outreach, Nathaniel Corum, the program will share the insight and knowledge of a diverse and committed team of socially-responsible designers and supporting organizations. Project Delivery Systems generated in the  course will be ‘open sourced’ for anyone to replicate through Creative Commons licensing on the Open Architecture Network (OAN), a web-based project management network created by Architecture for Humanity.

Semester Student Projects

In addition to participating in the ongoing team activities, each student will propose and undertake an independent or small-group semester project that explores and documents in depth with a particular area of focus. The end product and emphasis will be on the documented results of each student's proposals and research. These individual projects will all be selected in coordination with the full group to provide a complete range of the inputs necessary for achieving the group project output.

Class Deliverables

There are three things due at the end of the semester--don't panic if this sounds like a lot of stuff, as it is mostly all the same materials and information, just organized into four different delivery formats (live, printed, digital files, and online).

First, the final semester project will be presented in a live public forum with outside invited guests, at the time of the assigned final exam for the course or another mutually established time. This will include approximately 10-15 minute illustrated presentations by each class participant of each student’s semester project, coordinated together with the overall group project goals. (THE EVENT)

Second, the final semester project will be presented in a hard copy format on 11x17 horizontal format sheets (or other format to be selected by the group), which will contain the written text report on your work, as well as images that support and explain the text, as well as any other documentation or examples. (THE DOCUMENT)

Third, a soft copy (CD or DVD) version of all of the above documents is required. It must include the presentation (Powerpoint, PDF, or other approved format), a pdf version of the printed documents, and all of the separate source files for text and images that are included in your printed documents, as well as any other resources and research materials collected along the way. (THE DATA FILES)

Fourth, our class wiki will be maintained throughout the semester as an online resource and directory of all of our work--and at the end of the semester each person or group will be responsible for organizing their areas of the wiki with the information presented in the other formats, so the wiki can continue to be an ongoing resource for others to use.

Grading

The grading for the course will follow the format of an Integrated Project Delivery contract, in which the greatest impact will be determined by the success or failure of the overall group project. This is not a competitive environment, where one individual or group can succeed on their own merits alone, or at the expense of others. This is a collaborative endeavor, where each person must assist others to help pull up the quality of the overall end product. There will be opportunities for some individuation of grades based primarily on the levels of participation and contribution to the whole, which could result in an individual's grade being higher or lower than the grade given to the overall group project.

Attendance

As a seminar class that meets only one time per week, it is extremely important for everyone to attend every single class meeting. If you miss a class, you are missing out on a huge amount of information, and you are also damaging the collaborative project output of the the overall group. Any unexcused absences will directly impact your final course grade, with attendance and active participation in class considered to be very important criteria in grading. If you must be absent from a class, please email the instructor before class time, or as soon thereafter as you are able, explaining the circumstances and a plan for how you will catch up on the information and activity missed.

Credits

This is a 3 credit course which may satisfy requirements for Building Technology Electives.

Course Dates/Times/Location

Start Date   : 18 January 2011 End Date  4 May 2011

Class meets each Wednesday from 12 noon to 3pm, in room East 1

Instructor Info

Peter Anderson email: panderson2@cca.edu, or peter@andersonanderson.com phone: 415-243-9500 (office) or 206-856-7664 (cell)