Overview

A great project manager enables their team to take on new challenges, has the foresight to minimize resident disruption and customer risk, and understands the tricks of the trade to keeping project momentum up.  When it comes to water and wastewater project implementation there is more to consider than the data behind the solution. Enabling a project to stay on schedule, communicating with key stakeholders, and allocating resources efficiently and effectively are all critical responsibilities of a project manager.

Project Management for Water and Wastewater Utilities will cover the hard basics of defining and closing a project while driving home the importance of refining the soft skills that bring an idea from the drawing board to your residents’ backyard. This course will enable you to assess the feasibility of a project and define (or refine) your plan. The instructor will layout strategies for piloting a project, identifying new opportunities, mitigating risks, promoting  your team to take ownership of their work, and defining the intangibles of customer communication.

Learning Objectives

Upon completion of this course, participants will be able to successfully:

• Assess the feasibility of a project
• Identify the scope of their work
• Develop a task list and customize it to work for you
• Define roles and responsibilities and understand their importance
• Review the documentation process and know what is important to include
• Layout a schedule and its components
• Identify and mitigate risks
• Improve internal communication skills and effectiveness: keeping enthusiasm up, handling conflict, identifying new opportunities
• Improve external communication skills and effectiveness: when to deliver a message, what to say, and how to say it
• Complete projects with limited resources
• Utilize communication skills as a method for building momentum
• Choose the best method for communicating with the public
• Decide on next steps when the plan changes
• Discuss how to lessen impacts on customers
• Utilize humor and positivity to incite productivity and enthusiasm
• Review the purpose of a pilot project
• Identify how to set up a pilot project

THURSDAY, APRIL 7, 2022 : CENTRAL TIME

Short breaks will be taken throughout each session

Introduction to Project Management

• What are your most pressing questions about project management?
• What is a project manager?
• Program V. Project
• Components of a project
• Budget and cost estimation

Defining Your Project

• Who are your stakeholders?
• What is the scope of your work?
• Is it feasible?
• Communication and documentation
  • What is important to document?
  • K.I.S.S. – Keeping it Simple, Seriously

Controlling Your Project – Part One

• Stakeholder Engagement
  • Internal: Communication, keeping enthusiasm up, handling conflict, and identifying new opportunities
  • External: when to deliver a message, what to say, how to deliver it
  • Feedback: how to receive it and when to incorporate it into your project
  • Notification Strategies
• Monitor and Control Project Work:
  • Task List:
    • What does a task list look like?
    • How to customize it to work for you
• Manage Change:
  • How do you handle project change?
  • Identifying and mitigating risks

12:00- 1:00 p.m. :: Lunch Break

Controlling Your Project – Part Two

• Managing project quality
• Managing resources
• Schedule & time management

Best Kept Secrets of Project Management

• Certification
• Project Management vs. Emergency Management
• Bonus – Agile Project Management: What is it? How might it help Water Utilities?

Exercise: Identifying Key Stakeholders and Creating a Communication Strategy  

This group exercise will put you in a real-life project management scenario with emphasis on stakeholder communication. Each project benefits and impacts different stakeholder groups depending on the nature of the project. What sort of projects will impact your internal teams and how do you work to better support them? When will a project transition from inconveniencing residents to benefiting them and how do you get that message across? We will work through a series of scenarios and share the solutions that bring a project to life.

FRIDAY, APRIL 8, 2022

Short breaks will be taken throughout each session

10 Best Tips and Tricks to Keeping Project Momentum

• Leadership
• Resourcefulness
• Relationships
• Good habits

Piloting Projects and Shifting Organizational Perspective on New Processes

• The true purpose of pilot projects
• How to set up a pilot project
• Failure and acceptance
• Having fun in the process
• Examples

Exercise and Simulation: What Does Your Project Look Like?

This project simulation will apply the tools covered over the past day and a half. From deciding on the feasibility of a project to piloting one, how do you lay out your schedule, mitigate risks, decide on what to document, and reschedule your project when an unanticipated challenge arises? In this group exercise, our project management curriculum will be put to work as we develop a plan (sometimes on the fly) and communicate it effectively to our key stakeholder groups.