Lessons from Sammaan

I spent the past 20 months with Sammaan both as a full-time project manager and a part-time consultant, and have just disengaged from the initiative.

This time has helped me to understand the challenges in implementing large-scale innovations in government organisations while getting the firsthand experience of looking at the state of sanitation facilities in Indian slums.

Some of the “Key Lessons” that I’ve learned during this experience:

a) Lots of patience required working with the government: Government organisations, especially Urban Local Bodies (ULBs), in India are understaffed and overloaded with work, and there is no clear delegation of powers between the state governments and the ULBs. Many of the ULBs are not empowered and, therefore, are unprepared to implement large-scale innovation projects like Sammaan. Also, key decision makers of ULBs, such as commissioners, get transferred quite frequently. In the past 20 months, I worked with 6 different commissioners at the Cuttuck Municipal Corporation (CMC), and bring each of them on pace with the project objectives. This requires not only lots of patience, but also extra resources to be budgeted while implementing innovative projects like Sammaan.

b) Clear delineation of roles and responsibilities: Sammaan is a long-term project with diverse partners working together. At any one time, we had 6 – 8 partners working together on a particular stream. Also, these partners come from varied backgrounds, such as design, architecture, project implementation, slum development, and government relations. From a project management point of view, this implies that the roles and responsibilities of the partners need to be clearly conveyed and documented. Also, constant communication channels need to be built amongst the partners. This helps partners to debate and discuss the open issues. I, as a protocol, fixed a call on Tuesday of every week at 10AM to accommodate an all-partner meeting. This time is used to discuss the activities they have achieved over the last week, plan for the next week, and discuss any challenges being faced in accomplishing their tasks.

c) Freeze important details at the beginning of the project: When working with the government, it is important to freeze the complete budget of the project, government contribution of funds, detailed government scope of work, approvals required from the various government departments, and other related matters at the beginning of the project. This needs to be documented and signed by the ULB and the state government at the the very start of the project. The clearer the MoU and the scope of the project, the smoother will be the its implementation.

d) Voice of the end-user is very important: When working in a large scale project like Sammaan and with multiple government agencies, it is easy to lose sight of the end beneficiary who will use these toilets. Thus it is important to constantly get the voice of the slum dwellers regularly to ensure that the project is in line with their expectations.