Executive Summary

This paper will explore the issue of project management and planning style based on the Aceh experience for its implications here in Yogyakarta. Through examining case studies from UN-HABITAT, Canadian Red Cross and UPC-UPLINK, the paper will emphasise the significant role of the participatory approach in the rebuilding processes. We will further show how the modern, commercial contracting model, or ordinary project management style does not efficient enough in managing the massif rebuilding practices.

 

Three pressing questions that relate to successful project management (PM) will frame this paper:

1. What lessons can we transfer from one relief project in one context to one in a very different context?
2. To what extent does the local, traditional culture and the culture of the aid organization influence project delivery? 
3. In what ways can PM skills and techniques be better developed to cope with these complex contexts?

 

Some challenges are common across relief projects and this paper will attempt to categorize these lessons into generic classes, with a second order categorization to better describe their impact, likely magnitude, and suggested ways of addressing these issues.

 

Background

The tsunami and earthquake disaster that struck Aceh on 26 December 2004 resulted in an influx of over 350 aid organizations – only some of which had experience in the relief and reconstruction business. Three years after the disaster, the housing reconstruction remains less than half finished with only 45,000 houses completed from 120,000 committed.

 

Where are the blockages in the housing delivery system? Is it the government or the housing provider? The answer is both. Many NGO’s active in Aceh were originally humanitarian organizations without any pertinent experience in housing reconstruction. Lured by huge donations, hundreds of NGOs jumped into the reconstruction process without any supporting background, knowledge and experience in post-disaster housing reconstruction and rehabilitation. Now after three years, these compounded disasters are becoming glaringly obvious.

 

Previously, organizations that work in disaster relief and post conflict reconstruction focused on non-housing sectors. Housing is always classified as internal government business, whereas donors and NGOs are more interested in reconstructing schools, clinics, micro-infrastructure, or other structures classified as non-private entitlement, since its easier to identify, justify and does not require a lengthy and potentially conflict-laden process of beneficiary selection, verification and validation.

 

In Aceh the only organizations specialized in rebuilding houses are UN-HABITAT, CHF, and Habitat for Humanity. The rest were NGOs involved in watsan, child welfare and protection, and livelihoods regeneration (e.g., Save The Children, OXFAM), who dared to take the plunge into housing – but without any clear objectives and previous experience. Others, like the International Federation of the Red Cross[1], with all its experience in emergency response has not shown any significant progress on their housing project. Even the World Bank, as the number one leading agency in the development sector, has shown little expertise, not much training, poorly integrated experience in its organizational culture and learning cycle with the end result being significant delays in the MDF (Multi Donor Fund) housing project. The result has been big blockages in housing delivery for the disaster survivors. These complications are compounded by fraud indications as well as quality assurance in the housing projects.

 

The challenge for these well-funded organizations is how to transfer knowledge between international staff and locally hired professionals, which obviously did not take place easily. This is an important lesson for many international organizations with diverse experiences in different fields and different parts of the world. Apparently, money alone cannot buy good teams.

 

When a massive scale disaster like that in Aceh happens, lack of expertise in planning, building, designing, and project management becomes obvious. As a result, donors and NGOs simplify the problems by applying a technocratic approach, drawing on hard core engineers, who mainly emphasize the anti-seismic, construction qualities with no adequate understanding of the socio-cultural aspect. Simplifying the process as a construction output leads to major shortfalls in the activities.

 

This lack of knowledge in post-disaster planning and project management needs to be addressed, given so many disasters happen in Indonesia. This paper will explore 3 housing projects in Aceh and observe 1) how each were implemented, 2) identify the bottlenecks, and 3) the shortfalls and prominent variables that determined project success.

 

We will show that there is quite significant evidence to prove how a participatory approach to project management style is most successful. We will then outline an alternative approach to project management in post-disaster areas.

 

Community Based Reconstruction: myth or applicable solution?

In Aceh, the meaning of community participation downgraded rapidly, in essence becoming meaningless but essentially used jargon much as “sustainable development” or “gender mainstreaming”. Such phrases are compulsory terms to secure funds. Yet they are rarely accompanied by adequate understanding. Moreover, many NGOs in Aceh claim to use participatory approaches, but only participation in its lowest form (see table 1).

 

Table 1: level of participation and empowerment

The concept “participatory” has drawn  debate concerning what is participatory and what is not, especially surrounding issues of defining what active involvement, never mind empowerment, means in project design, materialization and supervision.

