Educational facility master planning and educational specification development are complex, specialized activities. In addition to a thorough understanding of building issues and functions, a planner must have excellent consensus building skills among large and small groups of people. Even if a district has staff with these skills, they are likely to have many other job responsibilities that cannot be set aside to focus on facility planning. It is often considered useful to bring in someone who can analyze the district's problems from an objective perspective. Planning Alliance has been developed to meet these needs.