The Big Project Is Starting...

After quite a few days of discussions with the client and with Eoghan Mackie, the Challenges Worldwide MD in Edinburgh, the big one is going ahead.  This is great news, because it's a significant and extremely worthwhile project with the potential to make a positive difference to the lives of a large number of Malawians in rural areas.

I've got to spend much of this weekend on some preparatory work, finalising the detailed project plan, before it kicks off for real in the coming week when the clients are visiting Blantyre, and I'll be meeting up with some of the project team in Lilongwe at the end of the week.  The current intention is that I'll relocate to Lilongwe from Monday 12 July, possibly for up to four weeks.

I'm going to be project managing the entire process, which involves multi-disciplinary and multinational teams including people from the client's operations, suppliers, my colleagues in Blantyre, and others, so I'll be relying heavily on my PRINCE2 project management skills.

I'm likely to be staying in the house that has been leased by Challenges Worldwide to accommodate volunteer lawyers who will be coming out to Malawi to work on a new justice programme, but there's space there at the moment, so it makes sense to use it.  I don't know at this stage whether I'll return to Blantyre each weekend - it's  4+ hours each way on the bus, and it will also depend on what I can do about having access to transport - I'm not particularly keen on being trapped in an albeit comfortable house for entire weekends.

We'll see what happens.