The ‘Fix It’ Economy - Opportunities for Project Management

Recycling or Recovery has been in vogue for the last two or three decades as a means to save the environment and many organizations , communities and countries have embraced it as priority But is this enough ? How do Repairs / Refurbish or Reuse / Repurpose compare with recycling /recovery? This becomes one step before and can be prevent large quantities of materials going to the final destination i.e. the landfill.

The ‘Fix it’ process is nothing new. This is how we started off during the industrial revolution, but over time “use and throw” became the norm. Now, we have acute problems of environment and global warming and we realize that repairs and maintenance can be a very useful step in the circular economy chain which will prevent help achieve the goal of zero waste.

In the coming years, the ‘Fix it’ economy can be become substantially large, considering that many of the advanced countries so far did not give it the needed priority and moved to a product development strategy focused on quicker obsolescence and hard to repair options. The developing nations imbibed the repair and maintenance processes more easily due to economics, purchasing power and to some extent culture and a way of life.

Activities involving Repairing / Refurbishing and Reusing / Re-purposing are all examples of projects. Timeline, risk or uncertainty of success and scoping are variable in individual cases and become candidates where project management can be gainfully deployed.