Project Implementation:

Project implementation (or project execution) is the phase where visions and plans become reality.
This is the logical conclusion, after evaluating, deciding, visioning, planning, applying for funds and
finding the financial resources of a project.

The implementation of projects in sustainable sanitation and water management is complex. It

requires the coordination of a wide range of activities, diverse institutional arrangements, and
different time frames (DFID 1998). There is not one typical project in water and sanitation, as the
actions may vary from the construction of a new infrastructure, to the introduction of new ways of
working. Projects in this area cover issues such as: social development, health, environmental
sustainability, institutional strengthening, technical implementation, pilot plants, service
delivery, social marketing, hygiene promotion, sanitation promotion and capacity building.
It is important to take into account that independently of the nature of the project, implementation
takes time, usually more than it is planned, and that many external constraints can appear, which
should be considered when initiating the implementation step (i.e. seasonality in availability of
community engagement/resources) (NETSSAF 2008).

Objectives of the Implementation Phase

Factsheet Block Body

The objectives of the implementation phase can be summarised as follow:

 Putting the action plan into operation

 Achieving tangible change and improvements

 Ensuring that new infrastructure, new institutions and new resources are sustainable in every
aspect

 Ensuring that any unforeseen conflicts that might arise during this stage are resolved
(Ensuring transparency with regard to finances
 Ensuring that potential benefits are not captured by elites at the expenses of poorer social
groups

Other actions need to be taken before work can begin to implement the detailed action plan,
including:

 Scheduling activities and identifying potential bottlenecks.

 Communicating with the members of the team and ensuring all the roles and
responsibilities are distributed and understood.
 Providing for project management tools to coordinate the process.
 Ensuring that the financial resources are available and distributed accordingly.
  Field management staff must make time to establish an atmosphere of candour and trust
with partners during implementation so that concerns may be raised (and often resolved)
informally.

 Realistic long-term planning of finances is key to the implementation of an action plan (see
also financing and sources of funding).
 A communication strategy can be used to raise awareness (see PPT) of the positive
benefits for the community, as well as explaining that there are necessary trade-offs, such as
the introduction of water pricing, which will not please everybody. This will help to further
strengthen local ownership of the plan and encourage public participation in the
implementation of projects.
 At the end of a planning and implementation cycle, a press release is useful to highlight
successful stories and announce the publication of a final document such as a water report
(see also media campaigns).
 Expectations among stakeholders and the general public are likely to be high following the
participatory approach to the development of the preceding stages of the planning process. It
is therefore important that actions are visible and demonstrate tangible results early to build
confidence in the process.

A practical implementation plan should be prepared by the implementation team to define real time
schedule of delivery of services, such as (NETSSAF 2008):

 When the purchase of materials is completed.

 When the excavation is finished.

 When the structures of the buildings are constructed.

 When the commissioning is expected.

Project Monitoring and Control

According to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK), “the Monitoring and Control
Process Group consists of those processes performed to observe project execution so that potential
problems can be identified in a timely manner and corrective action can be taken, when necessary,
to control the execution of the project.”
Project Monitoring and Control activities take place in parallel with Project Execution Process Group
activities so that, while the project work is being executed, the project is being monitored and
controlled by implementing the appropriate level of oversight and corrective action.
 The project is observed and measured regularly against the project plan to ensure that the project is
within acceptable variances of cost, schedule and scope, and that risks and issues are continually
monitored and corrected as needed.

The main purpose of monitoring and controlling activities is to be proactive in finding issues ahead of
time and taking corrective action. Corrective action can require revisiting Planning Process Group
and updating the Project Management Plan as needed with the ultimate goal of bringing the project
back in line with project objectives and constraints and improving future execution to avoid repeating
the same issues.

Monitoring and Control Processes

Monitoring and Control processes include:

1. Monitoring and Controlling Project Work

The Monitoring and Controlling Project Work process collects, measures and disseminates
performance information, and assesses measures and trends to forecast potential items requiring
corrective action. This includes monitoring project risks and ensuring that they are being managed
according to the project’s risk plans.

