Members of Development Planning Co-ordinating Unit (DPCU) of the Kadjebi District Assembly have been trained on Project Management at Kadjebi in the Oti Region.
The participants were taken through the introduction to Project Management, Project Initiation, Project Planning, Project Execution and Project Closing and Ex ante Evaluation by Officers from the Oti Regional Co-ordinating Council (ORCC).
Opening the training, Mr. Cletus Chevure, the Kadjebi District Co-ordinating Director, said the orientation was necessary to build the capacity of staff since there were gaps in their work.
He said without acquiring knowledge is like working in the darkness, 'so there's the need to gain new skills daily and charged the participants to take the training seriously.'
Reverend Wiafe Asante, the Oti Regional Economic Planning Officer, said the ORCC had noticed project management as problem for most Assemblies in the Region, Kadjebi inclusive.
He said they observed the deficiency during monitoring visits to project sites in the Region and this has necessitated the training to help learn and improve on what they already knew.
Rev. Asante asked the District Engineers to terminate expired projects, but they should do final accounts before terminations to avoid Court cases and been slapped with judgment debts.
On Project Initiation, he said, this is the stage where problems are identified through feasibility studies and needs assessment.
The Regional Economic Planning Officer said at planning stage, resources must be assessed well, all stakeholders involved, and information well communicated to avoid rejection and successful project execution.
Mr. Johnson Senyo Kumah, the Acting Regional Engineer, who spoke on Project Planning, said planning and management were essential, but 'the key is not to prioritize what's on you
He explained project schedule as a timetable that organised tasks, resources and due dates in an ideal sequence so that project could be completed on time.
Mr. Kumah said some tasks were critical, others not and that many tasks had some slack and could therefore, delayed a bit without delaying other tasks or affecting the project finish date.
The Acting Regional Engineer said projects compete with one another with same resources, so there was the need to 'manage resources in such a way as to optimize the use of a limited supply, trade-offs must be made.'
He said in project execution, there must be a Contingency Plan, or better still, Plan B to address unforeseen events that might cause the project costs to increase.
Mr. Kumah entreated the participants to work as a team and contribute their quota to the development of Mother Ghana.
Mr. Edward Arthur, Internal Auditor, ORCC, who spoke on Project Execution, said in the project management process, project execution tends to get the spotlight, because 'it is the stage where things get done and the activities completed or not during it have a big say in a project's performance.'
He said; 'No matter flawless your project plan is, projects in the execution phase are still subject to potential drawbacks.'
On Quality Assurance, Mr. Arthur said, 'there's an element of quality control in quality assurance-they go hand in hand.'
The Internal Auditor charged the DPCU members to try solving the right problems during project execution, as 'no matter how good the team or how efficient the methodology, if we're not solving the right problem, the project fail.'
Source: Ghana News Agency