E1-Project management by SEA RISORSE S.p.A.

Description and methods employed (max. 10.000 characters)^discuss

what

Project management aims at ensuring that project objectives are adequately achieved, on time and within the costs estimated. It also allows effective decision-making and smooth communication among partners and with the EC. It assures that project progress reports and cost statements are provided timely and accurately. This action includes all activities undertaken by the beneficiaries for the management of the project (administrative, technical and financial aspects) and for meeting the reporting and accountability obligations. The objective is to have the full control of project activities, to intervene promptly in order to give the EC the certainty of a sound management of contractual issues and to give clear indications to project staff about management rules.

Action E1 will provide overall management of COWS actions, including contracts, structure, and organization. The principal objective of this Action is to be pursued through two main groups of activities:

1. .planning, monitoring, quality assurance
2. . administration, communication

Planning, monitoring, quality assurance will be implemented by: running the technical management of work packages; maintaining and adjusting as needed COWS plans; monitoring pace and quality of the project; managing the different project's activities, securing internal communication and interacting among partners for the definition and detailed plan of the activities they lead; identifying problems, taking; appropriate actions at proportional level; organizing and chairing COWS meetings; fostering gender equality; defining and managing the bridging of the project beyond the LIFE+ contract term.

Administration and communication will be implemented by: supplying all deliverables to the EC, providing financial control, subcontracting and legal documentation, and maintaining the execution of the COWS Partnership Agreement (Consortium Agreement), managing distribution of funding to the Associated Beneficiaries, informing and reporting the EC about the project's activities, secure and provide all deliverables, including the preparation of the Inception report, the progress reports, the mid-term and final reports with payment request, providing the COWS interface with EC and other relevant parties, assisting to relevant EC events, setting up and maintaining an internal documentation digital workspace for COWS, members, promoting gender equality in the project, ensuring effective coordination of knowledge management.

how

This action is organised into two different tasks: (1) Manage COWS technical, financial, legal and administrative aspect; (2) Define and run project performance monitoring.

The Project Manager is the principal owner of this Action. The candidate project manager is an experiences engineer. She is one of the leading scientist who operated the early experimental small scale plant for anaerobic co-digestion from where the present proposal originates.

The management structure is presented in the annexed Management Chart.

The meetings of the Project Management Committee (Steering Meetings) are the main agora for important decisions.

Project Coordination provides good overall strategic direction at the environmental, technical and management levels, while ensuring that COWS is running smoothly, that problems are taken care of, reports written and that all parties involved in the project receives support.

Steering Meetings will be held every 6-9 months as the crucial and formal coordination tool. Day-to-day collaboration and coordination will be maintained directly (we remember that 2 of 3 partners have offices in the same location and the Comune of Viareggio offices are not too far from those of the coordinator) and also through the virtual environment for managing project activities (a web based project portal with rich-media capabilities). Foreseen dates of face-to-face Steering Meetings are 21/06/2012, 07/12/2012, 02/09/2013, 27/05/2014, 18/02/2012.5, 12/05/2016. The monitoring will be conducted by the Project Manager and other technical resources who collaborate in the activity against COWS plan on day-to-day basis and technical monitoring project review meetings to verify general progress against overall plan and financial considerations.

Any method used must be technically and financially feasible, sufficiently accurate, consistent, and not prone to distortions: options should be listed and their advantages and disadvantages assessed. A careful planning of the organization of monitoring activities (including areas of responsibility and authority) will ensure that everyone works together for a smoothly run project. Progress of the project work will be monitored against the milestones and the objectives defined in the Monitoring Plan. The Monitoring plan will include for each object of monitoring a specific description of the reason for measuring that given fact, or product, or result associating them to the relevant interests of stakeholders/participants. For each monitoring item, methods used will be described along with their references. Moreover, timing (how often each data collected and when), responsibilities (who is responsible for making sure the monitoring happens), threshold for compliance, and data restitution formats will be included. During project implementation, the

Monitoring plan will provide the use of measures to review and evaluate the project, in order to ensure that keeps on track. At the end of the Project, the Monitoring plan will include an evaluation and reflection step in order to gather the most important lessons learned. Project accomplishments in relation to environmental and socio-economic impacts will be monitored and evaluated by the relevant Committees:

• Environment Committee (contribution to environmental objectives and transferability of solutions implemented);
• Policy and Communication Committee (consistency, contributions and transferability and dialogues with the key stakeholders).

