Challenge

Prior to Northstar's involvement, this project was facing a potential budget over-run due to an inflated scope concept. This initially caused the College to consider deletion or deferral of some functional objectives from the master plan, even though those objectives had already been advertised to the College's Board and constituency.

Success

Once engaged, Northstar organized and led a Cost Opinion Value Analysis (COVA) process. Through this collaborative process, the Owner and project team identified a wide variety of scope alternatives while prioritizing their impact on the original master plan objectives, additionally reflecting the cost, value and opportunity of each, relative to the overall group of options. This resulted in a defined scope which met all of the original functional and quality objectives. Northstar followed up by implementing a change management process for the execution of the project to ensure prioritized best value decision-making occurred on the application of remaining budget. As a result, all original master plan objectives were achieved within budget, as well as the addition of a number of desired enhancements. A supplemental dividend of these efforts came when the project received a 2007 Best Practices Award from the St. Louis Council of Construction Consumers, in recognition of an exceptional level of achievement in design and construction cost effectiveness.