In Aceh specifically, “participation” was even more likely to fail for a number of factors. The most prominent of these was the conflict, the damaged social fabric, a dysfunctional governmental and educational infrastructure, the lack of trust, and the resulting closed-minded society.

 

On the other hand, the weaknesses of NGOs in Aceh were due to their narrow approach to rehabilitation and reconstruction from the physical aspect without looking at the accumulated effects of post-trauma from either conflict or disaster.  This was compounded with a misunderstanding of why the people of Aceh failed to empower themselves.

 

Only a handful of NGOs were truly able to implement a community-based approach, whereas most proved they did not really understand the concept by producing reconstruction projects without empowering its beneficiaries.  The tendency to treat to housing reconstruction as nothing more than housing projects.

 

Methodology

A 3^rd party monitoring system run by University of Syiah Kuala (UNSYAH) was set up to review all reconstruction projects. It uses 3 key indicators to benchmark the success of each project. The indicators are 1). Construction Quality, 2). Satisfactory Index, and 3). Accountability index.

 

Those 3 indicators will be used to appraise UN-HABITAT, Canadian Red Cross and UPC-UPLINK in their Housing Provider Performance and subsequently triangulated with direct site visits. The goal of this paper is to show, then, how the participatory approach is significant in the rebuilding processes and is, in fact, a major determining factor leading to the success or failure of the project.

 

Table 2: Monitoring Results

Organization	Accountability Index	Satisfactory Index	Construction Quality Index
UPLINK (Urban Poverty Linkage)	Very High	Very High	Very High
CRC (Canadian Red Cross)	Low	Low	High
UN-HABITAT (United Nation Human Settlement)	High	High	High

Source: UN-HABITAT – UNSYIAH 3^rd Party Monitoring Result

 

The UNSYIAH survey (sponsored by UN-HABITAT) comprises Focus Group Discussion with a clustered group of beneficiaries and local leaders, and technical analysis to review construction quality. The Accountability Index and Satisfaction Index is based on the beneficiaries’ opinion of their benefactor, whereas the Construction Quality is measured through  direct on-site observation with a building inspector, architect and civil engineers, that refer and comply to the Aceh Building Code standard.

• The survey concluded that UPLINK has delivered the highest possible output in Construction Quality, Beneficiaries Satisfaction and Accountability Index
• Meanwhile, CRC delivered high quality houses but they scored low in satisfaction and accountability. This shows how construction quality is not the main factor that drives the satisfaction index.
• UN-HABITAT[2] comes out with slightly lower performance compared to UPLINK. Nevertheless, UN-HABITAT was able to deliver high quality construction with high satisfaction accountability marks.

 

Why were these three projects different from each other? What factors determined UPLINK’s very high marks as opposed to CRC’s low? Why can CRC deliver a high quality output in term of construction, yet fail to influence gain satisfaction and accountability? Finally, why was UN-HABITAT, the most experienced of the 3 in housing reconstruction, not able to match the UPLINK performance?

The answer, according to UNSYAH’s monitoring surveys, is that satisfaction depends on both the end product (i.e., the house) and the participatory process that creates a sense of ownership toward the building process.

Project Case Studies

In  this section we will compare methods and approaches that have been used by 3 different organizations in Aceh. UPLINK, Urban Poverty Linkage, is a left-leaning, grass roots organization with much experience in community organizing, but no pertinent experience in housing reconstruction. Second is CRC, Canadian Red Cross Movement, an aid agency that specializes in emergency response, but lacks experience in housing reconstruction Third is UN-HABITAT, the United Nation Human Settlement Program, strongly bureaucratic, but fully experienced in reconstruction, and balanced between their capitalist ideologies and a community participation approach.

 

 Table 3: Project size to location

Source: UN-HABITAT – UNSYIAH 3^rd Party Monitoring Result

 

Facing Complicating Factors: Location

1. UPLINK successfully focused on one particular area in a district that still had adequate macro-infrastructure. This is the most prominent variable that determined UPLINK’s performance in expediting their housing construction progress. The clear focus enabled UPLINK to establish more efficient management chains, reduce the coordination blockages and stimulate multi-sectoral approach decisively, which influenced people’s perceptions toward the processes and project output.

