Case Study: Chicago Public Schools achieves centralized, cloud-based project management and faster data access with Trimble e-Builder

Chicago Public Schools Capital Program Transitions to Cloud-based Project Management

Chicago Public Schools’ Capital Program—one of the nation’s largest, managing a $989M FY2019 capital plan and nearly $791M in active projects across 185 schools—tasked a roughly 100-person Department of Capital Planning and Construction with coordinating complex work at scale. The team faced fragmented document storage, no standardized naming or central repository, limited IT capacity, and disconnected systems, which made compiling data for biannual facility assessments and verifying minority/woman-owned business (M/WBE) contract commitments slow and error-prone.

CPS implemented e-Builder Enterprise as a cloud-based PMIS in August 2018 to centralize documents, enforce version control, and link project financials to Oracle and B2Gnow. The integration automated schedule-of-values workflows and M/WBE verification, making contract oversight auditable and accelerating data compilation for 900+ building assessments. The district reports improved synchronicity among internal and external partners, plans to onboard ~700 users, and will continue migrating legacy data into e-Builder.

Chicago Public Schools

Chris Sporina

Senior Business Analyst