Agile and efficient project management

The overall aim of this work package is to maintain the project on schedule and on budget. In particular, this work package aims to ensure (1) the effective management of the project within time and budget constraints at the highest level of quality; (2) the coordination of project partners to achieve synergy in collaboration and (3) the communication with the EU. ITM will be the coordinator of the project. The main tasks are overall project management, financial management, steering group/consortium meetings and formal reporting. It includes an overall management task taken up by an experienced development cooperation project coordinator at ITM. A project steering group will be setup, including one staff member from all participating partners. Given the innovative nature of this project, agile project management is needed to adapt to circumstances arising in the SEA region or developing new ideas that develop throughout the collaboration. At the same time, management needs to strictly follow-up the financial and reporting guidelines. The financial management will be followed up by ITM”s project management office. ITM has extensive experience with the management of EU projects (in Horizon 2020 and DevCo amongst others). The project management office will deal with contractual, legal and administrative issues. The project coordinator takes care of the formal reporting to the EU. Its responsibilities include the preparation and delivery of progress and final reports, as required, as well as any additional reporting that might be requested by the EU or as by consortium initiative. All the consortium partners will have their own local, project team. The project coordinator requires monitoring reports from each partner every six months. These reports should include a general description of what has been done, deliverables and budget. The project coordinator also manages the steering group/consortium meetings. There will be nine steering group/consortium meetings, three per financial year. The kick-off meeting will be a face-to-face meeting facilitated by the project coordinator. Other than that, there will be one other face-to- face meeting as project wrap-up in the last financial year. The rest of the meetings will be teleconferenced. In between, the coordinator will also participate in some content and capacity building workshops, serving as an additional face-to-face opportunity with HEI management and consortium partners, given that all workshops have mixed involvement of Partner country HEIs. The project coordinator will take care of filing the project documentation (reports, minutes, plans etc.) and shall also provide and host a virtual platform for sharing documents and storing documentation.