“Disaster Project Management & Humanitarian developments”- Skills required for a Project Manager

We know a disaster is a sudden, calamitous event that seriously disrupts the functioning of a community or society and causes human, material, and economic or environmental losses and further crisis, that exceed the community’s or society’s ability to cope using its own resources. Though often caused by nature, disasters can have human origins like poor construction, poor technology utilised etc. You know a skilled project manager can only work on these types of toughest situation, he wants to use integrated skills, what the real context says. Integrated approach which includes both proactive and reactive strategies can be applied to managing the impact of crisis and for the development of humanitarian area both rural and urban areas. Yes, a project manager has to make a self-frame works rather than what has learned from books. Here my self-sharing based on my experiences as well as the last three years continuous floods and massive landslides happened at Kerala. In cause of that you know we have lost many lives not only humans but also animals as well. Mainly Disruption of the livelihoods and crops etc happened due to floods, is in my native state “Kerala”.

Here I am introducing my one model “Delta model” for approaching humanitarian area for a better development of the assigned projects. Project manager should act in between both NGO and Govt for victims that may be infants, families, a massive community, or animals etc. Our every milestone for their stability.

Detail case study & identified the specific problem associated with: - 

In my opinion and personal thoughts and experiences from the normal project management concepts a PM has to re-think and has to do more collaborative and innovative approaches for humanitarian developments projects, especially where the disaster happened with all his dedication. Before directly going to a vague approaching with out any proper information, it will cause project delay and failure. A project manager should understand the detail topographic information about the affected area and the communities are living there, whether it is urban area and rural areas. He should interact with local communities and has to do a rapid situational analysis. Once a rapid analysis done PM can do detailed situational analysis and he can make a report with all information’s he collected just like a project business case.

Effective utilization of planning & implantation: - 

Like our normal project planning, in this case in disaster developments projects a project manager has to plan accordingly by considering the fast-changing environment and with reference to our prepared data at the time of situational analysis. Always we must plan based on local availability of commodity which is available remote rural areas. A project manager can use the concept of integration as well as strategic planning, that is define the project objectives, describe results and activities, risk and assumptions, indicators and mean of verification, and implementation of logical frame works and writing the project documents. A plan is necessary for action, funding, and communication. And in the humanitarian crisis planning should be based on a result-based management (RBM) style for getting better results. 

Effective utilisation of budget & cashflow management plan: - 

Fund is more important in the case of disaster management project further development, here fund is coming from various sources like as donations from various globes, from Govt as support etc to NGO , so the effective utilization of money is more important for a project manager. Project manager should allocate the requirement of fund very clearly after discussing with all stakeholders involved in the project. PM must closely monitor the fund utilization with NGOs. Better PM can make cashflow management plan to do the project within the budget because we are developing the project by using the money received from the supporters, so over budget plan cannot affordable. Think with good mind set what is the actual requirement. You know we can use the concept of minimum WBS, that is primary and emergency items which is required we can act for that, like water, food, cloths, and shelter. Step wise plan with all integrated tools is really required to utilize the budget as planned. 

Project manager will be a leader and a teacher: - 

Yes in the disaster project management a project manager should act as a teacher and good listener too apart from his leadership. Because a project manager is always needed to work with local peoples where the disruption happened, so wisely he must understand and can spread the ideas in to project canvas. In humanitarian areas in front of a project manager not only his milestones he has to see the emergency of infants, mothers, old agers, and animals to stable them. As well as project manager has to work on ground with NGOs, Govt & other aided agencies.

Skills for resource identification and its effective utilization: - 

A project manager one of the major skills how to utilize the resources effectively and identification of resources as per his prepared plan. Crisis time it is toughest task, instead looking from outside resources, he can utilise the materials and manpower from local destination. Project manger can deploy staffs locally for project execution and machineries form rural areas as well, do not want to wait for stuck consignment due to disaster. 

Think the minimum requirement do execution: - 

A project manager must think the actual requirement of the end users execute for that only, rather than wasting the budget. Just example those who needs shelter he can plan and work for small shelter rather a big building, always think disaster in future as well, if that location is in prone area. Because of this we can avoid major disruption rate in future if any disaster happened. Prepare the contingency plan for Next 3-6 big disaster- Prevention is better than cure.

Disclaimer: Here my self expressed in this article is my own views from my past 12 years project management experiences and experiences with few NGOs . If any one wishes to share their point of view, they can do the same here by commenting