Cut wastage, Mudavadi tells firms

The government has called on public firms to use the best project management processes to reduce the number of cancelled and abandoned projects.

Deputy Prime Minister and Local Government minister Musalia Mudavadi on Monday said the government needs to update project management processes and practices within its institutions to ensure they are consistent with proven management systems.

The minister said it was sad that even as the country gears towards Vision 2030 under a new constitution, the number of failed, cancelled or abandoned projects is on the increase.

“The country is losing billions of shillings in these unsuccessful projects, monies that would otherwise have been utilised for provision of basic amenities to millions of Kenyans,” he said at a conference on effective project management in Nairobi.

“Public projects form a significant portion of our gross domestic product (GDP) and hence the continued project wastages cannot be sustained in the long run.”

Mr Mudavadi said the government has been putting in place procedures and systems to promote efficiency in management of public sector projects.

One such initiative is the e-ProMIS system that will enhance the monitoring and evaluation of public sector projects through automation of relevant projects data.

Mr Mudavadi expressed gratitude to Businet Systems for taking the lead in promoting its PRINCE2 (Projects In Controlled Environments), an internationally recognised best practice in project management.

United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has declared the system as its de facto standard in project management framework.

Businet System chief executive Godfrey Osotsi said at times, public sector projects are driven by political cycles and so artificial deadlines are often set which creates a framework that is not helpful.

It becomes difficult to set the projected benefits and deadlines of the project to benefit the real-world users at the sharp end, he said.

A UK based project management consultant Victor Fashoro said that the sheer scale of the larger projects means that inevitably there would be problems along the way.

One of the challenges, he said, is that parameters of the project and contract provisions are tightly defined and the contracts not managed effectively by the same team through the project lifecycle.

Mr Mudavadi said that his ministry through the Kenya Local Government Reform Programme has been developing and disseminating policies, systems and procedures to support the ministry’s vision of being accountable and responsive local authorities.

He said that PRINCE2 has been successfully applied in various local authorities in Europe to achieve good governance and improved service delivery.

“This is a major learning point for our local authorities in Kenya,” the minister said.