Manage Delivery and Risk

Managing delivery

Once a project in your scheme is approved, the project manager will need to manage the delivery, including the following tasks:

• Keep up to date with progress
  Have conversations or meetings with those delivering the work at regular intervals or at agreed stages. This may relate to payments, project milestones or the completion of particular tasks.
• Resolve requests for change, and manage risks and issues in the project
  For example, a contingency payment request to cover unexpected additional structural work, or to deal with issues sourcing materials.
• Check work has been completed
  The project manager is responsible for seeing a project through to completion, ensuring it is delivered to agreed timescales, budget, and quality parameters. This may involve tasks such as managing appointed contractors, consultants or grantees to meet agreed deadlines for delivery or reporting.
• Engage with key stakeholders
  Ensure timely and appropriate communication is undertaken with stakeholders. Find advice about engaging stakeholders and partners

Monitoring progress

A proportionate monitoring approach will depend on the scale of the works planned.

For example, for the repair of a couple of windows, the work will likely be drawn up, quoted for, and delivered by a specialist joiner. A project manager or specialist conservation colleague might actively monitor and check the work is completed to the required quality.

For larger capital projects, the project manager might monitor and check information provided by a grantee or their agent. An architect might oversee the work on behalf of the grantee.

Chartered architects or surveyors engaged to oversee work on site are known as the ‘contract administrator’ and are responsible for the inspection and ‘certification’ of works as part of the construction process. They use their professional judgement to confirm that the works have been completed to the required standard and in accordance with approved plans and specifications.

These inspections generally take place at regular intervals and the resulting ‘interim certificates’ are regularly used by contractors (the people doing the work on site) as a means of requesting the next tranche of payment for the work from the grantee.

These certificates can also help project managers to monitor progress and quality.

Keeping records

It is important to keep comprehensive, well-organised records during the project so that others can access up-to-date information about it. You need an audit trail recording decisions, progress and payments that will makes it easy for an auditor to review and understand what took place, including what decisions were made and by whom.

For example, important pieces of evidence for an audit trail for a building grants scheme might include:

• Project plans, updates, and changes
• Key correspondence
• Grant claims and referrals
• Third party grant applications, assessments, decisions, and grant offer letters
• Copies of all contracts, approved schedules, and drawings
• Before, during and after photographs including ‘face-on’ shots of buildings to track change over time (ideally from the same angle)
• Evidence supporting grant claims such as architects’ certificates, receipted invoices or other evidence of payments made

Managing risks

Managing risk is an important part of any project.

Risks are uncertain events that, should they occur, will have an impact on a project. A risk can be either:

• a threat (has a negative impact on objectives or benefits)
• an opportunity (has a favourable impact)

When managing your project, you will need to identify risks and put in place appropriate activities to mitigate the impact of threats or maximise opportunities and ensure success. 

The goal of risk management is to identify, assess and control uncertainties that would affect the achievement of project objectives, and support effective decision-making.

A risk register is often used to help identify, assess, and prioritise risks, and plan agreed responses to reduce uncertainty. Your risk management approach will need to be proportionate to the size and complexity of your project. A risk register will identify:

1. What impact a particular risk would have on the achievement of your project’s objectives
2. The likelihood of the risk happening
3. How you will respond to that risk - practical ways of reducing the likelihood of the threat happening, minimizing its impact if it does occur, or maximising the opportunity
4. Who is responsible for managing that risk and putting in place the agreed responses. This person is the ‘risk owner

Risks to consider

Examples of risks that may affect your regeneration programme:

• Resources: difficulties in appointing specialist support, or loss of staff. For example, if the appointed conservation specialist leaves
• Economic: these can be wide ranging but may relate to an unexpected rise in the cost of materials or their sudden unavailability
• Financial: a funding shortfall such as a funding bid not being successful, or the economic climate means that suddenly there is a reduced contribution from another funding source
• Practical: building work may be impacted by poor weather. Delays at particular points can have a major impact on the completion of work to time
• Technical: finding significant structural problems in one of your projects or the presence of asbestos, or quality issues with the works
• Management: a significant change in the project team or a reorganisation in your organisation may impact how you can deliver

Develop and agree risk responses

Once you have identified your risks, think about what you would do to respond to each risk and agree responses with decision-makers.

For example, to minimise the risk of a lack of building owner interest in the grant funding you are offering, some possible responses would be:

• Review grant take up at a given point. Ensure building projects that you wish to take forward as a priority are identified.
• Survey local property owners to find out why they aren't interested in the grants on offer. If feasible and addressing the underlying problem, you could consider changing the grant value to incentivise take up.
• Identify additional promotional activities to raise the profile of the project with potential grantees. Consider partnering with a local organisation to help promote your grants.
• Draw up a 'reserve' list of building projects to be brought forward if 'priority' building owners don't show interest by given deadlines
• Set clear project deadlines for owners when negotiating work on buildings to make sure that you don't get stuck on individual properties. If there are issues or progress is too slow, you could move onto other projects that may be more successful at a pre-determined point.

Reviewing risks

As your project progresses, it’s important to:

• Review your risk register regularly with risk owners and decision-makers. Keep the register up to date
• Use your reviews to think about any new risks with your projects and if any risks have become issues (see below).
• Make sure the 'owner' of the risk is in a role where they can put in place the actions needed to respond to the risk.

Some risks may have occurred and have therefore become ‘issues.’ You can also use the register tool to document identified issues, agreed responses and owners in a similar way to the risk register.