GOPA's Project Management

• In Event: Improving general education quality in Georgia: Project design from conceptualization through analysis

Abstract

The GOPA Project Director’s responsibilities included (i) recruiting, fielding and managing the implementation team; and (ii) managing the project. A major challenge related to (i) was the fact that the project was not a ‘typical’ GOPA project focused on project implementation, but was an assignment aimed at preparing a complex project design. This specific project nature required a team of experts with specific skills and expertise. Some of the experts, who had performed well on previous ‘classical’ implementation projects, faced problems in coping with the specific challenges associated with project design, others had problems in communicating adequately with the local stakeholders and the client (MCA) and finding necessary compromises as to problem solutions. Hence, these experts had to be replaced which was another challenge to GOPA. GOPA managed to recruit and field appropriate replacements at short notice due to its resources and networks and through close cooperation with MCA.

As for responsibility (ii), a challenge related to managing the project implied establishing and maintaining cooperation and coordination between four parties – the GOPA home office, the implementation team, MCA and the local partner in charge of providing local resources. To ensure this, the Project Director communicated weekly with the parties in the field through email, Skype and telephone. This was complemented by several personal field visits. Furthermore, managing the project included managing the project’s financial resources and the logistics. To this end, the Project Director was assisted by a home-office based Finance and Contract Manager and a Business Support Manager.

Author

• Werner Trutt, GOPA Worldwide Consultants