2. CRC, with a huge program and huge budget, began with the challenge to select project location for such a large program. The easiest locations for work, the more developed east coast, were already occupied by medium or small Aid Agencies, leaving lots of gaps to be filled in the more devastated west coast areas. CRC had to accept these locations for the BRR approval, with half of their project allocated on Aceh Jaya, the most devastated areas in Aceh, plus small numbers in Aceh Besar and Nias Island. Nias alone became one big bottleneck with disputes and double claims between the CRC and UN-HABITAT, as well as other implementing agencies. This competition influencing the housing delivery system indicates that many agencies are competing with each other to fulfil their commitments to their donors. Nias as a remote island created major logistical issues, with the bulk of building materials needing to be transported from Sumatra Utara, 12-20 hours by sea. This mobilization doubled the cost more so than the mobilization and sluggishness issues CRC encountered in Aceh Jaya. CRC was accused of lacking project management skill, experience, compounded by an organizational culture that was not suited to the massive project. In their own defence, CRC put the blame on the BRR and the Local Government since there were no supports for infrastructure or land titling[3].

3. UN-HABITAT operated in a small scale in Nias and Simeleu island and put most of their energy towards the easiest part located on Banda Aceh, Aceh Besar and Pidie. Housing distribution numbers needed to be carefully arranged during early phase of the project implementation plan. Where the organization had to operate in remote areas (e.g. Nias and Simeleu), they made sure that the committed number was as low  as possible, fully recognizing the inadequate logistical support.

 

Lessons Learnt: Location

Focusing on one or two districts is important to ascertain project success. Coordination, multi-sector, cross-cutting issues can be easily resolved if the management span is reduced. The more scattered the project areas, the more coordination is required. By working in a comfort zone where basic infrastructure is available will always provide significant leverage toward project success. Avoiding operating in a massive scale in areas where infrastructure support is lacking became a major decisive strategy toward project success.

 

Managing the project size has a direct correlation to project speed. By keeping the number of committed houses on the medium threshold, organizations were are to be more flexible and adaptive in the approach they took. UPLINK and UN-HABITAT simply managed a controllable committed number of houses and carefully expedited their project delivery enabling them to put more focus toward construction quality issues.

 

Facing Complicating Factors: Participation

Rebuilding approach and level of community participation became the second most significant factor determining quality of project. The “rebuilding approach” means the project orientation, management style, delegation of management load. It is this factor embraced by UN-HABITAT and UPLINK that will be compared to CRC’s approach. CRC sub-contracted their construction to commercial contractors, a far too common model that has been proven to fail in Aceh and Nias.

 

Table 4: Level of Participation

Organization	Rebuilding Approach	Community Involvement (see table 1)	Role of Facilitator in the rebuilding process	Housing Design / Village Spatial Planning
UPLINK (Urban Poverty Linkage)	Participatory Approach; community managed funds in the rebuilding processes	Fully Participate (Empowered)	High	Design by the community, facilitated by Uplink technical staff
CRC (Canadian Red Cross)	Contractual based with Big Contractors approach	Fully Consulted	Low	Top down approach, community consulted
UN-HABITAT (United Nation Human Settlement)	Participatory Approach; the community managing the fund in the rebuilding processes	Fully Participate (Collaborated)	High	Design by the community, facilitated by UN-HABITAT technical staff

Source: UN-HABITAT – UNSYIAH 3^rd Party Monitoring Result

 

1.  UPLINK’s Community Based Housing Reconstruction Program used a fully participatory approach in collaboration with a sister organization that they themselves founded for this purpose. The JUB (Jaringan Udep Beusare) was a new entity in Aceh to enforce local involvement based on a leftist, pro-poor spirit. Together with JUB (who were also beneficiary community members), UPLINK commenced their activities by facilitating community workshops, fully consulting, collaborating and empowering the community to manage their own housing program. UPLINK brought the community together to develop a Village Spatial Plan for their own village, and used Community Action Planning methodology for the housing design, which involved all the stakeholders including women and minority groups as active participants. The design workshop creates a bridge between the community perspective and appropriate technical specifications, specifically for anti-seismic construction. Moreover, UPLINK applies a co-operative management style that enables and encourages the community to fully participate during the project implementation cycle.

 

The Community Cluster Model

The communities are grouped into clusters of 5 households. Each cluster elects their representative and leader. Each cluster opens a cluster savings account, to receive the bulk fund for the cluster. These funds are disbursed in 3 trances, based on the construction materialization progress.

