Project Management
A large proportion of community safety work is initiative or project based. It will greatly enhance your work as a community safety practitioner if you already have, or can develop, some project management skills.
Principles
Projects are different to other types of work you carry out. A project:
- is a well defined piece of work with a defined start and end date rather than a continuous process
- has specific objectives or outcomes which deliver a gain for the partnership or the community
- delivers a product or outputs which contribute to the outcomes
- has clearly defined resources or inputs allocated for its completion, this includes staffing, money and equipment
- should have its outputs and outcomes monitored during the project and evaluated afterwards.
Project management is a process and a set of techniques that enable the project to be completed to the agreed quality, on time and within the agreed costs. There are a wide range of project management methods used by community safety agencies, but most of them will have the following stages:
- a project initiation or feasibility phase where the scope of the project is agreed and a decision is made as to whether it is viable and worthwhile to carry out the work
- a detailed planning phase where methods, resources and a timescale are agreed
- an implementation or ‘doing’ phase where the project work is carried out and progress monitored
- an evaluation phase where the results of the project are measured.
These project stages are not always carried out in strict chronological sequence, but it should be possible to identify them, whatever method is used.
The First Steps Methodology
There are many different systems for project management, but the system described here was designed for the planning, implementation and evaluation of crime reduction initiatives. ‘The First Steps Method’ was developed by Geoff Berry and Mike Carter for the Home Office.2
2 Geoff Berry and Mike Carter Assessing Crime Prevention Initiatives: The First Steps (Home Office Crime Prevention Unit Paper 31)
Project Documentation
Whatever project methodology you use, careful documentation is vitally important. Not only does it help you manage the project, but the historical record of work carried out is invaluable if anyone wishes to replicate the project. Normally you will find the following sort of project documents:
- a project initiation document that sets out the project objectives and the method by which they are to be achieved
- a detailed project plan which sets out the project stages and the timescale in which they are to be achieved
- a resources spreadsheet which allows you to monitor how they are used
- progress monitoring reports
- quality assurance and project sign off reports.
Question
What documentation does your CDRP use for managing its projects? Get hold of copies of the forms and familiarise yourself with them. If possible ask someone to let you have copies of completed project documents to see how they are used.
Summary
Project work forms a substantial part of community safety work
Projects have a specific set of outcomes to be completed within clearly defined timescales and using pre-defined resources.
Clarity about the outcomes required from the project and what outputs or work is needed to achieve the outcomes is important.
It is important to have a pre-agreed methodology for managing projects within your organisation. Ideally, this should be shared by the whole partnership.
Monitoring and evaluation are an integral part of project management and should be planned at the start of any project so that all the necessary data are collected as work progresses.
