Project managers blamed for poor government projects
Two engineers have blamed the failure of most government projects on the lack of due diligence by project managers.
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The two, Mr Kenneth Ashigbey, and Mr Michael A. Abbey, further blamed the failure of project managers to comply with the globally accepted standards in carrying out projects.
They were speaking at a lecture at this year’s Project Management Initiative (PMI) Africa Conference in Accra on Wednesday.
The three-day event brought together project managers from various African countries to learn from each other on how to improve on their work.
‘Take full responsibility’
In the view of Mr Ashigbey, who is the Managing Director of the Graphic Communications Group Limited (GCGL), there was the need for project managers to take full responsibility whenever they failed to deliver.
“If government projects in Africa and Ghana specifically are failing, then we professionals are to blame because we allow politicians to dictate the pace for us,” he stressed.
According to him, if project managers failed to deliver the right results, the next generation would bear the cost and would not “forgive us for our mistakes.”
Apart from carrying out the input and output assessment before and after every project as managers, Mr Ashigbey indicated that it was critical to consider the overall impact the projects would make in the lives of the beneficiaries.
“As project managers, you must always carry out stakeholder engagements before you embark on any project in order to know the critical issues that bother the people and the impact it will have on them,” he added.
Code of Ethics
Speaking on the topic “Professionalism and ethics: reasons for failed and successful projects in Africa,” Mr Ashigbey noted that project managers had ignored their code of ethics and the globally accepted methodologies for carrying out projects, a situation he said was affecting the profession dearly.
In view of that, he called on the PMI Africa, Ghana Chapter to put in place the necessary mechanisms to ensure that project managers complied fully with higher ethical standards, adding that “there is the need to weed out charlatans from the system.”
Taking his turn at the event, Mr Abbey, who is also the Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Highway Authority (GHA), challenged engineers and project managers not to be lackadaisical in their work.
Drawing differences in projects
Juxtaposing some GoG projects and those which were funded by donors and the international community executed over the years, he said the former had been done abysmally.
He drew a clear distinction between the rehabilitation of the Adomi Bridge and the Fufulso Sawla road (donor funded) and that of the Ho-Fume and the Kpandai-Worawora-Dambai road, which were all GoG funded projects, saying that the latter failed to be delivered at the stipulated period.
