The BC Ministry of Education’s Capital Management Branch manages and allocates $2.432B in capital funding to the K-12 system every three years for the province’s 60 School Districts’ priority capital projects. Projects include, but are not limited to, school expansions and replacements, seismic upgrades, and new playground equipment. Two legacy OpenVMS systems, developed in the early 1990’s, were unable to accommodate new education and funding models and required modernization. A flexible system that could easily adapt to new legislation, processes and emerging models was required.

In response to this need, and in conjunction with FreshWorks Studio, ITK developed the new cloud solution replacement for the Ministry’s Capital Asset Planning System (CAPS) on Microsoft’s Power Platform. The new modern CAPS system consists of two Power Apps applications, one for use by Ministry Staff to orchestrate and manage calls for submission, review and approve plan submissions. A second application is used by School districts to develop their capital plan submissions and to collaborate with their Ministry planning officers to explore the best use of capital.

This custom Power Apps based solution met the above goals of modernizing the system and enabling a data-driven approach to defining funding models. The new CAPS system completely automates the call for submission process and provides workflows to efficiently manage the review and approval process allowing more time for Capital planning officers and School district staff to collaborate and explore innovative ways to best use available resources to meet the needs of BC’s public schools.