Featured Innovation: Empowering Town Staff

Freese and Nichols partnered with the Town of Chapel Hill to develop and implement a new way to manage their projects.

This approach incorporated the Town’s culture of inclusiveness and transparency, with input from more than 20 project managers, 10 departments and other staff – all as the Town continued designing and constructing record numbers of capital projects.

The program involved recommendations for improving the Town’s project management capabilities, then implementation of the highest priority recommendations.

This was accomplished by creating project management tools and establishing standard processes.

A powerful program management information system was also customized for the Town to assist them with this effort and a project management certification program, containing 32 hours of training, was developed.

In the words of Town leaders, “Throughout this effort, the Freese and Nichols team modeled the principles and program management practices they were developing for our Town.”

This customized approach enabled Chapel Hill to be their own program manager in a more cohesive, collaborative, efficient and effective manner.