 

In the preparation phase, UPLINK’s social facilitator engages the community to work as a group and to co-operate to strengthen togetherness and community spirit. This step efficiently addresses the fragmentation caused by a long conflict compounded further by the disaster. The training, always held in local vernacular, includes demonstration, brainstorming in design principle, building material selection, construction practice, and water & sanitation.

 

In the implementation phase, the technical facilitator provided advice to those building their house as well as those who worked with builders. This step insured acceptable anti-seismic constriction quality.

 

This “Community Contract” model is based on a belief that a well-organized community is a legal entity, eligible to be awarded a contract to deliver their own properties. This community contract model also reduced the internal management load by dividing each project into self-managed clusters that reinforced the community’s resilience and management skill, increased their sense of belonging, and at the same time, ensured accountability and transparency in each phase of the construction. The method relied on social controls that were the responsibility of each cluster member to monitor fellow members. Where a household did not deliver the product according to the contract timing or quality specifications, tranche payments to the cluster were withheld until all members caught up. The social control model enhanced construction quality since all cluster members contributed, looked after, and supervised one another. No ‘every man for himself’ applied anymore, and the power of control was decentralized to the grass-roots level decisively.

 

2.    CRC implemented their program using a common commercial contractual model; though to some extent it blended well with public consultation during the decision-making processes. The community was fully consulted in beneficiary selection (verification and validation), village spatial planing, and in housing design phases. But CRC lacked real engagement and empowerment. CRC believed that a massive housing reconstruction could be rapidly performed through national and multi-national construction firms. These profit-oriented companies fully realized that profit margins would not be significant enough in comparison to operational costs. The result was lack of interest from qualified companies for the CRC project in Aceh Jaya, where infrastructure and logistic support remain poorly served. Further, this approach does not bridge community needs with a profit-oriented company tied to a contractual - deliverable output - framework.

 

Further compounding the issue, problems within the community needed to be resolved through active facilitation processes that create common understandings and trust between stakeholders. This basic ingredient is not common to a modern construction company, clearly inexperienced in dealing with such a complex project. CRC has encounter basic common mistake by abandoning community entitlement to participate and engaged as a holistic approach.  Even with engineers and an experienced Project Manager on staff, CRC could not cope with the complexity of coordinating such a vast rebuilding project with the needs of a severely damaged community. This exposes CRC’s lack of experience. They wrongly simplified the housing issue as a construction project and lost track completely of the context of community during the process, taking real participation, engagement and facilitation[4] as an obstruction in project operation.

 

3.  The final example, UN-HABITAT applied a similar model to UPLINK, but allocated much lower cost per house. Overall the UN-HABITAT and UPLINK model is the same, a slight discrepancy in the participatory level, whereas UPLINK implements a fully leftist and socialist empowerment model, and in UN-HABITAT is fully collaborate with the community and prevent to apply any ideological approach.

 

Lessons Learned

• Following a massive disaster such as that in Aceh and Nias, a high participatory model[5] will enable the community to engage and participate actively, gave more flexibility throughout the program implementation cycle, expedite the knowledge transfer process through hands-on training[6], at the same time, to increase peer monitoring amongst housing cluster members. The Community Contract model decentralized the project management burden by transferring responsibility to the community as  implementers, as collective supervisors, as well as risk and responsibility takers. Our case studies showed that a well-facilitated community contract model will lead to far more successful outcomes than the common commercial contractual model.

 

• In the CRC case, it is important to keep the program as simple as possible both in size and expected outputs, and to work with local implementing agencies, not through a Commercial Contractual model. A centralized system to procure bulk building materials by big suppliers and contractors did not significantly assist performance in Aceh, since infrastructure is a major problem. Our studies show the best applicable solution is to lessen pressure on project management by decentralizing the program into smaller, simpler and manageable units, applied through a collaborative approach in conjunction with local NGOs who fully understand the local landscape, or with a fully participatory community contract model.

 

• Providing broad flexibility during the project implementation cycle is the key to success in participatory projects. Flexible, adaptive, responsive and transparent are basic keywords to underpin the process. Hence, facilitation is the tool that links all of the indicators and variables. Facilitation in the rebuilding process firmly contributed to capacity building, ensuring the community was well organized, and was a vigorous catalyst in behaviour change. The facilitation process further allowed the implementing agency to identify, address, and resolve potential threats, disputes, and conflict, by steering the community to reach a common understanding and to determine priorities.

