PM Excellence Academy
Onsite #1 · Live Kickoff · 6 hours
The live kickoff where the firm sets one standard for project delivery and names the leader who owns it.
Onsite overview · the three core behaviors · the five outcomes · how to prepareThe mandate
Until now, the quality of a GRACE project has depended on the internal processes established within our offices and teams over many years. These have served us well. They have propelled the performance that brought us to our current state. Although somewhat different, they share one common theme: the desire to produce high-quality work for valued clients, and to do it in a way that drives our business forward. That mandate remains our mandate today.
To solidify our identity and codify our brand experience across the firm, we aim to replace legacy approaches with a standard. And a standard only means something if the firm builds it together and someone owns it on every project.
Standards are tricky. To many, they signal constrained processes, checklists, and endless procedures, the busy work that takes us away from what makes us great. We aim to break that mold here by standardizing one core idea: what does Project Delivery Excellence look like, and what are the core behaviors and outcomes that reliably produce it?
Onsite #1 is where that starts. In one room, in one day, we define firm-wide intent, what great delivery looks like at GRACE, and we name who is accountable for protecting it: the Project Manager. The Project Manager is the Accountable Owner of the outcome, delivered through a set of leadership behaviors that drive results.
“Design that Defines. Impact that Endures.” is the promise. A repeatable standard, owned on every project, is how we keep it.
What the day is built on
Project Delivery Excellence is not a binder. It reduces to three behaviors the Project Manager owns on every project. The day is built on them, one behavior per working block, and so is the program that follows.
Define the finish line before the team takes the first step: scope, fee, the strategic plan, the contract, and a single client liaison, all settled before work advances.
Own the daily momentum of the work: client budgets, schedules, program, and team assignments held on track rather than discovered off it.
Guard technical and professional quality to the end: code compliance, consultant and model coordination, constructability, and documentation that keep the project insurable.
These three behaviors are practical. Clarity defines scope and aligns commitments. Advancement keeps delivery controlled and predictable. Integrity protects the design and technical work. Practiced together, and through people, they compound into a financially healthy firm and stronger teams, the outcomes described next.
What good produces
The behaviors exist to produce results. These are the five outcomes the program is built to deliver, each one tied directly to how the firm performs.
Scope, fee, schedule, and contract settled before work starts, so the project launches on solid ground.
Budgets, schedules, programs, and team assignments actively managed, with variances surfaced early rather than discovered late.
Code, consultant integration, BIM, constructability, and documentation guarded so design intent survives execution.
Utilization and efficient execution protected so the PM drives firm profitability.
The PM leads the workflow, leverages SMEs, and grows capability in others.
Run-of-show
The day moves in three arcs: build the standard together, surface the gaps honestly, then make it personal. The shape of the day follows.
Why we are here, how the day runs, and one shared standard for what good looks like. Meet the table group and take a quick baseline self-rating.
Surface what the room has lived, the projects that soared and the ones that sank, and what made the difference.
Stretch and reset.
Build the PM role from the work itself, then uncover the three behaviors that separate great delivery from the rest.
Map honestly where today’s process and tools fall short, and leave with each priority gap named and owned.
Transition and networking.
A fast, low-stakes reset that locks in the morning.
Why the PM owns the financial result, and the few levers a project manager actually steers.
Stretch and reset.
Frame the real project to carry through all twelve modules: its numbers, its open decision, its weak spot.
Set two or three specific goals tied to the behaviors and the project, and form the pod that holds each person to them.
How the next sixteen weeks run, and each participant’s commitment, said out loud to the people who will hold them to it.
Schedule shown is the working plan. Final times are confirmed before the session.
Before you arrive
Choose a through-line project, one active project you will carry through all twelve modules and test every standard against. The behaviors only mean something applied to real work.
Do before the day
Bring to the room
What the day delivers
The day produces two tools the firm builds together: a Project Process Map (how a GRACE project actually flows) and a Project Responsibility Map (who owns what, at each step). The room builds them, and the room defends what it builds. The PM Excellence Scorecard is how the standard is reinforced after today.
The reference for both is the live Lifecycle Map. On it the three core behaviors run across the lifecycle, Clarity up front, Advancement & Integrity through execution. The three streams (Client, Team & Business) run down every phase. Three views: Leadership Outcomes (what good looks like), PM Responsibilities (who owns what), and the Project Manager Playbook, with every Grace tool and template linked.
The throughline of the role is simple: lead the workflow rather than doing everyone’s work. Leverage the SMEs and the Administrative Project Coordinator. Own the outcome, not the paperwork.
Design that Defines, and Impact that Endures, starts with how a project manager runs the next project. That outcome belongs to the Project Manager.