PM versus Sustainability

 

Yeah, I know this month’s theme is supposed to be about how much project management and sustainability are copacetic. It’s just that, well, in some cases, they’re not, by which I mean the intellectual underpinnings of “sustainability” are occasionally in conflict with some basic elements of project management theory.

The organization Rotary International issued a pamphlet in July of last year[i] listing “six steps to sustainability.” These steps included:

1.      Assess Community Needs

2.      Use local materials

3.      Identify a local funding source

4.      Provide training, education, and outreach

5.      Motivate beneficiaries to take ownership

6.      Monitor and evaluate.

Let’s take these one at a time.

The Assess Community Needs step involves “…conduct(ing) a thorough assessment to identify a community need…”[ii] I can make this step really easy – what service, commodity, or product is in the most demand, or is commanding a comparatively high price? That’s what the free marketplace does: it highlights scarcity with increased prices, just as abundance is signaled through low prices. It really is that simple.

Use local materials. Why? Isn’t the most economically available material indicated for the most efficient project delivery? (I mean, seriously, we PM-types don’t even need to weigh in on this – we should be able to sit back and let the accountants tear into this assertion.) And isn’t the most efficient project delivery the greenest?

Identify a local funding source. Again, why? If I squint really hard, I might be able to see the reason behind assertion #2, that of using local materials. If the prices are the same, then using local vendors increases the monetary multiplier within the community.  It’s a short hop back on to that familiar soap box – its price would reflect that! But, stepping back down, this has nothing to do with funding. Funds are transferred from bank to bank over telephone wires. The days of the armored truck carrying large amounts of cash from city to city are over and done. The savvy project sponsor will access the best source of funding, and that almost always translates to the most efficient – the actual location of the source’s home office (assuming the location is not on the State Department’s list of terrorism-exporting nations) is irrelevant from a PM point of view.

Provide training, education, and outreach. Not unless the project is to set up a college. The pamphlet explains that this step is necessary to “…strengthen beneficiaries’ ability to meet project objectives.”[iii] By blurring the lines between the project team and the project’s beneficiaries, a convenient appeal for grant money is created. Who, now, exactly, is pursuing the project’s scope? Can they be managed? If so, they probably need little additional training. If not, why should project budget be expended towards ends that have nothing to do with accomplishing the scope?

Motivate beneficiaries to take ownership. If the project’s “beneficiaries” do not immediately and willingly “take ownership,” then the entire point of the project is suspect.

Monitor and Evaluate. Finally, a project management-consistent objective! And here is where the PM and Sustainability worlds most closely coincide. Real project managers use earned value and critical path methodologies to monitor their cost and schedule performance. If the project is doing well, then some decisions on the resource management front may be accommodated that serve the sustainability ends without endangering the successful completion of its scope. On the other hand, if the project is behind schedule or over cost, then the project sponsor and/or project manager have a choice, between pursuing the project’s objectives in the most efficient manner possible, regardless of its sustainability rating, or else selecting the most sustainable resources at the potential expense of the successful conclusion of the project.

But at least project management techniques make the evaluation of this trade-off an informed decision.