Management of projects with beneficiary participation: case study - rehabilitation of internal estate roads

Abstract

Beneficiary participation is an important factor for donor funded projects. Since it gives many benefits and final product to the community, donors are always insisting projects with beneficiary participation. However, for smooth execution o f beneficiary participatory projects has to cross many hurdles for its successful completion. Identify those drawbacks and addressing to them is necessary.

The relationship between the Donors, a Project Office, and the Engineering Body (RDA) is critical to existing organizational capacity, efficient project implementation and the subsequent institutionalization of project outcomes. This issue has not been given sufficient attention in the literature on the subject of project based organizations, which does not attempt to evaluate the Donor's or Project Office level of integration within the main organization, and the effect of this relationship on project implementation and institutional capacity and sustainability of project outcomes.

This research explores the literature and develops a model to analyze the factors effecting on successful completion of beneficiary participatory projects. The methodology includes a literature review on Beneficiary participation in rural development projects, benefits on beneficiary participation and its obstacles and constraints, beneficiary participation in Sri Lankan context. Also it includes a preliminary interview with project directors and JICA officials. This research has taken the Estate road rehabilitated data, which were executed under the Plantation Development Project (PDP/PRP II). The data are used for the analysis and derivation of conclusions.

The research concludes that there are many factors that affect to the successful completion of beneficiary participatory projects. The findings have an emphasis on more site visits by the management staff. The rehabilitation of a particular road will be according to its location and the conditions. Fixing to a predetermined amount will stuck the executing parties. Findings have extended to management staff distances, vehicle allocations to staffs, payment procedures, meeting minutes to be distributed on time to site and also recommending to some team building and coordination programmes with management and beneficiary parties.