Dissertation on reconstruction and civil-military project management.

[AdamHammond]

Hi All- I'm an Aussie currently undertaking my PhD dissertation on project management in complex crisis environments and am looking for input from as many different sources as possible with experience in this area.

Crises may be the result of weakened states, actual open conflict or insurgency, or the result of natural disasters. Their management may be preventive, during, after-the-fact, or elements of all of these. Large scale crises encompass all aspects of security- economic, political, social and military, and their management/prevention is therefore heavily related to critical security perspectives. Crises are defined as complex when they require the cooperation of numerous actors- both civil and military.

The aim is to broaden the existing project management literature to cover the added issues that such environments present ie security planning, information/intel sharing etc, while also addressing the strategic level issues of modelling and forming the complex inter-agency cooperation frameworks required.

Last year I travelled and studied full-time with agencies such as the CAC COIN Centre Ft Leavenworth and the Italian Army/NATO Post-Conflict Operations Study Centre. Despite the reconstruction-focussed nature of current operations worldwide, I got a lot of feedback that we are thin on the ground with respect to usable literature in this field.

With this project I hope to help fill the void by creating a practical tool that anyone involved in projects from MEDCAPs to building hydro-electric schemes can actually use. Both at boots-on-the-ground level and at the strategic level, and from any background- military, private sector, government, NGO or IGO.

As such, I plan to undertake my research in 4 phases.
1. A thorough literature review of what is currently in circulation regarding SSTR, complex crisis management, project management, COIN operations and civil-military cooperation.

2. Lay out a step-by-step guide to the various issues that must be addressed at the grass-roots level when undertaking projects in such environments,

3. Establish a methodology for identifying and modelling the various agencies that must be brought together under an interagency organisational structure/ cooperation framework,

4. Provide context through case studies based on the experiences of personnel from a broad range of professional backgrounds as I have often found that the results of intervention in crisis scenarios can be counter-intuitive.

I'd therefore like to make contact with anyone that has been involved in projects in such environments with a story to tell. Likewise if you're reading this and know someone who you think might like to be involved please feel free to cut and paste and contact me via PM to send it with my personal email.

There is interest there to publish the finished product and I'm already in contact with the Australian Defence Forces and the Asia Pacific Centre for Security Studies in Honolulu. However if anyone has any other suggestions as to agencies that might like to become involved please let me know. Any tips on organisations that might be interested in funding such a project are similarly appreciated!

best regards,

Adam Hammond