PMP prep, rewritten for the people who build substations.
The project management path built for the people running substation and electrical construction work — taught by the engineers and PMs who run those jobs.
The gap this fills
PMP prep is a commodity. There are dozens of providers running generic PMI curriculum, and ClarkTE has no advantage there. But substation and electrical construction project management is genuinely underserved.
The people running these projects — utility construction supervisors, EPC project managers at firms like Burns & McDonnell, Black & Veatch, Quanta — learn on the job from a senior PM who learned from another senior PM. There is no formal curriculum that teaches: how to read a substation one-line in the context of a construction sequence, how to coordinate energization and switching, how to schedule outages with the utility, how to avoid the specific failure modes that cause substation projects to slip (long-lead transformers, relay-settings rework, factory acceptance test failures, commissioning punch lists that balloon).
That is the path. PMP and PgMP are outcomes the path enables, not the content of the path.
Five courses
Courses are taken in order. Each one builds on the last — you cannot skip ahead. Completing Courses 1 through 4 earns the ClarkTE Substation PM Certificate. Course 5 prepares you to sit for the PMP.
Course 1. Substation Construction Fundamentals for PMs
Goal: A non-engineer PM can read drawings and understand the sequence.
Reading one-lines, three-lines, and physical layouts. Understanding what a substation actually does. Equipment categories, lead times, and failure modes. Construction sequence from civil through energization.
Course 2. Scheduling and Sequencing Substation Work
Goal: Build a defensible CPM schedule for a substation project.
Long-lead procurement (transformers, breakers, relays), outage coordination with the utility, weather and seasonal constraints, factory acceptance test (FAT) and site acceptance test (SAT) milestones, energization windows. Includes a downloadable Primavera / MS Project template with the standard substation activity codes.
Course 3. Cost, Procurement, and Change Management
Goal: Keep a substation project on budget and write a defensible change order.
Estimating substation work, the difference between a good and a bad bill of materials, vendor management for OEMs, change-order patterns specific to electrical construction (utility-driven scope changes, geotechnical surprises, relay-settings churn), claims avoidance.
Course 4. Commissioning, Energization, and Closeout
Goal: Run the back half of a substation job without the schedule collapsing.
The course nobody else teaches. Punch-list management on energized equipment, switching and tagging, NETA acceptance test coordination, relay-settings verification, as-built drawings, owner training requirements, lien releases, the full closeout package. Taught by ClarkTE's commissioning leads — this is literally what they do for a living.
Course 5. PMP and PgMP Exam Prep
Goal: Pass the credentialing exam.
Standard PMI curriculum mapped to the PMBOK Guide, but every example, scenario, and practice question is rewritten in substation and electrical-construction context instead of the generic IT-project examples PMI defaults to. Covers the 35 contact hours of formal PM education PMI requires for PMP eligibility, so this course alone qualifies a learner to sit for the exam.
The course no one else teaches
Commissioning, Energization, and Closeout
This is the proof the path is real and not a relabel. Every other PM curriculum treats commissioning as “the part where the contractor hands you keys.” Course 4 walks the actual sequence: pre-energization checks, switching orders, the energization itself, punch lists on energized equipment, and the closeout package your owner will pull off the shelf in 2042 when something faults. Taught by ClarkTE's commissioning leads.