Attachment-12_PERRP_-_Stakeholder_participation_in_projects_-_Final.pdf

© CDM Constructors Inc. Tarek M. Selim, Benefits of Stakeholders Participation in Construction Projects:

The case of the USAID funded Pakistan Earthquake Reconstruction & Recovery

Program

Abstract Multinational engineering consultants, contractors and real estate developers working in various parts of the world, encounter many challenges arising due to cross-national differences. As Engineering, Contracting, Construction and Management practices varies vary from country to country and from culture to culture.

The Pakistan Earthquake Reconstruction & Recovery Program (PERRP) a five year $120 Million Indefinite quantity contract (IQC) funded by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) was awarded to CDM Constructors Inc, an American Consulting, Engineering, Construction and Operations firm. It focuses on rebuilding on a Design-Build basis schools and healthcare facilities affected by the October 2005 Earthquake, including strengthening the capacity needed to sustain them, in the Mansehra District of Khyber Pakhtun Khwa (KPK) and the Bagh District of Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK).

In addition to work to internationally recognized design and construction quality standards, the project has to meet or exceed end users needs. This highlights that in addition to having to work on engineering and technical issues during the implementation of the work very strong interaction and involvement of the communities and end users of these facilities was of paramount importance. This feature, we found out is not a common practice in the construction industry in Pakistan. Keeping in view the importance of community related issues; a strong Social Mobilization team was set up for the Project which significantly assisted the Engineering team in successfully completing construction and handing over many buildings. At the same time communities were empowered and the technical staff was trained to deliver projects meeting stakeholder expectations.

In actuality, this approach even in the west, where community involvement in infrastructure development is quite common, is quite innovative. Traditionally, community involvement usually focuses on the early stages of project development in the planning and early design stages of any project and focuses on Permitting, Environmental issues and the like. In the case of the current program, we successfully carried this involvement through the implementation and actual construction and hand-over phases of the facilities; quite an innovation in itself.

This article shares the lessons learnt from this experience by examining the impediments arising due to diverse participants interacting in unfamiliar construction environments along with the measures taken to mitigate their effects. Ultimately, this approach can help develop new processes for firms engaged in infrastructure development projects in multicultural environment to augment their institutional knowledge and amplify their outcomes.

Introduction & Background

PERRP is an IQC contract awarded to CDM by USAID to design and build health and educational facilities in earthquake affected areas of Pakistan. The scope of works includes but is not limited to assessments, site investigations and the design and construction of schools and heath units in the Bagh District and schools in the Mansehra District. Parallel to construction an intensive social program is being executed to ensure community buy-in to the project. All construction material, labor, construction equipment and accessories are to be provided by CDM through sub-contractors.

People’s participation in education or health management in Pakistan has a checkered history.

Although Education Committees were introduced in some areas in the past few decades, have produced mixed results and are frequently known to be inactive or ineffective for several reasons:

distrust by government or school personnel as SMCs have sometimes been seen as an interference, lack of awareness about what active school committees are capable of and lack of information or training for the committee. Largely in response to donor requests, however, certain levels of government have issued directives to schools and communities to form such committees, but these directives have often been unclear and contradictory or have not been not based on best practices developed from community-level organizing. The result being that school committees have often existed in name only. (Rehabilitation of Education System)

This reality has been compounded since the 2005 earthquake. The few people in schools, who happened to be dealing with government and donors for emergency assistance, were designated as SMCs. While these actions were highly valuable and much experience was gleaned from them, schools now can benefit most by developing and strengthening an official committee to meet its needs.

The problem, however, is defining exactly what strategies to promote. SMCs had not been commonly developed by the various institutional stakeholders. In AJK at that time, there were several NGOs and international organizations working on various aspects of education. ‘School Management Committees’ document, published by the Government of AJK, Directorate of Education, Elementary Schools section served as framework for the establishment of fully representative, accountable, transparent and active SMCs .

On top of all this, potential conflicts generally arise between stake holders including construction supervisors, contractor, social team, government departments and community during the process.

Empowering social team to the level where they can effectively motivate and mobilize the communities during such conflicts need significant effort and commitment from senior management.

Stakeholder Analysis

As represented in Figure 1 - Stakeholder Chart working on community projects is always challenging as it involves a large number of stakeholders making a complex network of communication channels. Taking PERRP as an example USAID granted funds for the reconstruction of schools in the October 2005 earthquake affected areas, in coordination with ERRA. ERRA is the Government Authority responsible for donor coordination and pledging of schools to different implementers. ERRA had a whole organization structure for monitoring & evaluation, quality assurance and coordination. SERRA and DRU worked for ERRA at provincial and district levels respectively. NESPAK, an engineering firm, was hired by ERRA to review and approve the designs prepared for schools by different implementers.