 

Other Complicating Factors: Land Titles

Other independent factors played a significant role in administering an adaptive approach on housing reconstruction projects in Aceh. Table 5 describes certain indicators which influenced project outcomes.
 

Table 5: Additional Factors

Organization Land Titling and Building Permit National Staff Enabling Early Return Integrated Development UPLINK (Urban Poverty Linkage) Promote Community Land Adjudication Managing fully with Indonesian staff Yes, with a barrack Yes, supporting the community with Livelihood Package: agriculture, revolving fund mechanism, others CRC (Canadian Red Cross) Not willing to build unless the plot is already certified by BPN Fully expatriate Yes, with transitional shelter Yes, supporting with livelihood and watsan packages UN-HABITAT (United Nation Human Settlement) Promote Community Land Adjudication Collaborative, expatriate and Indonesian Staff No No Source: UN-HABITAT – UNSYIAH 3rd Party Monitoring Result

 

 

1. UPLINK ignored the centralized system administered by National Land Authority (BPN), who required housing providers to comply with BPN procedures[7]. Meanwhile, UPLINK used a community land adjudication process to resolve land-titling issues. UPLINK believed the entitlement process could be addressed easily through community land mapping and staking as a strategy to reach agreement on what would later lead to the issuance of legal certificates from the GoI. This approach was indeed very effective and land disputes have not arisen. This highly participatory land mapping process, accompanied by high tech surveying equipment, was successfully tried after the Gujarat earthquake and thus the experienced team was able to perform quickly and efficiently. This response – although risky – allowed UPLINK to move forward without waiting for legal instruction and contributed to UPLINK’s speedy recovery.

 

2. Unlike UPLINK, land titling became a major problem for CRC. Most of their sites in Aceh Jaya encountered land ownership problems. This complexity was worsened by CRC’s rigid approach to resolve the land issue before commencing groundbreaking activities. It is common for international agencies to comply with GoI regulations in order to prevent potential conflict, but this decision backfired on the Agency. What was expected by the Red Cross Movement in Aceh was to solicit land certificates before starting to build. To some extent, it should save the organization from legal charges, but this decision delayed project mobilization.

 

3. UN-HABITAT has substantial previous experience resolving land issues (relocation, resettlement and land acquisition). UN-HABITAT supported a community land adjudication system, from which arose only a few minor cases in Lamsenia Village in Aceh Besar, where relocation could not be avoided. To resolve that, UN-HABITAT worked with JRS (Jesuit Relief Service) and Yayasan Puter to use a participatory Land Relocation system. In collaboration with the community, they identified new sites owned by community members. The agreement stipulated an entitlement to buy the land collectively from the landlord, with the landlord providing two years grace period to the community before repayment to commence. No collateral loans were required. This was a “gentlemen’s agreement” based on broad community consensus as a result of a successfully managed participatory approach. 

 

Local Staff

The role of a good local team is essential for their understanding of local political and social landscapes. It’s easier for them to bridge the language barrier in ways that can affect the decision-making processes, and thus, ways of thinking.

 

1.      UPLINK established their firm management system in a way that ensured an egalitarian relationship between benefactor and beneficiaries, which was highly appreciated and successfully reduced the gaps between the two of them.

 

2.      With CRC, all of the senior and decision-making posts were occupied by expatriates. The gap between them and the locals created major problems for internal management with local staff only being used as a tool to achieved project outputs. Thus, they failed to capture the local perspective, with unpredictable and undetectable results.

 

3.      UN-HABITAT management included a well blended combination of local and international staff, with most of the expatriates having pertinent experience in the housing sector, most having more than 10 years in Indonesia, most speaking Indonesian fairly fluently, and understanding Indonesian culture, although not particularly Acehnese culture. This mix between local and expatriate that understood the cultural, social and political landscapes enabled UN-HABITAT to function more flexibly[8].

 

Quick Return

• Enabling an early return for survivors to TLC (Temporary Living Centre) or TS (Temporary Shelter) is the indicator of success. Yet verification and validation processes are major obstacles. Firstly, survivors are dispersed. Secondly, the manipulative approach in managing beneficiaries leads to. Lastly, is lack of a data management system to indicate the distribution and number of survivors at the earliest phase.
• UPLINK mobilized the community to return to their place of origin early. By enabling an early return, the process of identifying the eligible beneficiaries and their entitlements, as well as land titling, was easier and prevented dispute possibilities. Firmly screening the beneficiaries’ entitlements prevented irresponsible people from claiming false entitlements to housing assistance[9]. Early return then firmly supported active community involvement in decision making processes and led to less of an individualistic mind set[10].
• UN-HABITAT has no expertise in emergency phase rebuilding. Thus they did not enable early return, this is for some extend draw some difficulties in organizing the community on the early phase.
• CRC did enable early return to their origin which resolved the beneficiaries’ issue easily.

