Monitoring Plan, Cost, And Governance Of Solar Projects In East Timor: Essay.

Discussion: Monitoring Plan and Cost

The Alternative Technology Association (ATA) is a not-for-profit organisation that supports people to live sustainably in their homes and communities.The ATA operates across Australia, and also conducts international projects.

For this case study, we interviewed Kate Greenwood, the International Project Manager from the ATA about their Solar Projects in East Timor.

Talks to Kate (The ATA) about the International Projects which The ATA has conducted in East Timor, including some background on how these projects have been funded and managed in the past. Kate discusses the project objectives, high level planning process and expectations. These expectations included the role of the local community in setting up village management committees, and training local technical support, for sustainable management. Kate also provides a broad summary of the logistical arrangements to complete the project

Describes how she approached the planning and management for the ATA project in East Timor. She emphasises the importance of having inter-country partners and relationships with the local community, especially in relation to understanding the local culture, language, soliciting local stakeholder ownership, and shared values. Kate also discusses how she went about mapping the project, in collaboration with the relevant Government departments.

Kate was asked about the philosophy that she adopted in managing stakeholders, especially when she paused the project after the pilot phase, and how she kept stakeholders engaged.how the decision to pause the project allowed her to develop a more rigorous management plan. She explains some of the measures instigated to support her aims; development of KPI's, control and monitoring, and an end-users survey to establish a monitoring/evaluation baseline. She further explains the reasons why it was important to actively engage the East Timor Government and local stakeholders with the project.

Discusse some of the issues which can arise when outside organisations try to engage with local communities, and how utilising local knowledge and experience can help lower barriers to successful project outcomes. Topics covered include language, international procurement and supply chains, currency exchange rate risks, and health and safety risks

Discusses where she experienced ‘push-back’ to changes, the challenges of being a younger woman in a predominantly older male environment, and how she dealt with those challenges.

The implementation phase of the project has been successfully completed, with some alteration to the original scope, and the project has entered the monitoring phase. Kate reflects on the achievements and some of the lessons learnt.

She also discusses the focus of the current evaluation of the project and its processes, and identifies goals for potential future projects, building on the outcomes of this current work.

ATA is a non-profit organization that offering support and facilities to improve the lifestyle of people to maintain the effectiveness and sustainability. The organization has designed and implemented the solar project at East Timor. The current essay will provide information about budget, resources, and methodologies that used for monitoring and tracking of the system that implemented by the organization. Moreover, the essay will provide data about the time and cost that required for reporting to the higher committees. The essay will also justify the use of data and consideration of a specified structure to present the data.

Table 1: Schedule of tasks

The monitoring of project operations and activities for solar East Timor is essential for maintaining the higher efficiency and effective utilization of resources. According to the given scenario, the Kate is looking for a good plan for scheduling of cost and approach of the team members (Kerzner & Kerzner, 2017). The strategy for monitoring and control of the functions of the project suggest that the consideration of project performance metrics and quality standards are essential for identification of areas of lacking and action to overcome them.  The proper planning for monitoring and tracking of the information about the progress of the project, the Kate should consider the above planning. This kind of approach will help her to identify the issues and areas of improvement according to proposed standards of the solar project and offer the training to the staff members about the proper utilization of resources and management of functions (Bayona,, Saboya, & Bustamante, 2018).

The cost of monitoring and progress tracking planning would be $1,416.00 and time is 21 days. The identification of project progress will be done against the determined international standards and approach of the team members (Harrison, & Lock, 2017). The proper collection and analysis of feedback through meeting will provide the actual idea about the progress and issues with an individual. The project manager will also provide training for managing the functions and monitor the approach of the individual to complete the tasks in the given time period and cost (Lewis, 2016). The major advantages of monitoring and controlling strategy for the project will involve the identification of actions, process, and activities according to the proposed plan for the project.

Table 2: Project team members

These are key members from both sides who will contribute in governing the project and proper implementation of requirements to achieve the goals. The leading governing bodies will provide the advice and guidelines according to the input of the identified members of these team members.    

