Arun Kumar Ahuja

Ahuja_ArunPaper: Project Management adoption for social projects of built environment sector

Abstract: Social projects of built environment sector are either planned as part of social responsibility initiatives or taken up as post disaster reconstruction/rehabilitation projects. Planned projects are facilities for education, housing, healthcare, sanitation or for overall welfare of the society. In developing countries, the requirement and development frequency of such social projects is very high. Individually these projects are of small scale and low financial value, but collectively the national expenditure of a country on these projects is high. These projects are initiated by government bodies, private organizations conducting Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives, social organizations and funding organizations.  These projects are primarily executed by small scale construction organizations in non-formal project environment and sometimes in remote areas with locally available technology and human expertise. Thus, successful planning and implementation of these projects requires adoption of Project Management methodologies. Through global literature survey and case study approach, this paper would study the relation between the Project organization structure, funding structure and extent of Project Management adoption for these projects. For case studies, projects would be construction projects being implemented under a flagship social scheme of Government of India, the Sawchh Bharat Abhiyan Scheme. This scheme initiated in 2014 with a budget of USD 9.25 million has a sub-objective to make the country open defecation free and includes construction of around 110 million toilets by 2019. Though Indian projects would be studied, results would be applicable for other developing countries having similar project work environment.

Biography: Arun Kumar Ahuja is part of RICS School of Construction. He is working with RICSSBE as Assistant Professor. Arun has a M. Tech. in Construction Management, from Indian Institute of Technology Delhi and a Bachelors in Civil Engineering from National Institute of Technology, Kurukshetra. He has six years of construction industry experience working with Reliance Infrastructure Limited, Doosan Power Systems India Limited and PwC in India. His key competencies are in the areas of Project Management, Project Planning, Scheduling, Project Monitoring and Controls, Optimization and Quantitative Research, Contracts and logistics.