Project Management and External Communications

The overall purpose of this Work Package was to provide effective project management throughout the Survey and delivery of the project’s external communications plan. Put simply: its role is to join together all of the various Work Packages and partner organisations, to form a unified project.

The objectives of the Project Management and Communications Work Package were to:

• Manage the Survey on a day-to-day basis on behalf of the project partners, ensuring the timely delivery of high quality products within budget  (following methods based on PRINCE2)
• Provide operational support to the Survey, including the control of documentation, financial accounting and servicing of project meetings
• Ensure effective internal communications are maintained throughout the Survey
• Manage and deliver the Survey’s external communications plan
• Manage links between Countryside Survey and other surveys (notably the Northern Ireland Countryside Survey)

More detail:

Countryside Survey in 2007 was coordinated by a dedicated Project Manager acting on behalf of the partners’ governing body, known as the Countryside Survey Steering Group (CSSG) and its sub-group, the Countryside Survey Project Board (CSPB). The CSSG is the decision-making body of the Survey and responsible for the approval of project outputs.

All work undertaken during the 2007 Survey has been planned and executed in an environmentally responsible manner, in compliance with terms and conditions set out by Defra and the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC). This includes the avoidance of unnecessary travel through effective use of telecommunications technologies, such as video and tele-conferencing.

The main outputs of this Work Package include:

• Project meetings and meeting papers 
• Milestone reports to the CSSG
• This website
• External communications materials
• Logs of key issues, risks and lessons learnt
• A structured repository of project documentation and products