Please see also C1, C2 and C3.

Reporting and Administration deals with reporting and financial procedures under LIFE+ provisions and overarching EU and national law. An Inception Report will be prepared within nine month from project start. The Inception Report will contains an assessment as to whether the project objectives and work plan are still valid at that time, to give the Commission the possibility to launch an early termination procedure if the project's objectives are not achievable or the work plan is not feasible. Reports from the Monitoring and evaluation Action C1, C2, C3 are prepared independently but will be forwarded to the Commission through this function.

Contract and Legal task swill deal with all contractual and other legal issues of the project (Consortium Agreement implementation and amendments, relationships with third parties, change control and formalisation of updates to the work plan, roles and resources assignment). A quality approach will be applied to all the work undertaken drawing up an agenda for quality as a regular part of each meeting of the Steering Committees.

The Project Manager will: provide the COWS project interface with the Commission, follow the project to ensure timely execution of work, achievement of milestones and deliverables, monitor and ensure the quality of deliverables, manage review meetings, manage decisions regarding common funds, changes to plans.

The Coordinating Beneficiary appoints the Financial Officer who is responsible of payments. The Financial Officer is responsible of the faultlessness of financial transactions within the project. The Financial Officer executes the payment orders committed by the Project Manager. The Financial Officer reports to the Coordinating Beneficiary. The project work has been allotted to Actions. For each Action there one responsible Beneficiary, even in the case that more Beneficiaries participate to that Action's activities.

Methods employed:

This Action is inspired by a lean approach based on a participatory approach based on clear responsibility. The reference methodology is PMBOK (Project Management Body of Knowledge) by PMI (Project Management Institute)1 on the background of the PCM (Project Cycle Management) approach of the EC Programme2. The two methodologies do not conflict. More detailed provisions for the management of the project will be drawn in the Partnership Agreement that will be signed among Beneficiaries following EC prescriptions.

Each Beneficiary has one seat in the Steering Committee, which is the organism where decisions that involve legal representation powers are taken. Given that the Coordinating Beneficiary is the sole responsible of the contract face the EC, SEARIS chairs the committee with veto power and double vote weight if there is not a majority.

The Coordinating Beneficiary appoints a full time Project Manager who reports to the Steering Committee and will coordinate the team of Action Leaders and lead the Project Management Committee.

where

Project Management activities will mainly take place at the Coordinating Beneficiary facilities (SEARIS, Lucca, IT). Activities that are in charge of Associated Beneficiaries will take place at their facilities. If requested, the Project Manager and another project officer will attend to the regional kick-off meeting with EC representatives at the places indicated by the Commission.

when

The Project Management Action will cover the project's time span plus two month for the final administrative arrangements. Start: 01/06/2012 - End: 22/07/2016

Constraints and assumptions (max. 2.000 characters)^discuss

Overall constraints applying to Action E1 are those deriving:

• from Grant Agreement, Special Provisions and relevant rules governing the Contract;
• from regulations and laws governing the scope of the project.

Overall assumptions applying to Action E1 are:

• no disrupting organisational change will occur in partner organisations across project duration;
• partners' institutional mandates do not substantially change across project duration;
• turnover of key persons is low.

Expected results (quantitative information when possible) (max. 2.000 characters)^discuss

The main results are:

• Sound project management and accountability
• Quality control of the outcomes delivered to the Commission and the stakeholders
• Recognition of the COWS approach as a best-practice to be followed
• Coherence of action and vision
• Decision making and conflict resolution capacity.

Accordingly the following outputs will result:

• All project deliverables/outputs supplied in due time, quantity and quality.
• All contract provisions satisfactorily fulfilled.
• No serious conflict relevant to the project arises among partners
• Financial management of the project traceable through transparent records.
• Project partners and key stakeholders committed to prosecute on the project's track after its subventioned term.

Indicators of progress (max. 2.000 characters)^discuss

The main indicators are (1) formal compliance with the contract, (2) the substantial compliance with the contract and the (3) focus on project objectives.

The dimensions involved are both legal and value for money.

The measuring will be accomplished by SEARIS: the first to be carried out progress, interim and final report delivery the last one at project end.

For the first indicator, the threshold is a zero non-compliance notices and the means of verification is document review.

For the second indicator, the threshold is that all deliverables will be sent and 90% of due results available.

The means of verification is document review.

For the focus on project objectives, the threshold is that all objectives must be achieved and the means of verification is document review.

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