We recently spoke with leaders involved in implementing major public sector capital programs—Johannes Müller, an implementation expert, Ryan, an administrator with a transit agency, and Donovan, an administrator with an independent school district—about the key components necessary for successful, evergreen PMIS adoption.

Q: Given the massive scale of public projects, what is the key to ensuring that the PMIS rollout is fast and the projects quickly achieve success?

Johannes: The key factor in achieving velocity and maintaining momentum is partnership and staff augmentation. Our public sector clients have their day jobs—they need to ensure invoices are paid and documents move, they can't dedicate all their time solely to implementation calls and system training.

We've found success stepping in as an augmentation of their staff, helping them implement the solution, train on it, and resolve workflows, so they can basically just start using the system when it's ready. This approach prevents implementation delays and reduces roadblocks.

Ryan: Relying on experienced implementation partners is crucial because few individuals in a transitioning organization might have hands-on experience with the configuration, implementation, and administration of a new platform. For us at our public transit agency, relying on external expertise allowed us to "hit the ground running". Our delivery partners provide industry knowledge and lessons learned from managing other accounts, helping us get up to speed quicker.

This partnership sets the foundation quickly by identifying the work breakdown structure project hierarchy and standard operating procedures, ranging from invoicing to design submittal reviews. We are also able to take a phased implementation approach to prioritize functionalities needed sooner rather than later, which aligns the technology rollout with the overall program schedule.

Q: For the long-term success of the system, how do you make the PMIS easy for everyday staff to use, thereby improving accuracy and accountability at scale?

Donovan: My role as the dedicated administrator in a large city K-12 public school system focuses heavily on user empowerment and adoption. My goal is to remove any technical roadblocks so that project teams can focus on what they do best: managing and building their projects.

Every new user receives tailored onboarding resources. To ensure consistency and keep skills sharp, I host weekly office hours and team-wide discussions on specific tasks and procedures. We recently conducted a deep dive on the invoice submission process, which involves many layers of compliance checks, and giving everyone that understanding reduced our average approval and processing time significantly.

I also manage a centralized resource hub where users can find quick reference guides, SOPs, and process maps. The main focus here is to empower our users to find the information themselves and to become more self-reliant with my support.

“My primary goal as a company admin here is to foster confidence and expertise across our user base.”

Ryan: The PMIS Administrator acts as a champion for adoption. While end users are experts in their disciplines like engineering or finance, administrators are the system experts who will empower others to effectively use the tools and make their jobs easier. This includes daily tasks like managing users and permissions, providing training, ensuring document control, and generating reports. Beyond technical tasks, we focus on improving company sentiment with clear guidance and frequent enhancements.

Q: How do you ensure the system remains secure and trustworthy over time, fostering future-proof Capital Programs, especially concerning sensitive public data?

Donovan: Governance and optimization are crucial for the long-term health and integrity of our data. I collaborate with our controls teams to conduct project audits, ensuring our templates and standard operating procedures (SOPs) are being followed correctly.

This dedication to data integrity is fundamental because it allows us to generate reliable, high-level dashboards for leadership, giving them a trustworthy, real-time view of projects. Additionally, I carefully manage all system permissions, ensuring every user—whether internal or external—has access to exactly what they need while protecting sensitive information and maintaining clear lines of responsibility.

Johannes: This focus on accuracy and accountability at scale is paramount for public sector agencies, which are tasked with delivering complex projects under intense public scrutiny. To achieve this, executives need to deliver defensible transparency that captures every action, milestone, and outcome in real time, eliminating distractions with a curated view of the project performance. The system must deliver accurate tracking of the budget and a complete history of workflows, markups, and changes with a transparent audit trail. This is where the dedicated administrator, performing governance and data management, proves invaluable.

Q: What is the single most important factor for agency leadership to prioritize during and after implementation?

Johannes: Executive sponsorship is non-negotiable. You need an executive supporting the process from the top down, helping teams define procedures and then using the system to basically drive those processes. Leadership must continually reinforce this priority, because teams will quickly revert to spreadsheets if they don't have that guidance.

Executive sponsorship is critical for defining the product vision, and those leaders need to keep pushing this forward because a robust PMIS platform is a good thing for their teams.

In essence, shifting to an easy, fast, and secure PMIS rollout transforms the process from a burden into a resource. This transformation relies on a cohesive team structure: engaged executive leadership setting the vision, expert partners accelerating the implementation, and dedicated administrators empowering users and ensuring data governance.

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