UMLAZI V NODE – LOCAL MIXED USE
6.1 INSTITUTIONAL ARRANGEMENTS & INTER GOVERNMENTAL RELATIONS
6.1.2 INSTITUTIONAL ARRANGEMENTS FOR CAPITAL PROGRAM MANAGEMENT
As shown below in Figure 76, the Strategy Office of the Municipality provides for a range of functions including Programme Management, Infrastructure Asset Management, Spatial Strategy and Sustainable and Resilient City Initiatives. All these functions will be driven across the municipality with collaborative arrangements across all relevant Units and Departments.
The Programme Management structure provides for Construction Category Management, Standard Documentation and Implementation Planning.
Construction Category Management is intended to identify the programmes and portfolios, undertake spend and ease of supply analyses and to make recommendations on appropriate procurement strategies for each programme and portfolio.
Standard Documentation is intended to ensure that the procurement strategies are backed up by appropriate documentation to give effect to these strategies. This Department is intended to be a best practice hub also dealing with knowledge and change management. The intention is to ensure that, wherever possible, standardised documentation is utilised. This function will also provide training to Line Departments on how to compile procurement related documentation.
Fig 76 Propose Organogram for the Strategy Office
Implementation Planning is meant to deal with pre-implementation support by ensuring that project and programme pipelines are created and that all relevant actions and decisions relating to these pipelines are timeously taken to ensure smooth implementation. This Department will also deal with programme and project oversight, strategic programme delivery management, programme financial control and integrated programme controls. Currently an integrated roadmap is under preparation which looks at the critical milestones and their inter-relatedness for the planning, budgeting, reporting, performance management and Infrastructure Asset Management processes. The intention is to ensure firstly that these important activities are treated as ongoing processes rather than events and secondly to ensure that all activities upstream of the milestones are identified and properly planned for.
The Corporate Spatial Strategy structure provides for Long Term Strategy, City Support Programme/BEPP, Strategic & Spatial Budgeting and Regional Growth & Development Strategy. The Long-Term Strategy function will produce the IDP and the thematic prioritisation thereof as well as managing long term scenario planning and ensuring that potential risks such as climate change, energy and water scarcity, inadequate economic and employment growth, social instability and urbanisation and other demographic changes are addressed. The City Support Programme/BEPP will deal with the production of the BEPP and the other requirements of the CSP programme being driven by National Treasury including the CSIP and built environment indicators and will fulfil the role of eThekwini CSP co-ordinator. The Strategic & Spatial Budgeting function will implement a GIS-enabled spatial budgeting tool to drive municipal budgeting, facilitate and co-ordinate the analysis and integration of, and reporting on, grant funds and implement the Municipal Services Financial Model (MSFM) as a strategic non-spatial budgeting tool. The Regional Growth & Development Strategy function will deal with inter-governmental relations & partnerships required with provincial (including the PGDS) & national departments, state-owned enterprises and adjacent municipalities and will promote joint planning & implementation of infrastructure (engineering and social) across all the relevant municipal, provincial and national departments and manage a land banking programme.
The organogram for the Strategy Office has been approved by the Unit Labour Forum and is being submitted to the Executive Committee of the Municipality for approval. Resourcing will commence thereafter subject to the availability of funding.
Whilst this institutional process is underway a firm of consultants have been engaged to assist with a conceptual design of a Programme Management Office. This work has commenced and is scheduled for the next 3 months.
including management, community and other stakeholders.
The CSP programme has also been requested to assist the City with a Transversal Management study to ensure that the critical collaborative structures are backed up by appropriate performance management and other systems to ensure their
effectiveness beyond the goodwill and passion of individuals. The Matrix Management assessment of eThekwini has been completed together with a 3-day boot camp with senior management, and eThekwini is entering the next phase of this work which is to identify workstreams where more detailed assessments can be undertaken, and transversal management principles and procedures can be institutionalised.
Critical areas identified for Transversal Management are shown in Figure 77 below.
Fig 77 Collaboration Structure
In the interim eThekwini has a capital monitoring collaborative forum chaired by the City Manager which monitors the capital spend of the municipality, and which also monitors a key precursor to spend, namely the procurement process. This is supported by a software tool which captures spend and key activities. Weekly budget meetings with multiple service units, to coordinate spend, procurement, and related processes take place.
The City Manager’s office is also monitoring the “Top 150” capital projects. These projects have been selected because of their budget quantum and-or because of their urgency. The Top 150 follows a similar process. As discussed above, in parallel, the municipality is preparing itself to implement CIDMS, which is concerned not only with spend and procurement, but also with the remainder of the project cycle and with comprehensive program management.
Significant progress was made this year with the development of a single corporate spatial strategy as part of the Capital Budget process. Historically, service units determined their own budgets with loose reference to the IDP/SDF/BEPP. An intention of the single spatial strategy is to ensure the conscious and corporate selection and prioritisation of programs and budgets in order to achieve spatial transformation and higher economic growth through implementation of SDF priorities.