Real Estate Development, Design, and Construction

Jointly Listed at Harvard Business School as HBS 1465This course has an irregular schedule: Most Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays on HBS calendar, 1:30 – 2:50 pm, starting Thursday March 24th and ending Thursday, April 28th.Harvard Business School Aldrich Hall 012General Notes:GSD students should register for this course as GSD 7309M4.The course GSD 7309M3, \”Sustainable Cities: Urbanization, Infrastructure, and Finance\” runs in the same time block from January 25th until March 11th. Together the two courses constitute a full 4 credits. Enrollment limited to 30 GSD students. This course is taught by the HBS Case Study method. Grading is by a combination of class participation and a team project. Students registered into GSD 7309M4 receive a GSD format grade, not an HBS grade. This is primarily a finance course, with significant aspects of architecture and urban design woven in.Career Focus:This course focuses on students who expect to be leaders in the global real estate industry and its related specialties. In the near term, these students will lead in the built environment as project managers in real estate development, real estate investing, private equity in real estate, architecture, urban planning, construction, or other fields emphasizing project management. In the longer term, these students will be leaders in those firms and in the industry. The course will also be relevant to students with a general interest in buildings and design.Educational Objectives:The educational objectives of this course are to introduce students to the basic tools and concepts needed to be thoughtful users of design, and effective project managers and leaders in the built environment. The analytical tools address a set of management skills that grow from the project level to the firm level to the regional and industry levels. Skills range from understanding pro formas and schedules; to managing architects and contractors; to strategies for the real estate practice; to analyzing and anticipating impacts of major trends in the next decade in real estate development, design, and construction. Jointly-listed between Harvard Business School and Harvard Design School, this course is intended to serve an audience comprised of students from both schools, using faculty and concepts drawn from both schools and combining issues in finance, architecture, project materials and methods, and planning.Course Content and Organization:The course is organized into four modules. They follow the chronology of development, design, and construction including two different aspects of design, and two different sets of implementation tools.1. Development Vision: Creating in the Built Environment2. Development Economics: Marriage and Tradeoffs. 3. Design: Aesthetics, Pragmatics, and Value4. Construction and Project Management: ToolkitClasses and assignments include case study discussions, simulation exercises, group and individual short projects, polls, and a multi-phase final project delivered in groups and drawing on all the tools of the course.This course is distinct from the \”Real Property\” and \”Real Estate in Emerging Markets\” courses at HBS since this curriculum focuses primarily on the conception, creation, and delivery of projects, with less emphasis on capital markets and the management of cash flowing real assets. It is a good project specific complement to \”Sustainable Cities: Urbanization, Infrastructure and Finance\” at HBS which has more emphasis on infrastructure, large projects, and resource effectiveness. This course is distinct from other professional practice courses at the Harvard Design School due to its extensive combination of design, project delivery, and real estate economics, as well as its use of the HBS Case Study pedagogy.