Top 10 tips for community safety project managers

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Top 10 tips for community safety project managers

• Rick Brown
• Evidence Led Solutions

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About Evidence Led Solutions

• Community Safety Consultancy
• Established in 2001
• Develop research and training for community
  safety / crime reduction practitioners
• Trained over 150 community safety practitioners
  in project management techniques

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Project management training

• Provide two day residential course
• Cover the key project management techniques
• Based around community safety / crime reduction
  examples

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Tip 1 How to spot a project

• Come in many guises initiatives, pilots,
  interventions, operations
• Characteristics of projects include
• Clear beginning, middle and end
• Clear set of outcomes
• Draws on skills from a number of people
• No existing structure can provide outcomes

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Tip 2 Do your homework

• Ideally, interventions / tactics within a project
  should be driven by analysis.
• Even if you jump straight to a chosen approach,
  confirm decision with available data.

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Tip 3 Be clear about what can be done

• Have clear objectives
• Manage expectations of stakeholders
• Be clear about the mechanism of change
• Its easier if you are output oriented

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Tip 4 Have a plan

• Give yourself time to think through how the
  project will be implemented
• The plan is the roadmap for the project
• Should be a living document

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Tip 5 Be realistic about timescales

• Easy to be over-optimistic
• Never start at the end and work back
• Break the project down into small, measurable
  chunks.
• Trade off between time andresources

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Tip 6 Manage the risk

• All projects have risks
• Identify likelihood and severity of risks
• Assess the need to act

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Tip 7 Monitor closely

• Unless you monitor closely, you wont know
  whether things are going wrong.
• Input monitoring
• Process monitoring
• Output monitoring
• Outcome monitoring

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Tip 8 Be willing to change

• Project management is about making informed
  decisions
• The best projects are those that adapt with time

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Tip 9 Find a way out

• All too often projects just fizzle out
• From the start, you should plan the exit strategy
• Jumping from a project to mainstream working can
  be difficult.

Mainstream
Project
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Tip 10 Learn the lessons

• At the end of the project, assess what you have
  learned
• Document the process of implementation and the
  problems encountered
• Be selective about outcome evaluation

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Dynamic project lifecycle
Phase 1
Phase 2
Conception and definition
Analyse problem
Define objectives
Select intervention
Agree project brief
Define aim
Yes
No
Identify tasks
Redefine
Planning and scheduling
Timetabling
Handover and closure
Review and evaluation
Risk analysis
Replan
Exit strategy
Costings
No
No
Yes
Agree project plan?
Define outputs
Monitor progress
Yes
Problem
Phase 4
Phase 3
Executing the project work