 

Multi-sectoral Approach

A multi-sectoral approach can underpin the Local Economic Development by supporting local women and men to actively revitalize their livelihood activities.

 

1.      UPLINK provided the beneficiaries with small grants that enabled them to gain access to capital for income generating activities. Several JUB members received a pedicap. In addition UPLINK assisted the community to produce a sustainable building material workshop[11] (or Community Builder’s Yard) such as environmentally pressed clay brick (clay with cement and pressed by hand). These bricks reduced the use of timber and was more environmentally friendly since the brick does not need to be fired. UPLINK also established a new mushroom plantation which already has overseas orders and will provide a new income source for the community. The integration of housing with livelihoods has provided the community with adequate support to revive their capacity as well as promoting best practice in linking reconstruction with the next level of the development stage.

 

2.      CRC also aimed to provide the community with an integrated development plan, micro-infrastructure as well as livelihood and income-generating provisions. Unfortunately since there was no significant movement towards the housing delivery, especially in Aceh Jaya, the full process is stuck, waiting for housing as the foremost component to be delivered first.

 

3.     UN-HABITAT clearly avoided integrated development issues, but UN-HABITAT actively engaged the BRR micro infrastructure department to provide basic infrastructure within their working areas, a smart move from the limited resource organization. With integrated development issues, as a specialized UN Agency, UN-HABITAT does not provide livelihood support. But this lacking was remedied with a collaborative and co-operative approach. Differing from UPLINK, which tends to reject NGO involvement in their working areas[12], UN-HABITAT applies a fully co-operative approach and coordinates other agencies in other sectors, such as education, child-protection, watsan, capacity building and so on. With this co-operative approach UN-HABITAT is able to create a driving force toward the multi-sector approach, delivered through different organizations, while at the same time promoting a collaborative approach between different stakeholder.

 

Lessons Learned

• Complying with government policy is a basic rule for international agencies. Unfortunately given to complications in Indonesian land administration systems, rigid compliance will not help the housing provider to expedite the program. Applying community land adjudication as an alternative solution proved to significantly expedite the housing reconstruction phase delivered by UPLINK and UN-HABITAT. Community land adjudication promotes agreements between stakeholders, between neighbours to endorse private land entitlement, secures land occupancy.
• Enabling Early Return helps the community to be organized effectively and efficiently if it is accompanied with well prepared basic life support infrastructure. Organizing the community during the early phases is much easier than one or two months later. This “momentum window” effectively helped a fragile community to channel its perception, understanding and attitude towards a more constructive, democratised, and civilized mutual-support system.
• Although CRC was able to relocate most of the IDPs (Internally Displaced People) to newly built Temporary Shelters, the lack of infrastructure provision or integration with livelihood support reduced the early return momentum to the lowest level.
• Delivering a comprehensive program through involvement and participation of other organizations where specific expertise is lacking is a must, as long as it is not doubling or competing. There is no special formula to address this coordination issues, It all depends on the willingness to co-operate between each agency.

 

Conclusions

What Determines Project Speed?

Talking about speed is talking about delay. Delays have been caused by several reasons: shortage of able human resources, logistical problems, bureaucratic and institutional problems, and difficulties in coordinating the multitudes of organizations. Basically there have been the following types of delays:

-         Delay in decision making caused by inexperience, hesitation, hysteria and lack of leadership.

-         Delay caused by weakness in implementation structure and/or approach, caused among other things by long negotiation between GOI and donor agencies and long debate about appropriate approach and team works among (internal) implementing organizations. 

-         Delay in procurement (delay in designing or specifying details, or caused by shortage of materials and manpower, aggravated also by bad access to certain remote areas)

-         Delay in the process of trust building and consequential late agreements between homeowners and providing organizations.

By now, participatory and fast-tracking techniques are widely known. Homeowner’s participation in the experience of UN-Habitat, UPLINK and others has proven to speed up reconstruction, because they not only feel mobilised (from sedentary living in the barracks or temporary shelters) but also develop a sense of belonging. Elizabeth Haussler of Build Change said that homeowner’s involvement is the key to quality and satisfaction, and should be the target in improving building practices.[13] The WB was said to have detailed 56 steps in housing reconstruction, of which many are not critical and so can be fast-tracked if properly analysed. The main delays were caused wrong or delayed decisions.

