Every project manager can learn something from emergency situations
Chris Cattaway is no stranger to the havoc nature inflicts on the world’s most vulnerable people. Having managed the responses to devastating earthquakes and cyclones, Chris is passionate about the key role project managers play in helping disaster victims. And he thinks the lessons learned in these situations are valuable for anyone involved in managing projects.
Chris cut his humanitarian teeth in Rwanda’s Refugee Camps with Medecins Sans Frontieres. In 2001 he was responsible for Save the Children’s response to the Gujarat earthquake, co-ordinating the effort to build 27,000 temporary homes in under six months. In 2003 he established Save the Children’s emergency programme following the earthquake which killed 50,000 people in the ancient city of Bam, Iran. Then in 2008 he headed-up Save the Children’s response to Cyclone Nargis, in Myanmar, Burma, which was one of the largest emergency programmes ever mounted by a single agency.
The cyclone severely affected 2.4 million people. 95% of housing was destroyed in a huge area and the immediate relief effort will be followed by many years rebuilding the country’s devastated infrastructure.
“In Burma the relief team grew from 500 people to 1300 people in a few weeks – some of whom had never worked before at all,” Chris says. ”They have a lot to deal with but even experienced managers who have different backgrounds will have their own way of doing things. In an emergency everyone has to learn to work together quickly. However, with no common project management vocabulary or methodology being used in the NGO sector, it’s like everyone is living on their own little island. If we are to get people working together more effectively and more efficiently they need to be taken to the ‘mainland’ where they can share a common language, learn from each other, work with, and understand, some underlying principles so that they can access resources available to the mainstream project management profession.”
“People often tend to think of project management as being about managing the delivery of products using familiar and pre-tested structured methodologies and processes in a controlled environment. Emergency situations are very uncontrolled environments, teams are brought together at a moment’s notice, and yet you need to get things done quickly while chaos reigns supreme. In these situations, you realise that competent project managers can be useful even if they don’t use the most sophisticated project management methodologies. An understanding of project management principles is useful in itself. In fact, practical application of the basic knowledge can be of more benefit than trying to use a very rigorous framework within a culture and environment which is currently at a low level of project management maturity.”
Chris is careful to emphasise the good work that development agencies achieve without utilising conventional project management methods with the same rigour as in other sectors. “As with other sectors, the relief and development sector has its own unique requirements, and uses lots of other tools and methods that are not commonly used in other sectors. That’s not to say that we can’t improve by learning from, and adopting, best practice from other sectors, ” he says “but we know from first hand experience that it is critical to contextualise the materials, and to create a learning environment where practitioners can relate the generic tools to their own jobs, experiences and culture”.
At a first glance, it, may be easy tooverlook the differences between NGOs and private sector organisations, but they are driven by very different values which does make a big difference in terms of the outlook of the people involved, the success factors, and the approaches toward implementation which are acceptable. Nevertheless, Chris’ wide-ranging experience has taught him that the private sector and NGOs have more in common than you might think. Both types of organisation want to work as efficiently as they can with the resources they’ve got. Both want to please their customers. And most people want to do a good job no matter what kind of organisation they work for. Organisations in the public and private sectors could learn a lot from NGO’s ability to cope with crisis situations.
Learning from each other is – naturally – a two way street, Chris says.
“Other sectors can also teach NGOs a lot. Currently, there’s a huge amount of work going on to professionalise the NGO sector, including the development of career pathways, competency frameworks and creating professional associations which will include centres of excellence to recognise and promote best practice in various technical and management disciplines. Much of this is already well-established in other sectors”
Part of this work is the introduction of a new professional qualification for project managers working in development agencies.
“The development of the PMDPro (Project Management for Development Professionals) Qualification will be of huge benefit for NGOs and other development organisations. We are working in partnership with The APM Group, LINGOs* and PM4NGOs (Project Management for Non Governmental Organisations) to create a new certification scheme which will enable people to be recruited, and their performance managed against a clear benchmark. Sharing a common vocabulary and understanding should make it easier to work together quickly and efficiently – all of which means being able to be more accountable to beneficiaries.”
The scheme is designed specifically for those working in charities, humanitarian agencies and not for profit organisations. It comprises three levels, and includes both newly-developed contextualised modules and industry-recognised certifications. Pilots are taking place in March and April 2010 and the full scheme is expected to be released later in 2010.
“The aim is to make the qualification easy to access and affordable for those working in remote locations, particularly in developing and least developed countries. In time, this will make a huge difference when teams who have the best intentions but little experience of working together, join forces to help those in the most need.”
At BPUG Congress on 9th February 2009, Chris will be talking to delegates about managing Save The Children’s response to Burma’s Nargis Cyclone. He will be exploring the idea of organisations in different sectors learning from each other, and will give more details about the new qualification scheme. For further details visit www.bpugcongress.com
Chris Chattaway is an independent consultant based in London, Chris works internationally in the NGO and private sectors. He has taught Project Management for NGOs to Masters students at The Roehampton University. He is currently managing the setting-up of a Consortium of 15 major British Humanitarian Agencies which, with funding from the British government’s Department for International Development, will revolutionize the funding of disaster responses and associated capacity building. In recent years he has managed a global capacity building programme for a major international NGO and advised its directors on projectising the implementation of the organisation’s strategic objectives.
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