Chapter Meeting at IHE Delft Institute for Water Education

Impact Evaluation of Programmes and Projects in Modern Times

Discussions around the Theme of assessing and evaluating impact of projects and programmes have been numerous in the past years. With particular regard to development cooperation projects and programmes, a number of Donors, multilateral, and bilateral agencies have not only requested implementing organizations to define a way to assess projects' impact, but also supported the development cooperation community with studies, guidelines, references, and best practices to help improve that process.

The topic remains however largely a disputed one, especially concerning the essence of Impact defined as long-term contribution to broad scope goals. Main question being: how can we assess the contribution of an individual project (or programme) to a very large goal?

The issue of assessing this kind of impact is even more challenging when it related to projects which are not infrastructural or whose results are not easily quantifiable.

For example, if a country need to improve the water service delivery to its citizens from 60% service coverage to 85% service coverage, an infrastructure project building connecting water pipes in a city could relatively easily quantify the effect (percentage wise) as it can quantify the number of households that in the end get water. However, how can we assess the impact of a large educational project whose aim is to build the capacity of the municipality water service provider for the same overall goal?

In the first session of the evening, led by Nadine Sander, we would like to discuss the approach taken in a large programme funded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands to try and answer the above question. In the interactive session, we will explore how projects designed and implemented in completely different contexts can be compared.

In the second session of the evening, led by Bart Terlingen and Antonie Reichling, we are going to ask ourselves several questions about evaluations:

• Why would you evaluate your project management?
• Why do we have such difficulty to find time to evaluate?
• Why do we find it even harder to evaluate the process and not just the product?
• What are critical success factors for effective evaluations?

We will involve you in a way of evaluating the effectiveness of your project management approach on four levels:

• The policy on project management of the organization (Strategic level)
• The selection process for the different projects (Tactical level)
• The planning and execution of the project (Operational level)
• The effectiveness of cooperation outside and within the project team (Transformational level)

In between and at the end we will draw conclusions and wrap up with an overall conclusion:

What do you do with the collected data from an evaluation?

• Assurance of strong critical success factors
• Root cause analyses weak/improvement points
• Personal action plan
• Organisational learning

Bio

Nadine Sander is Programme Assistent for the IHE Delft DGIS programmatic cooperation since 2017 where she has been working on activities related to, among others, communication, monitoring and evaluation and learning. The IHE Delft DGIS programmatic cooperation is the global partnership programme of IHE Delft, funded by the Dutch ministry of foreign affairs. The programme currently exists out of around 50 projects.

Antonie Reichling first got involved with project management in 1985 with System Development Methodology. Since then he has supported a number of organisations in their project management. As consultant or trainer, he tailors to the clients need, based on his knowledge of the strong points of diverse methodologies.

Bart Terlingen is a senior trainer/consultant. His experiences over the last twenty-eight years convinced him about the importance of being skilled at both ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ in project management. His proposition is: “tenacious problems are based on the ‘soft’ side.” He empowers companies to develop themselves and serve their clients best.

PDUs: 3 total (1.5 Strategic and 1.5 Leadership) in all certifications.
ID: C266-201807
Capacity: 70 seats

Agenda:

17:00 - Registration, sandwiches and refreshments

18:00 - Opening, welcome and introduction by the PMI Netherlands Chapter

18:05 - Introduction of our host IHE Delft Institute for Water Education by Gaetano Casale, Liaison Office Manager, Office of the Rector

18:15 - The Challenge of Impact Evaluation in Education, research, and Partnership programmes: the case of IHE Programmatic Cooperation with the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs – Nadine Sander

19:15 - Break

19:30 - Workshop Critical success factors of effective Evaluations– Drs. Bart Terlingen and Antonie Rechling

20:30 - Wrap-up & Networking drink

21:00 - Closure