Same projects,
four structures
Four ways a municipality can organize the same capital program. Same departments, same crews, same council. Only the structure changes, and with it, how the work moves.
Same org chart, four sets of roles
Department heads report to the CAO. Operations is its own department in Models 1 and 3, and a division of Engineering and Public Works in Models 2 and 4. IT is a division of Corporate Services, and policing is contracted to the RCMP. Pick a model, or hover one above, to see who delivers, who sponsors, who supports and who governs.
RACI by model
Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed. Every activity should have exactly one A. Rows without one are where work stalls and conflicts get settled by whoever pushes hardest.
Delivery director means the director of the department delivering the project. In Model 1 that's always Engineering and Public Works. Support departments are Corporate Services, Development Services and HR. IT is a division of Corporate Services: it sponsors projects in Models 1 and 3 and delivers its own in Models 2 and 4. Asset manager means the asset management group in Engineering and Public Works (Models 1 and 3); Models 2 and 4 have none. Operations means the Director of Operations and the operations manager in Models 1 and 3, and the operations manager inside Engineering and Public Works in Models 2 and 4.
Who leads which projects
The same project lands in a different place depending on the structure. Pick a model to see which department leads each kind of work, and what the crews do on it.
Operations crews patch potholes, crack-seal and lay small paving patches as maintenance. The annual paving program needs design, tendering and a contract, so Engineering leads it in every model.
Engineering leads anything on roads and utilities that needs design and a contract: water, sewer, storm, paving and sidewalks. Operations maintains those same assets, does small jobs in-house, and in Models 2 to 4 runs the building and fleet projects.
Parks leads it in Models 2 to 4, with Engineering's help on grading, drainage and lighting. In Model 1, Engineering runs it and Parks sponsors it.
The executive lens
The study in leadership terms: what it found, how to tell which structure an organization is running, what drift looks like, and the questions worth asking.
The structure decides when people talk. When people talk decides how the work flows.
Which model is your organization running?
Eight questions. Answer for how capital work actually happens, not how the policy says it should.
Streams colliding
Speed-first by drift, not by decision
Model 4 is a tool, not a default. Used on purpose, it has a trigger, an end date and a review afterward.
Five questions worth asking
Select a question to see what a well-structured program looks like.
How structure
shapes flow
Who does what when a capital project moves from budget request to close-out? Pick a project and walk it through. At each step, choose how your organization does it today.
At the end you'll see which of four delivery structures you're running, and how the same project would run under the one this research recommends.
Map your organization
Describe how your municipality is set up. See which of four delivery structures you run, pick the one you want, and get the changes as a brief for your leadership team.
- 01Pick the template closest to yours
- 02Answer five short steps
- 03Plan a change, or post your result
Rather warm up first? , or .
Your project so far
This work was made with AI assistance. The research combines human and AI input, the website was built with AI, and both were reviewed by people. It may still contain errors, and its accuracy isn't guaranteed. Check it against your own context before relying on it.
What comes next?
Ten everyday projects, sixteen tasks each. Put them in the order they should happen. It's the same skill a capital project needs: knowing what has to be true before the next step can start.
TasksTap or drag to place
Your sequenceFirst to last
Why structure decides flow
Three ideas from outside municipal government explain most of what the four charts show: how organizations communicate, how queues behave, and how bottlenecks should be managed.
These charts respond to dragging and hovering, so they work best on a computer.
The plan mirrors the conversations
In 1968 Melvin Conway observed that organizations produce designs that copy their own communication structure.
A capital program works the same way. The schedule ends up shaped by who talks to whom, and when. The inverse Conway maneuver is to draw the conversations on purpose, so the plan follows.
Choose a group to see when each model first brings it into the work.
Busy crews make long queues
The waiting time for a shared resource doesn't grow in a straight line. It climbs steeply as the resource fills up.
Drag the slider, or move across the chart, to change how fully the crews are booked, and pick how many crews share the work. The study uses about 75 to 80 percent in peak months as a starting point. It's a rule of thumb to tune with real data, not a standard.
Overtime doesn't escape the curve. Sustained 50 to 60 hour weeks cut productivity by roughly 10 to 15 percent.
Modelled as a pool of identical crews (an M/M/c queue). Most capital work is scheduled, not random, but breaks, emergencies and late changes are random, and they feel the queue first. A bigger pool waits less at the same booking level, but every pool climbs steeply near full. Read the curve for its shape, not its exact numbers.
Plan around the constraint
Every system has one resource that limits everything else. In many municipal capital programs, it's the shared operations crews.
The Theory of Constraints gives five steps for managing that resource. Only one model works through all five.
This study assumes the crews are the constraint. Confirm it with your own data first: in some organizations it's project manager capacity, design, procurement or council timing.
Compare the models
Set what matters to you and see which structure fits. The ratings are the study's qualitative judgments on a 1 to 5 scale, where higher is better.
How much does each one matter?
Pick a preset or set each weight.
Best fit
How each model lines up with standard project management practice
Practices drawn from PMI's standards for project, program and portfolio management, applied to a capital program. The levels are the study's judgment.
Map your organization
Describe how your municipality is set up: its departments, where the crews and buildings sit, who runs each kind of capital project, and how the program is managed. The site matches it to the closest of the four structures. Then pick the model you want to run, and it lists what would change and builds a brief for your leadership team.
The match is a prompt for reflection, not an assessment. It reads the structure you describe against the four illustrative models in this study.
The best method found
For a standing municipal capital program, one structure stands out. The fastest model still has a place, as a declared emergency mode.
Model 3: departmental streams, governed as one portfolio, with the crews planned as the system constraint.
Model 4 is kept as a declared emergency mode inside it.
- It matches the standards.PMI portfolio capacity management, ISO 55000 alignment and assurance, FCM cross-functional teams and GFOA monitoring, without centralizing delivery.
- It fixes the flow problem at its source.It adds the two conversations that matter most, early: the capacity review and the support review.
- It manages the real constraint.It's the only model that names the crews as the shared resource and builds the program around them.
- It answers what audits keep finding.Standards, governance, prioritization and visibility, for one position and existing software.
- It keeps what works in Model 2.Departments keep ownership, expertise and speed.
Build control in stages
Each stage pays for itself on its own, and each makes the next one easier.
The first coordination meeting
An imagined conversation, not a transcript. It's the first coordination meeting of the year at a municipality that has just adopted Model 3. Everyone around the table has lived through Model 2.
Step through it one line at a time.
The structure decides when people talk, and when people talk decides how the work flows.
Sources (37)
Independent research. Titles are generic, and the four models are illustrative structures rather than a description of any one municipality. Ratings are qualitative judgments drawn from the research.
Tools and comms
A proposed tracking and communication system built from tools most municipalities already have: Microsoft 365 and a computerized maintenance management system (CMMS), whichever one the municipality already runs. The rule underneath it: every fact is entered once, in one home.
Each tool has one job
Select a tool to see what lives there, who writes to it and what doesn't belong in it.
Follow the data
How one request for operations crews moves between the tools, from budget approval to close-out. Nobody re-types anything.
The tracker
Lists 1 to 4 come from the study's tracking design. List 5 is new: basic Planner comes with most Microsoft 365 plans, but Gantt charts, dependencies and baselines need a paid premium license, so key dates live in a list. A calendar view of List 5 becomes the one program timeline everyone can see.