Project Management and Communications
The overall purpose of this Work Package is to provide effective project management throughout the 2007 Survey, including delivery of the project’s external communications plan and management of links with other national surveys. 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 are 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 is 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 high-level products.
The Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH) reports to the CSSG quarterly via a meeting and written reports. The CSPB meets as and when required, according to the emergent needs of the project. Individual Topic Groups have also been established to advise the CSSG and Work Packages on specialist areas, such as external communications.
The Survey is managed in four overlapping stages:
- Field Survey
- Analysis
- Reporting
- Integrated Assessment
All work undertaken during the 2007 Survey is 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-conferencing.
The main outputs of this Work Package include:
- Individual reports for each stage of the project - ie. Field Survey (2007); Analysis (2008); Reporting (2009); Integrated Assessment (2010)
- Quarterly progress reports to the CSSG
- The Countryside Survey website
- Various external communications materials (leaflets, posters, presentations, etc)
- Logs of key issues and lessons learnt
- A structured repository of project documentation and products (delivered online)
- Meeting papers for the CSSG and CSPB