Department of education was responsible for sourcing new school plots where the original plot had challenges associated, taking over the completed buildings, auctioning salvageable materials and provisioning of educational services. USAID funded hard and soft programs where ILED did capacity development of Educational sector and CDM provided its design, construction and community engagement services.

Meeting all the stakeholders’ expectations, and steering the project through the communication, cultural, linguistic and perception constraints is the biggest challenge faced by firms working on donor funded projects in remote communities under diverse environment.

Community

USAID

Dept. of Education

ERRA

SERRA

NESPAK

CDM/PERRP

DRU

Design Consultants

Construction Sub-contractor

ILED/PRIDE

Figure 1 - Stakeholder Chart

Situational Challenges

Many challenges faced the program implementation team to integrate these various stakeholders into the planning and implementation of the program. These were both external and internal to the Team.

External Challenges

• Convincing locals;

• Catering for administrative differences between regions;

• Identifying the right people;

• Stakeholder Identification & Management;

• Motivating the stakeholders;

• Training stakeholders for effective cooperation;

Internal Challenges

• Identifying the critical activities;

• Integrating the activities in the overall program schedule;

• Creating a cohesive team of divergent professionals;

• Training the staff;

• Effective Follow up;

Methodology CDM followed a structured approach to address these challenges and improved its practices by practical field experiences. The process of community-based construction is a necessary part of the answer to the challenge to empower communities to actively participate in construction projects and to realize the developmental opportunities presented thereby (Watermeyer, 1995).

Not harming the local property and relations between people remained the basis of the stakeholder involvement. While CDM’s social component was primarily aimed at facilitating construction of new school and health facilities, the estimated one-and-a-half years of technical activity was also seen as a prime opportunity for significant community institution building. The social mobilization approach was based on existing GoAJK, guidelines for forming School Management Committees (SMCs). Rather than only having normal capacity building activities such as workshops and training sessions, CDM’s main approach was to use our technical activity as practical organizational development learning experiences for the SMCs/HCs. Rather than ‘do everything’ for the community, CDM’s approach was to assign as much responsibility as feasible to the community, thereby instilling from the outset a strong local sense of ownership, pro-activism and responsibility. This community participation gave members direct practical experience in assessment, planning, implementation, management, sharing of responsibility, monitoring and evaluation - all essential learning subjects for developing their organizations. Through ‘non-formal’ capacity building approaches such as meetings and discussions, SMCs and HCs were led through different activities depending on the needs of each site.

Through informal capacity building approaches such as meetings and discussions, SMCs were facilitated through various activities depending on the needs and context of each site and community. Achieving community participation and construction by working together was a dynamic and interactive learning process, which was modified as required by the circumstances of each construction site.

For effective implementation CDM followed the PMI guidelines to integrate the social mobilization into the design build construction program. Social mobilization milestones were linked with the design-build construction work breakdown structure and schedule. This Process is summarized in Appendix 1 to this paper.

The WBS for social mobilization was designed to reflect the project cycle of construction and related social mobilization in the typical site and community. Its three components relate to construction phases:

1. Pre‐construction Capacity Building; 2. Participation during Construction; and 3.

Post Construction Activity.

Figure 2 - Social Mobilization - Work Breakdown Structure

As a part of preconstruction capacity building, Social mobilizers gave brief introduction of projects to communities, facilitated the process to pass ‘community willingness resolution’ and helped them to form School Management Committee (SMC) or Health Committee (HC). Once the committees were formed lines of communication among stakeholders were established. SMC agreed upon roles and responsibilities of different team members. CDM design team presented several concept designs to the SMC to solicit their input in the design development process. SMC were then challenged to arrange the Patwari surveys of sites and facilitate the construction sub-contractor pre-bid site visits.

Before the construction started on site, subcontractor was introduced to communities.

Community and subcontractor were made to sit together and finalize the community contractor agreement. In this agreement the location of electric connection, water supply, labor camp, material storage yards, salvageable materials stacking place etc were finalized. Community was tasked to identify the suitable free of cost locations for setting up temporary schools which were used during construction.

Code of conduct was issued to the CDM employees, subcontractor and communities where each individual was reminded their duties during construction. SMC and subcontractor worked in parallel while CDM did liaison between them. Regular fortnightly community and subcontractor meetings were held where all the conflicts were discussed including the violation of community contractor agreement, violation of code of conduct, any construction quality related deficiency highlighted by community, problems caused by community to subcontractor. A continuous dialogue during the process of construction was ensured which helped in reducing the perception barriers between different stakeholders.

