Jane Sorensen, 119447640

Monday, July 5, 2010

for Prof. Sylvain Gauthier Project Management: Tools and Techniques

T E R M PA P E R : D I S A S T E R A N D I N T E RV E N T I O N P L A N N I N G A S P RO J E C T S
The Deepwater Horizon, as we discussed in class, got me thinking about how project management applies to the response activities of international non-prots during disasters and emergencies, specically in the areas of animal security and human health. Similarities in these processes occur in part by capacity built by governmental and non-governmental organizations over decades of work, but also due to recent event and mission proliferation. New organizations especially benet by the development and recognition of project management as a framework and set of skills, and what expertise is available.

Disaster response as project management

On June 19th and 20th of this year, I participated in a Humane Society University course called Emergency Animal Sheltering. The mandate of the course was to prepare volunteers to serve at emergency shelters for pets and animals evacuated or displaced in the event of a disaster. Information covered in this course is vital for dealing with any large-scale animal sheltering operation. 1 In preparation for the course, participants read several training documents available at the Federal Emergency Management Agencys website. These documents discussed the importance of animals in disasters, the various kinds of disasters, planning disaster responses. and the structure of activities and responsibilities once disaster strikes. In brief, animal issues are people issues, and the impact of not planning for animals with regards to disaster management is manifold: risk of injury to residents and responders; media risks and the additional distress, anxiety, and grief to those concerned (given that the great majority of the public have pets and/or care about animals), intensive relief efforts to compensate for lack of planning; the high economic cost of animal lives in agriculture and related elds, sometimes dealing a fatal blow to family farms; and associated disease outbreaks and risks with hazardous and biohazardous materials. There is also, as Exxon Valdez, the Deepwater Horizon, and other disasters have shown, an immeasurable and often irreversible ecological price to pay, with animals at the forefront. The emergency management hierarchy - the Incident Command System (ICS) - begins and rests largely at the local level. Local and county or regional agencies are stakeholders and actors in a situation, and are part of the planning process. There is also a state or provincial emergency management authority, and
1 The

topics covered in the course material can be viewed at http://www.humanesocietyuniversity.org/ coursesandprograms/professionalstudies/courseinfo/coursepage.html?sectionID=200

2040 words

Disaster and Intervention planning as projects

national or federal response agencies and organizations. In the US, Homeland Security is responsible for the National Response Plan, which was created in the 1990s and revised in 2004. It groups capabilities and resources into the Emergency Support Functions that must exist at all three levels of administration (local, state, and federal).
Federal ESFs 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. Transportation Communications Public Works and Engineering Fireghting Emergency Management Mass Care, Housing, and Human Services Resource Support 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. Public Health and Medical Services Urban Search and Rescue Oil and Hazardous Materials Agriculture and Natural Resources Energy Public Safety and Security Long Term Recovery and Mitigation External Affairs

Given the interdisciplinary nature of such high-level planning, the different kinds of disasters there are, with multiple resources and plans for each ESF, one could call an Emergency Management Agency the equivalent of a Project Management Ofce. Animals in emergencies largely fall under Mass Care, but Public Health and Agriculture and Natural Resources are stakeholders and participants in the emergency plan. Interestingly, in the National Response Plan, the most important federal agency dealing with veterinary issues in disasters is the U.S. Army Veterinary Corps of the Department of Defense. After that come the various agencies and organizations of the Departments of Agriculture and of Health and Human Services. This is where the American and Canadian Veterinary Medical Associations coordinate activities related to animals in disasters (the Canadian Veterinary Reserve notably began in 2006). Wherever there is a duplication or overlap of duties in law or policy, scope management must be invoked to create memorandums of understanding on responsibilities. As part of the planning process, and waiting in the wings for authorization to act during emergencies, are agencies and organizations that have Mutual Aid Agreements, and non-governmental organizations with specic missions and expertise in aid, such as the Red Cross, Tzu Chi, and the United Animal Nations. Developing an Emergency Operations Plan is essential for municipalities and organizations that serve them. Like planning and implementing a project, the Plan itself is a team effort involving key participants and stakeholders. The best credentials for membership on the planning committee are the authority to represent, control over resources that can be used in a disaster, and experience or knowledge of disasters. Nonetheless, outreach to volunteer responders and the private sector is emphasized for effectiveness. The planning process, as a project, is as important as the deliverable of a plan, because those creating the plan

Page 2 of 6

Sorensen

begin to work together as a team and learn each others capabilities, making them that much more effective in emergency/disaster response and relief. The following areas of Project Management here describe the t with Disaster Management: Work Breakdown Structure. From initiating the project, following the directives and indications from the federal level to develop local and regional counterparts, surveying environmental factors that constitute risks and organizational factors as resources, and comparing the plan-project with plans from other jurisdictions, the WBS is also analogous to the roles and responsibilities of the ESFs and that of the ICS used to marshall the response to an emergency through all phases of the Disaster Cycle. As the Incident Commanders Branch Director in a test exercise of an emergency sheltering situation, my rst task was to quickly recruit and determine skills for our ICS roles, as shown in the following Figure:

Branch division of Incident Command System, Animal Response

Communications. During states of emergency and crises, communication becomes difcult not only from the perspective of preparedness and familiarity. Plans on how to deal with incoming and outgoing messages of stakeholders, participants, and recipients need to have appropriate and responsive channels in place, and backup plans equally vetted in case of communication equipment breakdown. Risk. The nature of disaster management is akin to the management of risk in Project Management; it is like managing a project where you know the risk trigger is the project. The stages in the Disaster Cycle are mitigation, preparation, response, and recovery. The response stage is the most intense, and the shortest, as there is no telling how long it takes to recover from a disaster or how long until the next one occurs - they can be planned for and their effects smoothed out or diminished, but they can rarely be prevented. This requires active monitoring of the environment and human system risk factors.

