K-12 School Districts Can Experience Digital Transformation with e-Builder

Obstacles Facing Outdated Systems in K-12 School Districts

Collaboration and visibility are valuable aspects of construction projects in K-12 school districts. Disconnected and outdated project management systems make it difficult to paint a reliable picture of a project's status, clogging up the pipeline of information from K-12 owners to stakeholders and taxpayers. Without a proper digital project management system in place, school districts use outdated paper documentation methods.

Watch: e-Builder Enterprise for K-12

With paper documentation comes many obstacles:

• Paper documents can get ruined or misplaced without record.
• Illegible handwriting on paper forms can cause avoidable delays or re-work.
• Finding appropriate files can be impossible or time-consuming if staff are physically out of the office.
• The time it takes for staff to file, look up, and update paper documents designates many man-hours, eating into the project budget and timeline.
• A large storage space is needed for paper documents.

These obstacles can lead to project schedule delays, cost overruns, and fractured trust with the public or stakeholders.

Osceola County K-12 School District Integration Into e-Builder

To enable the digital transformation of their construction project management capabilities, the school district of Osceola County in Central Florida traded their spreadsheets and all their paper-based problems for e-Builder Enterprise’s robust cloud-based software.

Before implementing e-Builder, capital projects for the school district were managed on paper and in Microsoft-based applications; most data was outdated before it could be extracted for reporting purposes. Contracts, change orders, purchase orders, and project-related documents were all paper-driven and had to be physically located, sent, and stored. Processes were inefficient and valuable time was often spent seeking out proper documentation.

“I love the way e-Builder is customizable...I can build any process in there that we need to, and if I need to redo that process, I have the control to make changes to it...I know not all districts work the same and not all companies work the same. [For instance], my RFI process may be different from your RFI process. The customization of E-Builder is fantastic.”

-Charlene Barkholz | Construction Systems Analyst, Osceola School District

When Osceola County School District implemented e-Builder for K-12 digital transformation, they experienced project cost savings, a reduction in cycle times, and increased staff productivity. Osceola County School District can use e-Builder to streamline scheduling and documentation management, including over 60 processes—such as plan reviews, inspection reviews, purchase orders, and contracts.

Benefits of Digital Transformation for Osceola County K-12 School District

1. DRIVES COLLABORATION AND TRANSPARENCY

On any given day, the K-12 school district manages a combined 200 active projects and has completed/closed over 2,400 projects since going live with e-Builder in 2010.

Operations and facilities directors can drive collaboration and better manage school construction project schedules, construction administration processes, and project costs with e-Builder enterprise.

Superintendents and financial managers have real-time access to accurate and up-to-date information that can be shared with stakeholders and taxpayers for greater transparency and visibility.

2. CUSTOMIZABLE WORKFLOWS

Because e-Builder is configurable and customizable, it is being used by multiple departments within Osceola County, each with their own distinct workflows. These departments include:

• Maintenance Department
• Safety and Security Department
• Building Department
• Technology Department

By tailoring the software to suit their needs, each role is appointed properly to specific employees and results in a more streamlined process.

“We configured our processes and our roles to make sure that everybody is able to use the program itself, that they're not seeing everything, but it's tailored to exactly what they need to see and what they need to work on.”

- Charlene Barkholz, Construction Systems Analyst, Osceola School District

3. NEW PROJECT REQUESTS

School site administrators use e-Builder for new project requests. Administrators can log into their own website and put in a new project request. Projects can be labeled by how major or minor they are to the district (the difference between installing an electrical outlet versus constructing a new high school), which allows the K-12 school district to better prioritize and plan the response to the project requests.