UKZ has been involved in many international projects, collaborating with different European partners. Consecutively, the staff of UKZ has the necessary competences to manage all aspects of the project. The cooperation with all partners has been going on for the last five years now, whereas with the Kosovar partners it has strong cooperation since our existence. The preparation and communication about the respective initiative has begun around one and a half years ago. Effective communication prevails through the project timespan.
The aim is to properly manage the project, including administrative, finance, monitoring, and coordinating aspects. The main purpose is to draft a commonly agreed work plan based on the SMART principles, ensuring the effective monitoring of the implementation of planned processes and outputs. This will be produced in the first project meeting in conjunction with the Kick-off seminar. It is also important to produce necessary documentation relating to project management and administration and to ensure effective communication. Also a consolidated mobility plan will be produced. Besides, project partners will jointly plan the sustainability, quality control and dissemination strategies.
This WP aims at effective and transparent coordination and management of the project with a management structure and methodology that will ensure the timely implementation of activities and achievement of objectives. A Steering Committee composed of all contact persons of the project consortium will be responsible for the overall management and oversight of the project. A Project Management Board, made up of the representative of each partners will look after the day to day affairs of the project. The Project’s Leader will work with all partners and ensure that all the documentation needed for the financial management for the project are collected and transferred safely. Management working package consists of financial, administrative, programmatic and logistical management of the project. All project partners will have their role in project implementation and reporting responsibilities. The partners will sign Partnership Agreements, as well as agree on management procedures and all other project management issues.
Apart from overall project coordination, EU HEI consortium partners will provide expertise for :
- Mobility activities (workshop, exchange/study visit and training) programme (including needs assessment, development of the programme and its implementation jointly with local experts, whenever available);
- Drafting of the strategy on international cooperation/project cycle management;
- Planning and implementation of the study visit;
- Creating the online platform for quality international cooperation and project management;
- Development of the monitoring framework.
The local partners – members of the WB HEI partners – will be responsible for
- Active participation in drafting of the strategy;
- Active participation in the training, study visit and workshops;
- Planning and implementation of the training of the university staff;
- Day to day management of the project activities in the local universities ;
- Active participation on building the online platform for IC/PM and
- Active participation on building the WB network association – RECON.
Monitoring of project activities: early in the project period PSC will coordinate designing and will approve the project monitoring framework; the PSC will also identify a team of three persons from among the member universities and one expert/member of the Erasmus+ staff to engage in the monitoring of implementation of the project activities. The team will engage in regular monitoring of project activities/deliverables based on the monitoring framework.
During the preparation phase the working group identified several threats to the successful project implementation and strategies how to address/overcome the same:
Availability of resources (human and financial) to establish IC/PM offices in every member university: each university engaged in early efforts to identify one or more staff members who could serve as IC/PM officers;
-Readiness and commitment of the personnel of each university to take part in project activities: cooperation and commitment of the staff to contribute to this joint project proposal showed high level of commitment by all staff members – including senior management;
Support of the senior management of all consortium members to fully support this project idea.