Once the construction was completed, SMCs were engaged during the final inspection.

They were tasked to arrange for facility handover events. CDM social mobilizers helped SMC in development of their monitoring and maintenance plans to be implemented after the completion of buildings.

CDM prepared the exit plans for each construction site on completion of construction phase. A social mobilization completion report was prepared summarizing all the benchmark information on the school such as physical structure, site plans and location, SMC member contacts, SIPs and enrollment etc. It also set out a schedule of DOE mentoring visits and anticipated and agreed upon joint DOE‐SMC activities. Once CDM left the community, SMCs were visited on regular basis to check their current performance on Maintenance and Monitoring Plans.

The summary schedule below Figure 3depicts the link between social mobilization and design-build construction schedule for each site. These efforts once repeated on several sites at one time in close by communities helped in creating a synergy required for successful implementation.

Figure 3 - Integration of Social Mobilization process with Design-build Lifecycle

An effective organization was required to implement such methodologies on over 75 projects underway spread over many remote locations. CDM adopted a matrix organizational structure. Only 4 expatriate staff along with the local line managers were based in Islamabad, while the project implementation team, including construction supervision staff and social mobilizers were located on remote locations in Bagh & Mansehra districts. Matrix organizational structure initially created some confusions and conflicts due to unfamiliarity of staff with the dual manager concept. Later, once CDM provided the staff with requisite trainings, issued roles & responsibilities memorandums and clarified lines of communications through visual charts this system worked well.

Most of the schools constructed by CDM did not have the libraries initially. In parallel to other social mobilization efforts CDM ran a voluntarily program of library challenge.

Each SMC was challenged that of they collect a book per student, CDM will match the same number of books through its voluntarily efforts.

Results & Analysis Unless there is a mechanism to judge the performance of a system, it could not be improved further. CDM adopted a community participation index model from USAID Performance Monitoring Framework where each community is tracked to get indications of each committee’s interest and ability to participate now, as well as in future, to care for and contribute to their school or BHU.

Each SMC/HMC was assessed using 20 questions or indicators with each to be ranked from 0-5, for a total of 100 possible points. The same questions were asked in successor survey. As shown in Table 1, in the six months since the original assessment, significant development in community participation was observed. Whereas in April, only 7 (24%) of the communities were above the minimum threshold score of 50%, by October a large percentage (72% or 22 in number) of them had moved above this minimum score. As in April, the target is for all the communities to score at least 70%. While only 2 (6%) communities had reached that goal by April, a total of 7 (23%) have reached it by

October. In April, 23 of the communities were below the minimum score but now there are only 8 communities at that level.

Table 1 - Early Results: Scores and Ranking: at April 30 and October 31, 2008 Scores Description Rank # of SMCs or HMCs with this score

April 08 October 08 90-100 outstanding consistency of participation, initiatives, exceptionally high achievement over many months 5 0 2 (6%)

70-89 skills and participation very well developed 4 2 (7%) 5 (16%) 50-69 skills and participation well developed 3 5 (17%) 15 (50%) 30-49 skills and participation growing 2 21 (70%) 8 (26%) 1-29 in beginning stages 1 2 (6%) 0 0 not yet started by project 0 0 Note: The CDM assessment exercise arbitrarily chose a score of 50% as the minimum threshold. However, low scores do not necessarily indicate an ineffective committee; rather, a low score usually reflects the early stage of involvement in the project. In many of these cases, the committees simply have not yet been asked to take certain steps which would give them a higher score. In October this is still the case, with construction not yet started in 8 of the 30 communities. As construction starts and committees carry out assigned activities the scores will rise.

Due to the high engagement of the committees CDM was able to get the desired results.

On 72 construction projects underway in the most challenging areas involving complex communication networks only 8 work days were lost due to local disputes where other organizations lost entire projects due to conflicts and disputes while working in similar areas. Even when CDM encountered three court cases raised by community members;

due to active involvement by SMCs not even a single work day was lost and the courts immediately gave verdicts in CDM favor.

Most of the schools sites in the rural areas have landowner ship issues. At times the awarded projects have to be cancelled if the necessary care is not done at the time of selection of projects. P15, Project Completion Report, UNESOC. Dr. Pomerai highlighted the same aspect during ERRA INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE, 19-21 April 2010 stating over and above design construction and resourcing, land tenure and land allocation was a major problem. CDM’s early intervention of assessing the land ownership at the time of initial site assessments and later conducting the Patwari surveys to ensure boundaries of the site proven very helpful. Due to this pro-active approach none of the school sites had work stoppages due to land ownership issues.

