Guides

This guide is designed for public owners, finance leaders, and capital program managersseeking to strengthen governance, accountability, and long-term planning outcomes. Itexamines the seven areas that most consistently shape program success, including projectdefinition and prioritization, risk management, and progress reporting.It also explores how these challenges differ across large and local agencies, offering practicalapproaches aligned to real organizational constraints and delivery realities.By addressing these areas more deliberately, agencies can reduce reactive planning, improvestakeholder confidence, and manage programs with greater transparency and control.

This guide covers the following key topics:

• What qualifies as a capital project and why consistent classification matters
• How project intake and early-stage definition shape downstream decisions
• How to score and prioritize projects using objective, multi-criteria frameworks
• When approvals happen, who owns them, and how to reduce governance gaps
• How to phase and fund capital programs across multiyear horizons
• How to manage risk and contingency at the project and program level
• How to track and communicate progress to support timely, informed decisions