Crawford, Lynn

English

Introduction: Federal and state governments are committed to achieving better community safety and disaster resilience. It requires coordination and collaboration amongst multiple stakeholders in developing capability to predict, respond and recover from disastrous events including natural hazards and bio-security risks. Disaster response and recovery is implemented through multiple projects but use of traditional project management has been criticized as too time consuming and inflexible. This research project is the first phase in an investigation of the use of innovative, collaborative, context sensitive and systemic project management approaches to support improved community disaster response and recovery capability

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Bond UniversityResearch RepositoryParticipatory Project Management for Disaster ResilienceCrawford, LynnPublished: 01/09/2012Document Version:Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of recordLink to publication in Bond University research repository.Recommended citation(APA):Crawford, L. (2012). Participatory Project Management for Disaster Resilience. Poster session presented atResearch Week 2012, Gold Coast, Australia.General rightsCopyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright ownersand it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights.For more information, or if you believe that this document breaches copyright, please contact the Bond University research repositorycoordinator.Download date: 10 May 2019Participatory Project Management for Disaster ResilienceVice-Chancellor’s Research Grant Scheme (2011-2012)OVERVIEWFederal and state governments are committed to achieving better community safety and disaster resilience. It requires coordination and collaboration amongst multiple stakeholders in developing capability to predict, respond and recover from disastrous events including natural hazards and bio-security risks. Disaster response and recovery is implemented through multiple projects but use of traditional project management has been criticized as too time consuming and inflexible. This research project is the first phase in an investigation of the use of innovative, collaborative, context sensitive and systemic project management approaches to support improved community disaster response and recovery capability.BACKGROUNDIn Queensland, the Disaster Management Act 2003 (DM Act) establishes structures and operational policies to deal with disasters before, during and after disaster events. Numerous policies, plans and guidelines for disaster management are  available at state and local levels (Bajracharya et al., 2011) across a wide range of agencies and services including Police, Fire, Ambulance, State Emergency Services, and Defence. The www.disaster.qld.gov.au site provides a focus for disaster management initiatives in Queensland. These initiatives link to the National Strategy for Disaster Resilience (National Emergency Management Committee, 2011) which calls for involvement and capability development across all sectors of the community including all levels of government, business, the non-government sector and individuals in preventing, preparing, responding to and recovering from disasters.Disaster management has been described as a form of public project management (Tun and Pairote, 2006). However, the applicability of traditional project management methods to the chaotic environments encountered in disaster related contexts (Steinfort, 2010) has been questioned.Traditional project management is based on a linear and rational (Hodgson and Cicmil, 2006) and top down approach most suited to what are described by Crawford and Pollack (2004) as “hard” projects, characterized by clear goals and boundaries, tangible end products, low permeability, and a focus on monitoring and control. Disaster-related projects are more likely to have ambiguously defined and evolving goals, emergent strategy and high permeability. Stakeholder involvement and flexibility are likely to be more highly valued than control.As a form of public project management, the challenges of disaster related projects will be compounded by the uncertainty, ambiguity and stakeholder management issues characteristic of project management in the public sector (Crawford et al., 2003).NEW APPROACHES TO PROJECT MANAGEMENT FOR DISASTER RELATED PROJECTSIn the context of disaster-related projects, application of systems thinking approaches (Checkland, 1981) have been proposed (Steinfort, 2010). Another approach with potential for disaster resilience is Agile project management (Cockburn, 2006), based on a process view of human collaboration whereby a series of relatively small tasks are defined and implemented incrementally as the situation demands, in a flexible and adaptive manner, rather than as part of a fully pre-planned process. This approach has potential to provide a framework for participation and action, progressively engaging the community in response and recovery as the situation evolves, an approach which is highly recommended in dealing with disastrous events. The aims of this first phase of the research are to: (1) develop understanding of the existing regulatory framework for disaster recovery in Queensland and its relationship to and treatment of project management, and (2) establish a workable case study approach in terms of access and data availability. These aims have been addressed through the use of discourse analysis which also provides theoretical underpinning. KEY REFERENCESBajracharya, B., Childs, I. and Hastings, P. (2011), ‘Climate change adaptation through land use planning and disaster management: local government perspectives from Queensland’, in proceedings of PRRES Conference,16-19 January, Gold Coast.Checkland, P. (1981), Systems thinking, systems practice, Wiley.Cockburn, A. (2006), Agile software development: the cooperative game. Addison-Wesley Professional.Crawford, LH., Costello, KL., Pollack, JB. and Bentley, L. (2003), ‘Managing soft change projects in the public sector’, International Journal of Project Management, 21, 443-448.Crawford, LH. and Pollack, JB. (2004), ‘Hard and soft projects: a framework for analysis’, International Journal of Project Management, 22, 645-653.Curlee, W. and Sterling, M. (2008), ‘Project management methodology for post disaster reconstruction (PDRM)’ in proceedings of PMI Global Congress 2008, Project Management Institute.Hodgson, DE. and Cicmil, SJK. (2006), Making projects critical, Palgrave.National Emergency Management Committee (2011), National strategy for disaster resilience: building our nation's resilience to disasters. Steinfort, P. (2010), ‘Understanding the antecedents of project management best practice: lessons to be learned for and from aid/relief projects’, Doctor of Philosophy thesis, RMIT.Tun, LM. and Pairote, P. (2006), ‘An integrated approach to natural disaster management’, Disaster Prevention and Management, 15, 396.Professor Lynn CrawfordCentre for Sustainable Healthy Communities

Participatory Project Management for Disaster Resilience

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Participatory Project Management for Disaster Resilience

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