Due to active involvement of communities in such locations very hostile situations were peacefully resolved. In several cases labor workers engaged in a relationship with the woman of communities were safely evacuated. In typical scenario such intruder may have suffered severe consequences. These situations were further reduced by issuing a code of conduct to construction workers.

CDM decision to involve communities during design phase was proven vital during construction. At some of the school sites where community members raised their concerns after the design was completed on the location of building blocks, SMCs came in front and defended the design already reviewed and concurred upon by them in past.

In one instance where at a school site in Mansehra an old student, a prominent football player in England County, confronted CDM engineers, doing the layout of building, with hostile attitude stating that this design will ruin his football field. CDM engaged SMCs who explained to him how his football field was secured in design and the current design is providing international size football field. Thus CDM decision to involve communities during the design phase helped it to save the money and time for redesigning the buildings.

Sustainability objective of community engagement was also fulfilled, where SMC, School teachers, health professional, community and students are taking care of their schools and BHUs. They have established their roles and responsibilities to clean and guard the completed buildings. At places, where thieves’ stole expensive parts from the building the community, on their own, tracked down the thieves and recovered the stolen items.

These results are also confirmed through the comments of various stakeholders who at many times admired efforts by CDM in engaging communities in the projects; as shown in the table below;

Communities’ participation in the library challenge program is another measure to gauge community involvement in this project where all 56 schools except 7 have raised enough money to meet the challenge to raise 1 book per student. Remaining 7 SMCs are slightly short of funds and it is expected that they will earn the balance money in next few months. In additional all SMCs are arranging extracurricular activities at schools. At some schools these have been arranged for the first time in history.

‘After the quake there was only a collapsed building. I thought it could not be reconstructed in five years, but unbelievably USAID/CDM has built this new school in only 18 months!’

Head Teacher, GBPS/HS Ahl

‘USAID/CDM has constructed an unparalleled building on one hand and organized us on the other hand and for this we are thankful’. PTC Chairman, GBHS Nokot

‘We all are praying for the reconstruction of our school by USAID/CDM’, religious leader at the central mosque during Friday prayers, GBHSS Jared

‘In all our participation and discussion to get our clinic built, we learned how to resolve a very old conflict with another community over our road. Now we will apply that know-how to other things’. (Chairman, Health Management Committee Seri Piran).

‘When we were sure we could not get a school because there was no road connection, we went to work and built the road ourselves, then USAID/CDM decided to build the school. This success highly motivated us. Now we have a beautiful new school. This is also the first time ever that parents have become involved in school affairs and we have made our first school library. This project has brought many changes. The people of the surrounding areas will remember this donation for many generations’. (SMC member, GBMS Chaknari)

‘We have a wonderful huge new school and we take maintaining it to be our responsibility’.

(SMC Chairman, GBHS Dharray).

Conclusion Changes in underlying societal power structures and empowerment of the community are important indicators of sustainability. However, structural changes are typically the most difficult to achieve as well as the most difficult to measure (Tango International, 2009). Sustainability and success of social mobilization program for a construction project could only be gauged in qualitative terms. All the results shared above are clear evidence of the successful implementation.

Getting community participation and construction working together effectively will be a dynamic, iterative process, learning and revising as work proceeds. Once the beneficiaries have developed a sense of ownership, they will feel responsible to operate and maintain the infrastructures because they recognize the benefits arising from such activities. When that is achieved, then we can begin to speak of the sustainability of the community organizations.

Results and experience reflected that rigorous immersion at grassroots level ensures successful completion of project in disastrous areas; Contractor and CDM had thorough consultation and communication with communities not only helped to control conflicts but getting community organized on other issues related to projects. It is also very clear to CDM team that construction will go smoothly if no harm is done to local property or relation between people. Sometimes broader conflicts breakout on construction project when local property is damaged, encroached or problems are created between people.

Thus contractors being very careful and respectful to community members gain the respect from the communities in which he is working.

It is essential that the need of stakeholder management is highlighted in construction projects to avoid major conflicts.

References

1. Rehabilitation of the Education System in Earthquake-affected Areas of Pakistan Administered Azad Jammu and Kashmir, Progress Report, July 2010,

2. Project Completion Report, UNESCO, Earthquake Response Plan, 2009

3. Report of Proceedings, ERRA INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE, 19-21 April 2010

4. COMMUNITY-BASED CONSTRUCTION : A ROUTE TO SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

AND JOB CREATION By RB Watermeyer Soderlund & Schutte Inc. Consulting Engineers, Johannesburg

5. JSA Inst. Civ. Eng. Vol. 36, No. 1, First quarter, 1995.

6. Sustainability of rural development projects, Best practices and lessons learned by IFAD in Asia, Tango International, May 2009

Appendix 1

Appendix 1