The post-Coronavirus pandemic era will place great pressure on public and private sector project owners across the globe to create new job opportunities to support the revival if not the survival of the many enterprises, and in particular small and medium enterprises (SME), that been negatively affected by the pandemic. Investing in capital projects such as infrastructure, affordable housing, healthcare, educational among others could play a vital role in achieving those objectives by generating new business for consultants, contractors, subcontractors and suppliers and creating new job opportunities for those involved or supporting the delivery of capital projects.
This will require project owners to incorporate what is known as socio-economic criteria when it comes to selecting and prioritizing projects that they need to invest in. Those metrics will be added to the other financial measures that are needed to determine if the project is viable or not. Similar to other metrics, those newly added metrics will be monitored, evaluated and reported on during the capital projects delivery phases to ensure that selected projects are achieving their socio-economic objectives.
Using a Project Management Information System (PMIS) like PMWeb, the forms for project’s scoring and progress monitoring will be adjusted to reflect the desired socio-economic performance metrics to be managed. PMWeb custom form builder will be used to create a form, called the Socio-Economic Audit Checklist to capture the Social and Economy scores set for the project. Each socio-economic performance metric will be scored on scale from 1 to 5 when the project selection and prioritization decision need to be made and then at the end of each quarter when the project is being executed. The score value of 1 would mean no compliance while a score value of 5 will be for full compliance. Weights will be set for each socio-economic performance metric it to be able to have total weighted score value for each measure.
In addition, PMWeb allows attaching all supportive documents for each Socio-Economic Audit Checklist. Those documents are usually uploaded into PMWeb Document Management repository under the folder specific for each process. In addition, links to other relevant PMWeb records and imported MS Outlook emails can be also added. This will ensure complete transparency into the content of each formal project communication.
A workflow will be assigned to the Socio-Economic Audit Checklist to ensure that responsibility for submitting, reviewing and approving the checklist is formally implemented. The workflow will identify all needed steps, the duration for each step, responsibility for each step, actions that can be taken for each step and sequence for performing those steps. PMWeb also allows adding conditions to the workflow steps to incorporate the approval authority levels.
The data captured in the Socio-Economic Audit Checklist will become the basis for monitoring, evaluating and reporting the socio-economic measures for a project or a portfolio of projects. The report will show the socio-economic score for each project and the location of each project based on the latitude and longitude values assigned for each project. The report could include filters to select the project or the projects portfolio that the organization is interested to report on.
Bassam Samman, PMP, PSP, EVP, GPM is a Senior Project Management Consultant with more than 35-year service record providing project management and controls services to over 100 projects with a total value in excess of US $5 Billion. Those projects included Commercial, Residential, Education and Healthcare Buildings and Infrastructure, Entertainment and Shopping Malls, Oil and Gas Plants and Refineries, Telecommunication and Information Technology projects. He is thoroughly experienced in complete project management including project management control systems, computerized project control software, claims analysis/prevention, risk analysis/management (contingency planning), design, supervision, training and business development.
Bassam is a frequent speaker in topics relating to Project Management, Strategic Project Management and Project Management Personal Skills. Over the past 35 years he has lectured at more than 350 events and courses at different locations in the Middle East, North Africa, Europe and South America. He has written more than 250 articles on project management and project management information systems that were featured in international and regional magazines and newspapers. He is a co-founder of the Project Management Institute- Arabian Gulf Chapter (PMI-AGC) and has served on its board of directors for more than 6 years. He is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP) from the Project Management Institute (PMI), a certified Planning and Scheduling Professional (PSP) and Earned Value Professional (EVP) from the American Association of Cost Engineers (AACE) and Green Project Management (GPM).
Bassam holds a Masters in Engineering Administration (Construction Management) with Faculty Commendation, George Washington University, Washington, D.C., USA, Bachelor in Civil Engineering – Kuwait University, Kuwait and has attended many executive management programs at Harvard Business School, Boston, USA and London Business School, London, UK.