Financial Times

Project management: A farce?
A Sri Lanka Chapter of the Project Management Institute has been formed with commitments to bring in the world's best practices through education, training and skill development. A top government official has confirmed at the inauguration of the Institute that the government was planning to inculcate project management expertise in the country through the forthcoming budget 2005.

Some time ago, there was similar rhetoric when the project management audit service was inaugurated. A few years before that when good governance commitments were echoed, there was fresh hope. The track record of such commitments keeps leading the nation back to different days in history. Remember, when the National Institute of Business Management and administrative training institutes were formed to be the panacea for all public sector ills. Commitment to improve the quality and effectiveness of the government audit services was yet another occasion for hope. In between all these came the Sri Lanka Chapter of Transparency International.

The ups and downs of the Bribery Commission and the political arm-twisting it has been subjected to are vivid in the mind of civil society. Civil society has watched on while the incapacity of the law enforcement authorities and the legal delays in bringing waste and corruption to its logical end has rapidly grown in a nation with so called seven star laws to control everything. The media has also been ineffective and inconsistent in mobilizing public opinion to generate pressure groups.

Last week as the Project Management Institute was inaugurated, a US Senator attempted to get the US Senate to ask the Treasury Department to send independent forensic auditors to Sri Lanka to validate an alleged "outrageous act of corruption in a 90 million dollar highway project in Sri Lanka funded by the ADB". The Senator called for a delay in the Committee approval of the release of the $ 460 million grant to the ADB Fund, until this allegation and another were investigated. The Senator in his submissions to the Senate Committee referred to the ADB anti- corruption policy quoted as "zero tolerance" and how the audit team of the ADB had avoided review of this controversial project and selected other projects for their audits. This shows that the Third World good governance mentors also have a blind folded approach concerning their own governance.

For all good intentions and professional approaches what is the Sri Lankan experience outcome? The best comparators of project management effectiveness are the percentage of government projects started on time, completed on time to budget and most importantly the level of planned cost benefit objectives realized. The dismal level of aid utilization speaks for itself. To cap it all Sri Lanka is now tagged with a high level of corruption identification in the international opacity indices.

Despite the private sector Chambers glorious words engraved in "Charters" on good governance, the private sector is a dismal benchmark due to poor performance in controlling waste, bribery and corruption and resource utilization.

It appears that only a handful of top corporate entities and multi national companies adopt the best practices in assuring economy, efficiency and effectiveness (3 E's) in project management. It is time that business leaders introduce simple processes like, concept justification, project justification, time and resource management plans, post audits in the management of major projects involving significant outlay of capital expenditure and even revenue expenditure. Today, with the availability of several software tools for project management there are no excuses in failing to optimize realization of objectives with optimum outlay of resources.

Post audits done 6 months and 18 months after completion of projects provide not only an effective control environment but also more importantly lessons to sharpen future objective setting, effective resource allocation, cost control and time management and improved planning skills.

The private sector should therefore firstly commit to adopt the simple management tools that all engineers, accountants, MBA students learn and leverage simple project management software tools available off the shelf. If anyone cares to surf the web they can access information on the most successful companies and see how they manage projects and people, track the newest management practices and discover simple tools and techniques. Then they can gradually advance to acquire further competencies and skills in project management.

Wake up, private sector business leaders and be true trustees of your shareholders and the nation's scarce resources (never forgetting the importance of the sustainability of the environment in the longer term) and optimization of the return on them.

Let civil society, the day their patience runs out apply pressure on political leaders and demand good governance and accountability in the management of national resources.

Back to Business