Minister of City Planning and Water Supply Rauf Hakeem launched the Project Management and Contract Management IT System Monday (26th Dec.) in Colombo. This system developed and tailor made to Sri Lanka for project management purposes specially to monitor the progress of projects.
The system was developed with the assistance under the Technical Assistance Program (TA-8562 SRI) for “Capacity Development for Project Implementation for the Government of Sri Lanka”, by Asian Development Bank. This will first be launched in water sector projects financed by ADB and will be replicated to other projects and sectors on request.
In several portfolio review meetings carried out by ADB and the gap analysis carried out, government and ADB noted most of the projects experienced delays, cost overruns and disputes. This situation resulted in Government of Sri Lanka incurring additional costs, prolonging of social and environmental impacts during construction, contractors facing cash flow problems and depriving the general public the use of infrastructure facilities for years and under utilization of foreign funds.
Insufficient capacity in project management and contract management skills, have been identified as a key contributory factor for these negative impacts in project implementation. Therefore, the Asian Development Bank approved a Technical Assistance Program (TA-8562 SRI) for “Capacity Development for Project Implementation for the Government of Sri Lanka” to enhance project and contract management capacity of staff engaged in the implementation and execution of national infrastructure projects. The development of the IT system took almost 2 years and the input of the relevant stake holders with particular emphasis on the water sector has been incorporated by developer MS Technologies.
The IT toll has 3 distinguish components. It has core projects management software, Document management System, Correspondence management system. It has also included the templates required for 65 procedures explained in the projects and contract management manual.
Key Features
• Project Program included in the contracts can be inputted to the system
• Contractors should update the project progress data to the system and Project Management Units will approve.
• Contract variations will be updated
• Online – Real time Contract Management can be done
• All stakeholder are given, view/edit/update permission
• Birdseye view of all projects for senior management
• Computer based contract correspondence of all project communications
• Document management system for storing, archiving and retrieval
• Contract document templates for all 65 producers in line with contract management manual
• Reporting Templates for different stockholder requirements with flexibility to customize
Key Benefits
• Relevant authorities can keep track of project progress details.
• Tracking of contract execution and deadlines. Bonds, commencements, variations
• Be early informed about the shortcomings on project delivery delays.
• Better utilization of resources (Labor, Equipment’s, Martials).
• Collaborative working arrangement – Improved productivity and the efficiency of project teams.
• Better communication platform for project correspondence.
• Improved decision making process , reduce prolongation of projects
• EAs , IAs and Development partners have access to real-time information
• Senior Management teams in the PMU are regularly updated with the project progress