Page 3 of 6

Disaster and Intervention planning as projects

Time and Cost management, Human Resources and Procurement. The time management function works as a function of Cost regarding items budgeted by each organization in order to meet their Mitigation and Preparedness goals. Catalogs of possible resources for each Support Function need to be created and maintained on a regular basis, which is critically important for volunteer- and relationship-driven efforts. During the Response phase of the Disaster Cycle, all of these project functions proceed according to plan, and situations in excess of your planning or resources capacities is absorbed by calling in and authorizing organizations with whom you have reciprocal Mutual Aid Agreements and Memos of Understanding. It is here that a disaster response can be escalated to the provincial/state and federal/ national level. There is a cost function at the Federal level that operates like the nance ofce of a project, prescribing how costs are paid and borne by each level of emergency response. Volunteer organizations help offset the local burden of the cost by accounting for hours donated. Quality Management. After verication of facts and assumptions of the plan - which includes resource inventories and organizational environment and process factors - quality management is most effective by exercising the plan and participants by attempting to approximate reality - training and familiarization with roles, procedures, and also personalities, using testing exercises, and simulated trials both indoors and in the eld.

Planning the Guidelines for Health Intervention

When one thinks of the onslaught of disasters, one often thinks of the mandates of the Red Cross, Medecins Sans Frontiers, and the World Health Organization (WHO). These, too, have project management principles and functions built into their activities, even when the activity is publishing guidelines for policy makers, health managers, and clinicians in the event of emergencies and epidemics. In the production of guidelines, the desired outcome or business driver of the project must be the critical focus in making recommendations, with explicit consideration of the balance of risks and benets, paying attention to diverse attitudes and preferences. The WHO has a handbook for writing guidelines for health intervention recommendations. The guidelines it publishes need to reect graded, preferably high-quality 2 evidence-based literature from as many regions of the world as possible, and there is a preference whenever possible for basing guidelines on systematic reviews (these are published papers that review the research and clinical literature of as wide and thorough a sample as possible). Therefore, it is in the WHOs interest to have a prescribed method of

Based on condence, see Evidence Assessment - Using GRADE in WHO Handbook for Guideline Development.

Page 4 of 6

Sorensen

research and production in the guidelines it generates and kinds of the guidelines it inspires from similar bodies at the national and NGO level. Following these guidelines make the work of the Guideline Review Committee more efcient, and involves them from the beginning of scoping the guideline. The Scope is circulated to external experts and organizations, for which scope management is an acknowledged activity, as these stakeholders will try to expand it into a textbook. In the planning and scoping of a guideline, the handbook discusses the requirements of an Emergency guideline versus Standard and Full guidelines, and Books and other WHO publications. An Emergency guideline is produced in response to a public health emergency where the WHO is required to show global leadership. The timeframe for production is between one and three months, will be informed by evidence but not by full reviews, and is generally WHO staff-produced with limited, informal consultancy and peer review from outside. When published, a review by date indicates when the guideline becomes invalid, or a new Standard guideline (usually requiring nine to twelve months) takes precedence. Most guidelines have focus on improving clinical practice and health policy quality, and identify processes for implementation. The planning and execution of a Guideline project is similar to Integration Management, as illustrated in Chapter 4, or slide 19 of lecture 3. The Handbook contains thorough recommendations on the following: project budget and sponsorship, rationale, guideline scoping, choosing development participants for international research and review, procuring a writer and editors and translators for effectiveness, assessing resources use and costs as the recommendations have an economic aspect, controlling quality in part by by prioritizing and grading the relevant research, evaluating the precision of research results, involving recipient stakeholders in the recommendations and ranking the recommendations, building in document revision via identifying research needs, and preparing for production and distribution.

The examples of how non-prot organizations plug into national health and relief efforts, and the expectation of exible modularity in preparedness, further demonstrate the portability and effectiveness of the project management method not just with delivering on contracts, but in delivering on best outcomes in emergency response, health interventions, and disaster relief.

Page 5 of 6

Sorensen

WORK CITED
Emergency Management Institute of the Federal Emergency Management Agency: IS-10 Animals in Disaster, Module A: Awareness and Preparedness. Accessed at http:// training.fema.gov/EMIWeb/IS/IS10.asp on June 15, 2010 IS-11 Animals in Disaster, Module B: Community Planning. Accessed at http://training.fema.gov/ EMIWeb/IS/IS11.asp on June 15, 2010 I-100 Introduction to Incident Command System accessed at http://training.fema.gov/EMIWeb/IS/ IS100a.asp July 3, 2010 WHO Handbook for guideline development, March 2008. Accessed at http://www.searo.who.int/ LinkFiles/RPC_Handbook_Guideline_Development.pdf on July 3, 2010

Other relevant literature: Rapid health assessment of refugee or displaced populations, 3rd Edition, 2006. Medicins Sans Frontiers. Accessed at http://www.refbooks.msf.org/msf_docs/en/Rapid_Health/ Rapid_Health_en.pdf on July 3, 2010 International Disaster Relief & Response Canadian Red Cross accessed at http://www.redcross.ca/ article.asp?id=5469&tid=036

Page 6 of 6