Our Heritage Deserves Better Project Management
Thursday, June 26, 2008
The climax of the CIOB four-episode series of conferences on conservation project management ended in London last week, after sucessful events in Glasgow, Dublin and the North of England.
Successful projects, failed projects, best practice and poor practice were all revealed. But who is to blame for some projects that never achieving what they set out to?
Whilst the conference highlighted best practice coming out of the Office of Government Commerce and in particular PRINCE2 project management methodology, it also highlighted the relative absence of even a mention of project management when government funding is being granted to heritage projects. It is a similar story when it comes to lottery funding.
The Chair of the conference, John Edwards of TFT Cultural Heritage said: “It is all very well to put project management methodology to one side if successful projects are being delivered, but with speakers highlighting a significant number of failures, then I can’t help thinking that increased practice of project management, will help ensure a proper conservation outcome as well as value for money. “It doesn’t have to be a belt and braces approach, a belt will do fastened to the right degree and not so tight that it will strangle a project with an overburden of processes”
There were many success stories and best practice described by speakers. The case study on Cardiff Castle for example, is one such success story of a project supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund and Cadw, where both heritage and project management methodology were integrated.
“I don’t think that speakers were necessarily asking for a separate project management appointment on all projects.” Edwards added: “The conclusion was that project management should be understood and sensibly practiced by all those involved in projects to an appropriate degree.”
