Capital Project Information

Fundamentally, three things must be answered when beginning any type of project:

What do we want?

The most important step of any project: knowing what you want, and the steps required to achieve it. Invest the time to create a clear and comprehensive scope of work to properly communicate with contractors and ensure equitable bid comparisons. Having a design or construction background, or working with someone that does, is helpful when creating your project’s scope of work. It can be developed by your staff, an outside contractor/vendor, a Planning and Construction (PAC) Manager (CM) or a combination of these resources.

The PAC Department is here to help create and/or review the scope of work for your projects, and early PAC involvement may expedite the approval process. If you need any assistance, email the PAC Construction Project Coordinator, Amanda Warner, at [email protected] or call at 312.534.5246.

How much will it cost?

After establishing a scope of work, you are ready to solicit cost proposals for work. We recommend a minimum of three proposals when bidding capital improvement projects.

Evaluating proposals to determine which has the best value can be challenging. Pay attention to the qualifications and exclusions contractors make in their proposals. If a proposal is substantially lower than the others, make sure a thorough proposal comparison is performed. Ideally, work proposals should be within ten to fifteen percent of each other. If not, there may be misinterpretations of the work required. If the scope comparison gets too complicated, call the PAC for assistance.

How will we pay for it?

You should have some basic sense on how to fund the project, i.e., through parish savings, CDs and/or endowments on deposit with the Archdiocesan Bank. Project funding will be thoroughly reviewed during the capital project initiation process.

Now that you have an idea of what you want, how much it will cost and how it will be funded, you are ready to begin the capital project initiation process.