Paper: 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: Prof. Vanita Ahuja is Program Director at School of Construction, RICS School of Built Environment, Amity University, India. She has +20 years of industry and academic experience in the area of Construction Project Management. In industry she has worked on projects of varying nature like residential and school projects, commercial projects, metro projects etc. She has also extensively conducted trainings of construction executives in the area of Construction Project Management. Her research areas are application of Project Management for Social Built Environment and Infrastructure management projects; and Supply chain Management of construction projects. She is on the editorial board of Emerald journal ‘Smart and Sustainable Built Environment’ and on the reviewer panel of other prestigious journals. Her book ‘Project Management Case Studies’ documents application of Project Management in projects of different sectors in India. In policy making area she is part of the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) working groups drafting codes for ‘Construction Project Management’. She also actively volunteers for Project Management Institute (PMI) at local and global level.