Outputs include:

1. Recommended corrective actions

2. Recommended preventive actions
3. Forecasts
4. Recommended defect repair
5. Requested changes
2. Integrated Change Control
The Integrated Change Control process ensures that changes as a result of project corrective
actions and other controlling factors are managed across the project knowledge areas. Integrated
change control takes place throughout the project, from project initiation through project closure.
Outputs include:

1. Approved change requests

2. Rejected change requests
3. Updates to the Project Management Plan
4. Updates to the Project Scope Statement (and requirements)
5. Approved corrective and preventive actions
6. Approved defect repair
7. Validated defect repair
8. Deliverables
3. Scope Verification
The scope verification process ensures that project deliverables are formally accepted.

Outputs include:

1. Accepted deliverables
2. Requested changes
3. Recommended corrective actions
4. Scope Control
The Scope Control process ensures that changes to project scope are controlled.

Outputs include:

1. Updates to the Project Scope Statement and Scope baseline (this includes requirements)
2. Updates to the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) and the WBS Dictionary
3. Requested changes
4. Recommended corrective actions
5. Updates to organizational process assets
6. Updates to the Project Management Plan
5. Schedule Control
The Schedule Control process monitors and controls changes to the project schedule.

Outputs include:

1. Updates to the schedule model data and baseline

2. Performance measurements
3. Requested changes
4. Recommended corrective actions
5. Updates to organizational process assets
6. Activity list and activity attribute updates
7. Updates to the Project Management Plan
6. Cost Control
The Cost Control process monitors and controls costs and changes to the project budget.

Outputs include:

1. Cost estimate updates

2. Cost baseline updates
3. Performance measurements
4. Forecasted completion
5. Requested changes
6. Recommended corrective actions
7. Updates to organizational process assets
8. Updates to the Project Management Plan
7. Performing Quality Control
The quality control performance process measures specific project results to determine whether the
project is meeting quality standards.

Outputs include:
1. Quality control measurements
2. Validated defect repair
3. Updates to the quality baseline
4. Recommended corrective and preventive actions
5. Requested changes
6. Recommended defect repair
7. Updates to organizational process assets
8. Validated deliverables
9. Updates to the Project Management Plan
8. Managing the Project Team
This process tracks team member performance, provides feedback, resolves issues and coordinates
changes to maintain and improve project performance.

Outputs include:

1. Requested changes
2. Recommended corrective and preventive actions
3. Updates to organizational process assets
4. Updates to the Project Management Plan
9. Performance Reporting
The Performance Reporting process collects and distributes performance information — including
status reports, progress reports and forecasts.

Outputs include:

1. Performance reports
2. Forecasts
3. Requested changes
4. Recommended corrective actions
5. Updates to organizational process assets
10. Managing Stakeholders
This process manages stakeholder communications and works with stakeholders to ensure that
requirements are satisfied and issues are proactively resolved.

Outputs include:

1. Resolved issues
2. Approved change requests
3. Approved corrective actions
4. Updates to organizational process assets
5. Updates to the Project Management Plan
Project management software (or it is frequently called “Project
Management Application Software“) is a computer program that helps
people involved in the project management process to initiate, plan,
execute, monitor and close projects of any size and type. Project
management application software is designed to plan and document
project tasks and activities, build schedules and timelines, solve project
issues, manage risks and threats, assign budgets and control costs,
establish collaboration and cooperation between project participants,
assure and control quality, assemble project teams and organize human
resources, and share information. Actually, the list of project
management software capabilities is large enough but the main idea of
PM application software is to allow you to take your project through all
the stages of project life cycle, from project conceptualization and
initiation through project execution, control and completion .

The importance of project management application software consists in providing

you with tools that allow keeping ahead of rivals and continuously working on
improvement of tasks, services and processes with very short time-to-market.
The best software for project management significantly helps achieve success
in developing, producing and delivering your product allowing combining
project activities with cross-functional expertise.
Project Management Software
Functionality
1. Planning. If following the project management basics, you should start
your project with planning its main tasks and activities. Deadlines, due
dates, time frames, timelines, durations, priorities, are those
characteristics of tasks to be planned at the very beginning. The best
software for project management will let you plan project tasks.
2. Tracking. Once the main tasks of your project have been planned, it is
time to perform and track the tasks. Tracking is an activity of monitoring
and controlling tasks. Project management application program will let you
use tracking tools to monitor and control your tasks and ensure the project
is running in schedule.
3. Measuring. Without measuring you cannot be sure that your project is
undertaken as expected. By means of project management application
software, you can use formulas to create and apply key performance
indicators (KPIs) and measures.
4. Reporting. At the closure of your project, you need to generate reports that
show current progress of the project and status of its tasks. Project
management application system will allow you to develop project reports
and review % complete per task and per goal.
Project Management Software Examples
Among a great variety of project management application software, there are the most
popular PM solutions which provide the best benefit to users. Here are several favorite
project management software examples:

 Microsoft products. It is the fact that Microsoft Corporation develops high-quality

and perspective solutions that have great project management software
functionality. In particular, MS Project offers you a complete set of PM tools that
allow you to create tasks, make notes and records, estimate critical paths, share
project information, collaborate with users, and more. One of the greatest project
management software features is “Charts Builder” in MS Project that allows
you to develop and print out Gantt Charts, Network Diagrams, and more.
There is also MS Outlook which is best for managing tasks and todo lists. While
MS Project combines a full set of project management software options and
features, MS Outlook focuses on providing you with task management tools with
possibility to organize your emails. This project management application
system will be best for people who need to organize and manage simple projects,
todo lists and processes. Both MS Project and Outlook are the choice of mid-sized
and large organizations.
 VIP Quality Software products. VIP Quality Software is one of the leading
companies on market of project management application software. It offers
VIP Task Manager which is in some way similar to MS Outlook and features
almost the same project management software options. The only thing is that VIP
Task Manager does not include an email client, though it offers some powerful
tools for managing tools -do lists, project trees, and schedules. VIP Task Manager
will be a great project management application program to small-sized
organizations.
 Task Merlin. This project management application software has outstanding tools
for scheduling tasks and activities within a project. The software system features
powerful task filters, searches and reminders. Task Merlin is one of the best
software for project management due to its convenient project outline panels,
integration with MS Outlook, and task emailing capabilities.
Contract Management
Contract management is the process of managing agreements, from their creation through to their
execution by the chosen party, and to the eventual termination of the contract. Key activities
involve performance analysis against the contract terms to maximize operational and financial
performance and to identify and mitigate financial and reputational risk through non-compliance
with contract terms.

What are the benefits of contract management software?

Contract management software digitizes and stores all contracts into a central repository,
providing a way for stakeholders, such as legal and compliance departments, to search for and
review contracts, eliminating the need to manually locate and sift through stacks of paper
manually. Contract management software also manages access to contracts so that only
authorized people in an organization can view any particular contract, improving security.

The software also provides alerts to key contacts when contract expiration dates are nearing,
allowing businesses to decide whether to renegotiate or cancel their agreement and avoiding
them being locked into contracts automatically rolling over from year to year at increasingly
unfavorable terms.

Finally, contract management software can be used to track current spend against a supplier, by
integrating it with other financial or procurement software systems.

How contract management works

Managing service delivery: This ensures that products are delivered as and when they are
ordered.

Managing the relationship: Involves strengthening the contact between vendor and purchaser to
allow for improved communication throughout the process of contract management.

Managing the contract: The ongoing administration that ensures the day-to-day procurement
activities follow what is detailed in the agreement
Seeking improvements: Amendments and alterations are pursued within a procurement
environment in order to improve efficiencies and generate an increase in profits.

Ongoing assessment: Procurement activities are assessed continuously to ensure that contracts
are honored, and all purchasing processes have been followed.

Managing change: As part of a long-term procurement relationship, the changes in activities,

requirements, or products need to be noted and handled effectively.

Managing renewal or termination: When a contract is due for renewal, taking proactive steps to
understand whether the contracts should be renewed as is, re-negotiated, or terminated, based on
future business needs, commercial attractiveness, and previous performance by the supplier.
Contract management best practices
 Standardize contract creation using a set of terms, conditions, and legal language that applies to a large
subset of contracts.
 Set contract management KPIs and make your goals transparent to the entire business.
 Track contract approval time. This allows an organization the advantage of receiving contracted goods
and services sooner, ensures a quicker move towards a positive relationship. Furthermore, the faster
responsiveness means the business has an easier time seizing later opportunities.
 Set automated reminders to alert essential parties to review the document; this eliminates the risk of
missing certain addresses in group emails.
 Make financial metrics a dedicated part of the business’ regular contract management reviews.
 Conduct regular compliance reviews. Neglecting this responsibility fails to protect the company
against the risk of legal, industry, and external regulations.