Boosting Business Performance

Dr. Roya Javadpour, a professor of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering at California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly) at San Luis Obispo, and her business and industrial engineering students don't look like construction experts -- and they're not.

Yet they're the protagonists in an extraordinarily heartwarming annual undertaking that makes most "extreme home makeover" television shows look amateurish. This article offers a glimpse into some of the dazzling results her students have achieved, based on presentations she has given to our local PMI and STC professional groups.

When Dr. Javadpour redesigned her graduate project management course in 2004 to serve disadvantaged county residents, she and her students soon began "a journey filled with trials and triumphs far grander than they could imagine." Each year since then, students in this course have gained project management skills by planning and completing a home renovation. They raise funds and solicit in-kind donations of tools, building supplies, materials, furnishings, and advice from the community, which allows many others to contribute to the undertaking.

The service project the students will complete in May of 2011 will aid a 16-year-old disabled teenager who was born with a severe form of spina bifida. He is paralyzed from the chest down and has been confined to a wheelchair ever since the age of two. Over his lifetime, this teen has endured twelve major surgeries and countless other hospitalizations. Furthermore, he suffers from hydrocephalus (water on the brain) and osteoporosis, which greatly affect his executive functioning skills.

Daily living tasks require constant prompting and a great deal of assisted care. His parents make every possible accommodation for their son, but as he has grown over the years, the physical demands of caring for him have taken a toll.

The students' goals are to improve the safety and comfort of the family's home and also to encourage his future independence. They plan to build a larger bedroom and a wheelchair-accessible bathroom, and provide other much-needed renovations that would otherwise go undone. These will allow the family to manage his daily medical needs with less overall stress, as well as bring great hope to him.

Once the finalists emerge, Roya tours the homes with a licensed contractor to determine which ones are eligible. The homeowner(s) must also agree to the project and must be willing to stay completely off-site during the two-week reconstruction period. When the quarter begins, Roya has the students make the final decision (if there is more than one option) using the information she has collected.

A Look at the Expectations

To successfully plan the project, students must:

Organize themselves into teams for project planning, fundraising, scheduling, safety, risk assessment, demolition, drywall, construction, painting, window replacement, flooring, landscaping, and more.

Assess the cost and time tradeoffs of completely transforming a badly neglected home in just a few weeks.

Create a work breakdown structure and prepare a variety of project plans and schedules.

Create contingency plans in case funding or other constraints prevent them from carrying out all of the goals on their wish list.

Plan all equipment and tools to be used, even down to the brand name. Students can sometimes borrow tools, but must buy or rent others. They also must obtain all needed building permits and schedule inspections.

Although the students ultimately choose the size and scope of the project, the main criteria are that the students:

Must finish what they start, given that significant fine-tuning may occur during the six-week planning process.

Must end the project with high morale, setting the tone for the teamwork, precise communication, and coordination they will need throughout the project.

Further, the home renovation project is only part of the course -- students also must master project management theory, practice, and techniques; take regular exams; evaluate each other at the end; and provide a personal reflection essay.

"Before and After" Views from the Earlier PolyHouse Project - Kitchen

How Do the Students Carry Out the Project?

At the end of six-week planning phase, the students make a final assessment of whether they can proceed with everything they had hoped to accomplish, and adjust accordingly. Since they have only six actual work days (two long weekends) to do all of the work, they prepare to execute every action precisely accordingly to plan. This is especially important for major tasks such as replacing a roof (as in the 2005 project), or moving load-bearing interior walls (as in the 2006 project).

Since the students are largely untrained in many of the skills required, they must find someone to tutor and guide them on-site, or train themselves. For example, they used "how-to" videos to teach themselves how to tile a bathroom, Roya explained.

Despite the long and grueling hours, where teams typically remain on the site from very early in the morning to late at night during their four work days, Roya asks them to provide daily status reports at the end of each work day. Although Roya herself does not perform physical work on the project, she is usually on-site every hour that the students are there, providing moral support, guidance, and supervision.

And miraculously, despite performing long hours of rigorous and demanding physical work for which very few of her students are previously trained -- including demolition, roofing, flooring, and landscaping -- "not a single person has ever needed more than a Band-Aid," Roya shared -- much to our astonishment.

In conclusion, the PolyHouse program provides an unparalleled learn-by-doing experience that gives students enormous confidence and skill. I've had the privilege of visiting one project during a pouring rainstorm as it was nearing completion, and another project in which everyone was sweltering in searing heat. I was repeatedly inspired by watching the dedicated crews put the final touches on each miraculous transformation.

For more information on the PolyHouse projects (and to make online donations), please use the following links: