SÍS Toolbox for Municipal Project Management

Promoting Best Practices in Integrated Municipal Water Resources Governance

Honduras

2019 - 2021

Client

Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC)

Beneficiaries

Local governments, local NGOs

Key Partner

GFA Consulting Group

In 2018, we attended the face-to-face Sub-ResEAU Latin America and the Caribbean event in Lima, Peru. The Swiss Agency invited us to present one of our signature consultancy services: The Water Integrity Management Toolbox. During the toolbox presentation and its unique approach to WASH governance issues, we had long discussions with members of the local GFA project staff of an SDC funded project in the Fonseca Gulf in Honduras. They were tasked to promote integrated water resources management in the water-stressed region together with municipalities by building capacities and infrastructure and strengthening the institutions for water governance. However, they were facing complex challenges when working together with the municipal governments.

The staff of the local authorities tended to lack the essential skills regarding project management, leadership, and transparency and communication. These weaknesses in the organisational setup of the municipalities were jeopardising the success and sustainability of the SDC initiative. So, together with the local project staff, we developed an idea: create a tailor-made toolbox for the context of public management in the Fonseca Gulf Region and support local authorities to strengthen their organisational structures and processes.

The project’s main objective was to help local governments improve their capacities to assume the leadership role in local water governance in Honduras. To achieve this, we were tasked first to develop a tailor-made toolbox for sustainable municipal project management, then to implement a pilot and to validate the toolbox together with 5 municipalities. Finally, we trained local facilitators to apply the toolbox and replicated the capacity-building activities other cities.

We built capacities of local government staff in the Gulf of Fonseca, so they were able to design and manage environmental projects and the corresponding integrity risks. In particular, we carried out the following activities:

Explore and discover

Analysis of standard project management practices in municipal governments.

Co-create and design

Design of a participatory methodology for the creation of an organisational change strategy in the municipalities of the Fonseca Region.

Empower

Training and capacity building of municipal staff in the municipal project cycle and integrity management.
Coaching municipal staff to implement organisational change strategies.

Reach and connect