For district facilities teams
A school district usually runs several construction projects at once with a small facilities staff. Each project has a budget, a schedule that has to finish before the school year starts, and a steady stream of change orders. This page describes how a district, as the owner, can keep each school as its own project in Fidrel and still see all of them together.
30 days free · No long-term contract.
A director and a few project managers can be responsible for a new elementary school, a roof replacement and a gym renovation in the same year. Each has its own contractor and its own paperwork, and the director still has to answer for all three at once.
A classroom building that is late by two weeks in summer is late by a whole term in practice. The date that matters is the first day of school, and everything else in the schedule works backward from it.
Every approved change order eats into a budget that was set before the work was drawn in detail. Without the change orders next to the budget, the first sign of trouble is the last invoice.
Fidrel does not know the school calendar. The window is a milestone, or a pair of milestones, whose dates your team sets and moves, and the working calendar records which dates do not count as working days. Because the baseline keeps the original plan, you can show a board exactly how far an end date has moved from the date first agreed. A schedule can be shared with everyone on the project or kept Internal, visible to administrators only, while the district reviews it.
Key metrics & reporting
A district often wants the contractor to see the drawings and not the budget. The estimate stays closed until it is shared, and an administrator gives access to cost tracking and vendor invoices person by person, so the director and the business office can see figures that the project team cannot. The Financials page shows a project only to people who have access to its costs, and says how many projects it is leaving out.
Step 1
Create one project per school or per scope, and invite the architect, the construction manager and the contractor with the access each needs. Folders and documents then stay with the project they belong to.
Step 2
Build or import the estimate in groups and line items and approve it as the baseline. It becomes the project’s original budget and is locked, and later changes come through change orders, budget adjustments or revisions.
Step 3
In the schedule, add the milestones your team needs, such as the date the site is clear and the date classrooms are handed over, and save a baseline. The variance in days then shows on every end date, so slippage is visible against the date that cannot move.
Step 4
Create each change order with its type, description, proposed cost, approved cost and schedule impact in days. Link it to a budget item and it shows as an expected change in cost tracking until an administrator approves it.
Step 5
Open Financials to see the district’s projects with budget, estimate at completion and variance. Marks such as Over budget and Watch point to the projects that need a decision this week.
Only a project administrator approves a change order or enters its approved cost. A change order can be created straight from an RFI, an issue or an NCR, so the question that caused it stays attached. Linked to a budget item, it appears in cost tracking as an expected change, and once approved its amount is included in the current budget. The status runs from draft through sent and under review to approved or rejected.
Fidrel does not track funding sources, bonds, grants or reimbursements, so those stay in the district’s own finance system. The summer window is a milestone whose dates your team sets and updates. Fidrel produces no board presentation: the key figures sit on the project overview and the Financials page, and the underlying data exports to Excel and CSV for your own summary.
Your trial applies to your first own project and starts when that project is created. No card required. Afterwards, choose card or invoice to continue.
The project system of the future connects people, documents and decisions. Discover the thinking behind Fidrel.
Read more
On site, answers need to be close at hand. Fidrel displays DWG drawings in your mobile browser, within the project’s document structure.
Read more
When everyone can see the next step, moving the project forward becomes easier. Fidrel brings activities, dates and reported progress together in a shared Gantt view.
Read moreFor district facilities teams
Anything else on your mind? We are happy to help.
Talk to usYes. The Financials page lists the organization’s projects with budget, estimate at completion and variance, and marks the ones that are over budget or need watching. Projects whose costs you cannot see are left out and counted.
Yes. The estimate is closed until it is shared, and cost tracking and vendor invoices are given to people one by one. Folders can be limited to administrators or selected members.
Add it as a milestone in the schedule and save a baseline. The schedule then shows the variance in days against the original plan, and the critical path highlights the activities that leave no float.
No. It tracks the project’s budget, committed cost, invoiced cost, forecast and change orders. Funding sources and reimbursements stay outside Fidrel.
Yes. Invite each person with a role and access to the whole project or only chosen folders, and check the summary of what they will and will not see before the invitation goes out.