Governance Team Members

Table 3: Reporting format

In order to manage the project progress and supervision according to standards and quality determined for the project, the reporting format of project will involve the project manager, technical team, supervisor and testing team. These are key members of governing team of project about Solar project who will develop plan, analyze the current and future conditions and requirements as well as identify the progress according to determined standards. These members will collect and document the data and information in particular format and share with the reporting authority. This kind of process will help to understand the progress, issues and support to provide the essential guidelines for managing the project. Moreover, the communication of report and documents will be done through online methods that are cost and time effective for sender and receiver. Moreover, the proper consideration of reporting format and frequency of the reporting will improve the effectiveness of the project.               

Table 4: Risk register

Risk management is an essential part of project management and implementation. The project manager needs to identify and develop the plan for managing the risks for gaining the desired results from the solar project of East Timor (Haimes, 2015). The major risks that could affect the progress of the current project are financial, human resources and environmental impact. The manager Kate needs to focus on these risks to maintain the flow of project activities and the achievement of the goals (Neves, Silva, & Connors, 2014).  

The communication with stakeholders is important for maintaining the efficiency and effectiveness in the project. The project manager of ATA, solar East Timor will conduct meetings with groups and individual for managing the activities and implementation of changes to gain the success in the project (Snyder, & Dionisio, 2017). Moreover, use of the online system for sharing the data and managing communication will be good for the manager to track the progress and collection of documents for reporting to the senior management. The online communication with project stakeholders is good in terms of monitoring and increasing the control over the actions according to time and cost allocated for each task (Scheer, and et al., 2014).

For the project, the Kate has adopted the democratic leadership style that has helped to involve all team members in decision making and implementation of the plan. For the monitoring and better controlling of the project, this type of leadership is beneficial as she can collect the 360-degree feedback for each action and provide the progress report to the CEO of the organization. Being a young woman manager, it would be difficult for her to order and make the decisions individually, therefore the democratic leadership will help her to gain the support and communicate the information to staff members (Anderson, & Sun, 2017).

For proper monitoring and control over the project, it is recommended to the project manager to maintain the proper communication with key members and governing team. The real time sharing of data and information will help to maintain the operations related to solar project up to the standards and help to achieve the goals more efficient manner. Moreover, regular meeting and brainstorming sessions will also support to gain knowledge about key issues and planning of them to minimize the cost and time for completing the project.       

Conclusion

From the study, it has been carried out that monitoring and controlling of the project is important for the project manager to track the project progress and meet the objectives. The approach that Kate has used for monitoring and controlling of the activities after implementation of the plan would be useful to analyze the progress and craft improvement in areas of lacking. Moreover, the communication and leadership functions of the manager are discussed in the essay to overcome the risk and manage the tasks.       

References

Anderson, M. H., & Sun, P. Y. (2017). Reviewing leadership styles: Overlaps and the need for a new ‘full?range’theory. International Journal of Management Reviews, 19(1), 76-96.

Bayona, S., Saboya, N., & Bustamante, J. (2018, June). Application of PMBOK in the development of research. In 2018 13th Iberian Conference on Information Systems and Technologies (CISTI). IEEE.

Haimes, Y. Y. (2015). Risk modeling, assessment, and management. John Wiley & Sons.

Harrison, F., & Lock, D. (2017). Advanced project management: a structured approach. Routledge.

Kerzner, H., & Kerzner, H. R. (2017). Project management: a systems approach to planning, scheduling, and controlling. John Wiley & Sons.

Lewis, N. S. (2016). Research opportunities to advance solar energy utilization. Science, 351(6271), aad1920.

Neves, D., Silva, C. A., & Connors, S. (2014). Design and implementation of hybrid renewable energy systems on micro-communities: a review on case studies. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 31, 935-946.

Scheer, D., Benighaus, C., Benighaus, L., Renn, O., Gold, S., Röder, B., & Böl, G. F. (2014). The distinction between risk and hazard: understanding and use in stakeholder communication. Risk Analysis, 34(7), 1270-1285.

Snyder, C., & Dionisio, C. S. (2017). A project manager's book of forms: A companion to the PMBOK guide. John Wiley & Sons.