Infrastructure
In respect of the termination of the contracts of the officials who worked in the Project Management Office:
(1) (a) What (i) is the number and (ii) are the details of all the employees who worked in this office, (b) what were the functions of this office and (c) what impact will the termination of these contracts have on the work of his Department;
(2) whether the staff members in the Project Management Office worked in his Department for more than a decade; if so, why were they not included in the staff establishment?
(1) (a)(i)(ii) The unit consisted of fourteen (14) of employees when it was initially conceptualised, and the number decreased to nine (1 Assistant Director and 8 Portfolio Administrators) as some of the officials resigned to take up opportunities offered to them by other institutions.
(b) The key responsibilities of the Project Management (PMO) are:
- Engage stakeholders for updated project information.
- Proactively identify, highlight, and address risks and issues allowing more response time.
- Assist with keeping information up to date using information systems applicable.
- Contribute to efficient, effective, and consistent reporting, such as M&E and the Business Plan.
- Assist with responding to audit requests.
- Assist with tracking and reporting on project applications and approvals.
- Assist with records management procedures in so far as performance information is concerned.
(c) The former Human Settlements Department merged with components of the former Department of Transport and Public Works (DTPW) to become the Department of Infrastructure (DoI). The DoI has an overarching Departmental Project Office, with small components in each Branch. Owing to a strain on CoE funding, it was necessary to re-allocate under-utilised staff to take over the function permanently. 3 staff members have thus been permanently relocated to the Branch Human Settlements PMO. The Branch HS PMO will be housed in the Office of the Chief Director: Human Settlement Implementation. Human Settlements is also moving over to Project Control System (PCS), which went live on 1 March 2024, as well as migrating documents to MyContent. The functions of capturing information onto the PCS within DoI is managed at the source, which in the case of Human Settlements, will be the Project/ Construction Managers. The Branch HS PMO collates and analyses information already captured into the PCS system by Project Managers, feeding it in to the broader DPO monitoring and evaluating basis. Support for the Human Settlements Branch PMO thus exists through the DPO.
(2) The PMO unit was additional to the approved staff establishment of the former Department of Human Settlements (DHS) and the positions were filled on a fixed-term contractual basis. While the activities of the unit were financed from OPSCAP budget until the 2020/2021 financial year and the Department’s own funding as of the 2021/22 financial year, CoE funding to extend contracts after June 2023 did not exist. Given the need to migrate from Biz Projects to PCS, the Department of Infrastructure (DoI) made funding available from a different Branch in terms of CoE, enabling contract extensions until February 2024. The DoI has an overarching Departmental Project Office, with small components in each Branch. Human Settlements must replicate this. The system used is also different: whereas Human Settlements used BizProjects (which shut down on 29 February 2024), DoI uses PCS. The end-February date correlates to the closure of BizProjects. In addition, CoE funding in Human Settlements is under severe strain. It was thus necessary to re-allocate under-utilised staff to take over the function permanently, which will result in significant CoE savings.
