Construction Project Management
Signature Course No. 138 — A Signature AI Socratic Coaching Course.
A New Kind of Learning
Socratic coaching, delivered by an agentic AI coach.
Not a course you watch. An AI coach you work with.
The Lighthouse Coach begins by discovering how you think about the subject, teaches what is missing, and gives you realistic practice before asking you to prove that you can use it. You may test out of concepts you already understand, while capstones turn the learning into a practical plan, decision, conversation, or other real-world result.
The curriculum is deliberately authored; the AI delivers it through coaching. It is not an AI randomly generating lessons.
A coach that teaches by asking — not by lecturing
The Lighthouse Coach is an AI Socratic coach built on Cognosco Learning's Construction Project Management course, in the Frontline & Industry Leadership category. It does not play videos at you. It holds a conversation: it asks you a question, listens to your answer, names the misconception it hears, affirms what you got right, and asks the next question — the way a great coach works in the room.
You work on one running project throughout — the Moss Hollow Community Health Center, built by Havilland Construction Co. for the Calder Health Alliance — and every figure in the course is stated once, in full, and reconciles to the same contract, so an estimate, a float calculation, a cost report, or a pay application can always be checked by hand against the same set of facts.
This is the course for project managers and assistant project managers, superintendents and field leaders moving toward project management, owners' representatives, and estimators, schedulers, and trade-contractor project managers who need the whole job's logic. It works in two movements: first, Module 1 — Winning and Starting the Job Right — work through Concepts 1–9, finishing with The Mobilization and Controls Plan; then, Module 2 — Controlling, Changing, and Closing the Job — work through Concepts 10–18, finishing with The Recovery and Closeout Plan.
You finish by proving the whole course — in The Mobilization and Controls Plan and in The Recovery and Closeout Plan.
You can type your answers, or talk out loud: the Voice Coach speaks its questions and listens to your spoken replies, hands-free. The course is self-paced and always on — roughly 30 minutes per concept, about 9 hours in full, taken in as many sittings as you like. Learners who already know the material can test out concept by concept.
Safety is taught the way a project manager runs it — the plan, the inspection, the documentation, and the stop-work decision — as a daily operating system, with site-specific requirements confirmed on a real project with the authority having jurisdiction and your safety professional.
Both capstones produce real artifacts — a complete mobilization-and-controls plan for Moss Hollow, and a recovery-and-closeout plan for the same project under changed conditions, defended in writing — documents built to be usable on a real job, not just in the course.
This is the one hundred and thirty-eighth course in The Lighthouse Signature Series — the online counterpart to the one-day, in-person learning Cognosco Learning has delivered since 2002.
Course Facts
One full concept, coached end to end — free: verify your email and we’ll send you a link to start.
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Diagnose → Learn & Practice → Prove → Capstone
Every learner moves through the same discipline a Cognosco instructor would insist on in the room.
Diagnose
The Coach starts where the course starts: with the job defined before it is priced. Every concept opens with three questions that locate where you actually stand — what you already run well on a live job, and where the common trap is waiting for you — and your answers shape how deeply the Coach works the concept with you. Everyone begins with Module 1 — no skipping the definition, the estimate, and the baseline you only think you have.
Learn & Practice
Work each concept in conversation with the Coach — spoken or written — then practice it against realistic situations until it holds up.
Prove
Every concept ends in proof: answer the check cold and demonstrate the skill. Know it already? Test out and take credit immediately.
Capstone
Finish with two capstones — The Mobilization and Controls Plan for Module 1 and The Recovery and Closeout Plan for Module 2 — that pull the whole course together, and earn the certificate.
What You'll Learn
A construction project is a promise made in three currencies at once: money, time, and a physical building that must stand up and pass inspection. This course teaches you to keep all three promises together.
You will learn how a project is defined before it is priced, how drawings and specifications become an estimate and an estimate becomes a bid, and how a winning bid becomes a bought-out job with a baseline schedule that reflects real logic rather than hope.
Then you will run the job: procurement and submittals on lead times, a site organized so work can flow, safety managed as a daily system rather than a poster, cost controlled against earned value rather than against invoices alone, and changes priced and documented so entitlement survives.
Quality is built in at first work rather than inspected in at the end, and closeout is executed as a planned final operation rather than a fading tail. The through-line is simple and unforgiving: on a construction project, everything you fail to decide early returns later as a change, a delay, or a claim — with interest.
What you will learn
- Define a project's scope, authority, and success measures before pricing or scheduling begins
- Read drawings, specifications, and contract documents as one governing set
- Build an estimate from quantities and unit costs, and turn it into a disciplined bid
- Build and control a critical-path schedule — logic, float, baseline, and look-ahead
- Run procurement, submittals, and long-lead items so material arrives before the work needs it
- Organize the site and manage safety as daily operating systems
- Control cost with earned value, run pay applications cleanly, and price changes so they survive review
- Manage quality, communication, risk, and coordination through the middle of the job
- Commission, turn over, and close out a project completely — documents, money, and lessons
Everything in the course
- All 18 concepts of Construction Project Management, in 2 modules
- A starting-point check first — the Coach finds where you actually stand before teaching
- Learn, Practice, Prove for every concept — no passive video watching
- A test-out on every concept: prove you know it and move on
- The Voice Coach: talk with the Coach out loud — it speaks, listens, and replies
- A personal Learner Record of your work across the course
- Two capstone exercises: The Mobilization and Controls Plan and The Recovery and Closeout Plan
- A printable session summary whenever you pause
- The Lighthouse Coach completion certificate (Signature Series)
- Your progress is saved as you go — stop anytime, resume where you left off
Built for the people who run building projects
Construction Project Management is for project managers and assistant project managers who run budgets, schedules, buyout, and changes as one system — superintendents and field leaders moving toward project management who want the office-side machinery, owners' representatives who must read a contractor's schedule, cost report, and change proposal and know which questions expose the truth, and estimators, schedulers, and trade-contractor project managers who own one discipline deeply,
and need the whole job's logic to make their piece land.
The course assumes you can read a basic drawing set and a spreadsheet, and that you have spent time on or around an active job site. It assumes no credential and no prior formal study. If you can follow a quantity takeoff and a bar chart, you have everything this course requires to start — the rest is built here, concept by concept, on one project you will come to know very well.
If you already run an area well, the test-out route in each concept lets you prove it and move faster — the bar does not drop; the route just gets shorter.
Prefer to learn live and in person? The same material anchors Cognosco's one-day programs — browse the in-person catalog.
Start with The Mobilization and Controls Plan
$195 — introductory price. One payment. No subscription, no password to manage.
Here is exactly what happens when you enroll:
- Pay securely with Stripe — you are taken straight into the course
- Create your learner profile and begin the Module 1 starting-point check
- Save the access key you are given — it restores your enrollment on any device
- Learn at your pace; your progress is stored in your browser on your device
For the full voice experience, use Chrome and allow the microphone when asked. Typing your answers works everywhere, all the time. Questions before you enroll? Email hello@cognoscolearning.com.
More Signature Courses are coming
Construction Project Management is Signature Course No. 138. Leave your email and we'll send you news of future Signature Courses and Lighthouse updates as they are announced — nothing else.