The main cause of delay in UN-Habitat’s experience is an indecisive, confusing phase that many other organizations also experienced. Organizations try to simulate and formulate answers for over-anticipated problems before they had the confidence to start.  This was made worse by formalizing the anxiety into an instruction to wait for guidelines. Many large formal organizations were naturally also inhibited by their system of accountability.

 

Community-Based Reconstruction as an Alternative approach

UN-Habitat’s seminar on lessons-learned in Yogyakarta on 29th August 2007^[14] concluded that community-based reconstruction is not unrealistic at all and has indeed proven to be faster and resulting in highest quality and satisfaction, as shown by the Universitas Syah Kuala (UNSYAH) survey. The highest scoring clusters of houses were organised by UPLINK with multi-layers of community participation. There is a consensus that community-based housing reconstruction can respond quickly to urgent needs and thus can achieve relief at an earlier stage; mobilize solidarity among the members of a community, and therefore build social capital; allow for better gender equity; strengthen local institutions; achieve good planning leading to high quality results; limit disaster vulnerability; and can be done with good monitoring to achieve transparent accountability. Aceh has proven that Community-Based Development (CBD) can be done on a large scale. Community-based reconstruction also resulted in better targeting of beneficiaries.

 

More needs to be said to counter the attractiveness of the “contractor” approach now even further pursued by BRR, as it is said to reduce risk, intensity of transaction, and staff involvement on the provider’s side. While these points are indeed true, other goals that need to be achieved in the reconstruction process, such as building social capital, cannot be achieved with the “contractor approach.”

 

Doubts about community-based approaches come from lack of understanding, experience and knowledge about how to organise it, fear of chaos, a shortage of professionals well trained in its implementation, and fear that it will take too long for a post-disaster situation.

A possibility worth exploring is to combine the contractor approach with community participation. Communities or homeowners could manage the contracting themselves, or to authorise payment to contractors. Here community participation is seen as a  part of a process that can be applied in different stages and ways. It runs the risk of being superficial but nevertheless would be useful in building up sense of belonging and quality control.

There is a need for a standard of what is meant by participation and community based approach. There are reports about situations where community-based approach clusters are surrounded by non community-based approaches, resulting in confusion among beneficiaries. Community-based approach also requires a fair lead-time, even though this is compensated by the speed and satisfaction in the later stage. Most failures in community approach are caused by the delay in its start up, leaving little time for the participatory process. In some cases there is a genuine shortage of capacity to conduct community-based approach, despite genuine good intention to satisfy community’s aspiration. The shortage of community facilitators is serious.

 

We must also be realistic about both the pluses and minuses in the process of community-driven development. The lesson learned is that community-based reconstruction is not all rosy and smooth. Not all communities are as romantically communal as we hope. Although communities are not “ideal”, it is however proven that negative prejudices are not all true either in Aceh. Facilitators need to be trained in that respect. They need to be able to respond to unexpected varying demands, and capable to coordinate various clusters of resources. Community-based approach requires that government make policies to support and regulate and encourage it. Community-based does not mean leaving the governments behind.

 

A minimum standard of community participation is viable. There are references that can be used and adapted. Level of participation (from mobilisation to decision making) can be determined by referring, for example, to Sherry Arnstein’s ladder. Participation can also be specified for different aspects and stages and/or aspects of reconstruction process: organization, planning of houses and village and settlements and cities, procurement, construction, evaluation, etc. A matrix could be developed for this purpose of combining levels of participation and specific participatory activities in each stage and aspects of reconstruction.

 

UN-Habitat’s practices, and UPLINK’s highly participatory practices at all levels, are among the resources that should be looked into to formulate the minimum standard of community-based practices.

 

The above are important ingredients for successful community participation program in post-disaster reconstruction.  Drawing from the lessons of Aceh and Nias, there is an urgent need to quickly enhance the capacity of the beneficiaries to rebuild their homes without having to wait for the government to deliver on the reconstruction of houses. Empowerment through housing development can be implemented by communities without depending upon the government.  It is all our hopes that a rapid program could be executed in post disaster areas so that the problems and failures that we faced in Aceh will not be repeated.