UFIL Journal 2: taking stock of the project implementation

This challenge was 'green' also in Year 1. There are no issues related to leadership aspects for UFIL. As underlined in the previous reporting period, the project is based on a strong partnership which fully recognises and appreciates the leading role of the Municipality of Cuenca. The Municipality is a legitimated urban authority whose commitment in fostering innovation and local development is well-acknowledged. Furthermore, as a positive development of Year 2, it is noted an increased reputation of the municipality at higher administrative levels. 

Political support was formalised at a kick-off event. The city’s local government elected in 2019 is now fully supportive of the project. On 18 February 2020, UFIL was officially presented by the Mayor of Cuenca, Dario Dolz. The institutional event took place in the campus of the University of Castilla-La Mancha (UCLM), in Cuenca, and saw the participation of institutional stakeholders including the Rector of UCLM. A video of the event is available here.

Strengthening the city’s reputation at higher administrative levels, and abroad. The Municipality of Cuenca is taking advantage of the visibility given by leading a UIA project to further build its reputation in Spain and abroad. It is now acknowledged by supra-local institutions that the city works for developing a forest-based innovative ecosystem in order to address its development challenges. In July 2020, the city was also invited to participate in the 5th Cycle of the Guangzhou Award, an initiative which aims at recognizing innovative actions pursuing social, economic and environmental sustainability in cities and regions while promoting prosperity and quality of life for their residents. The Guangzhou Award is co-sponsored by the United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG), the World Association of the Major Metropolises (Metropolis) and the City of Guangzhou, and it supported by ICLEI and C40.

Emerging lessons:

• Urban authorities shall use the visibility gained through the implementation of UIA projects to increase their reputation, regionally, nationally, Europe-wide and internationally.
• International awards are a perfect way for a project to gain visibility, share experiences, and create networking opportunities.

This challenge was 'yellow' also in Year 1.  In Year 2, procurement continued to be implemented by the three main concerned stakeholders: the Municipality of Cuenca, the Cuenca Council Wood SA and the University of Castilla-La Mancha. Procurement faced some problems (and delays), parts of which were due to the COVID-19 outbreak. In brief:

a) Cuenca City Council contracted external services related to graphic and design, editing, web development, advertising in digital media, and auditing. It also contracted services related to the residential training (e.g. accommodation of trainees) and disbursed the scholarships for training participants. These latter expenses had to be temporarily suspended because of COVID-19. No major problems have occurred in handling these contracts for external services but the overall contracted amount is low compared to the total allocation (approx. 15%).

b) The University of Castilla-La Mancha has the responsibility to purchase the equipment for the innovation lab, including for the manufacturing and prototyping of trainees’ innovative products/ideas. During Year 2, two procurement contracts were tendered and awarded. Tendering procedures suffered from delays due both to administrative/bureaucratic issues and to the COVID-19 crisis, as the pandemic paralysed for a while the activities of the University.

c) The Cuenca Council Wood SA was expected to complete its procurement during Year 2 but the purchasing process was interrupted because of COVID-19. After a 30% advance payment made to an Italian supplier, the delivery of a machine was delayed because the supplier closed down its facilities as a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Delays are still occurring for the procurement of equipment. Also during Year 2, implementation delays in equipment procurement occurred. They were due to administrative reasons as well as to the lockdown measures imposed by governments to fight the pandemic. This has partially affected the carry out of the practical work of the first training course which started in March 2020.

Emerging lessons:

• The application of responsible and sustainable public procurement criteria (see Journal 1  for details) does not prevent the occurrence of bureaucratic/administrative delays in the procurement process. On top of common rules complying with national legislation, each partner applies its own administrative procedures for procurement  which cannot be controlled by the urban authority.
• Flexibility of service contracts allows their interruption if unforeseen circumstances such as a pandemic occur, without determining a financial loss on the part of the contractor.

This challenge was 'green' also in Year 1. During Year 2, the smooth implementation of the project within the urban authority is confirmed. UFIL fully matches the priorities of the implementing unit of ‘Business Promotion, Innovation and Technologies Service’ within the urban authority. Therefore it is not disrupting its activities but adds value to them. Within the urban authority, support to the leading unit is provided by the Intervention-Accounting Service which manages and processes the payments related to UFIL execution, and by the Procurement Service which looks after public procurement. Finally, the General Secretary is involved for all matters that require decisions to be taken in collegiate bodies such as the Municipal Plenary or the Local Government Board. 

The undisruptive role of the project is confirmed. Cuenca is a relatively small municipality and has treated UFIL as an integral part of its institutional activities without disrupting its organisational structure. This is possible because the scope of UFIL is aligned well to the mission of the unit in charge of project’s implementation.

Unique leadership and co-management prove to be satisfactory. UFIL has in the urban authority the unique project leader but the project is co-managed with the Madrid-based partner ‘Khora Urban Thinkers’. After two years, this co-management is considered satisfactory by both parties. The partner relieves some of the project management workload of the leader by coordinating and monitoring activities and deliverables.

Emerging lessons:

• Projects fitting very well the institutional role of the urban authority and in particular the mission of the department in charge of project’s implementation have high chances to run smoothly in terms of internal organisational arrangements.
• There are several risks associated with a co-management approach. Co-management may reduce the level of project’s ownership within the urban authority; it may also reduce the opportunity for the urban authority to enhance its project management skills. A trade-off between pros and cons is probably determined by the attitude of the urban authority. If the urban authority delegates specific tasks to a third party but clearly keeps the lead and control, co-management may bring advantages.  
• The project keeps on being based on a risk-sharing model across the various institutional partners involved. The public function of the institutional partners is strengthened by their participation in the project. This should add value when it comes to the sustainability of project’s activities.

This challenge was 'yellow' in Year 1, so its intensity improved in Year 2.  In Year 1, a lot of time was dedicated to clarify and formalise roles and responsibilities within the partnership (the UFIL partnership includes a total of nine partners). A lot of time was also spent to harmonise the input of the partners to the project in terms of procedures and reporting modalities. Indeed, implementation in Year 2 benefitted from this initial effort. The communication problems which occurred in Year 1 were solved in Year 2 and the coordination mechanisms were fine-tuned in order to be more effective and agile.

Coordination mechanisms work better now. The project keeps on having several coordination mechanisms in place. Because of COVID-19, these mechanisms were frequently applied during the confinement and communication among partners is reported to have improved. A total of 18 working groups were held since the project’s start. Working groups focus on specific outputs at the operational level and deal, for example, with communication activities, recruitment of trainees, identification of sponsors, and training. In addition, four coordination committees (among all project partners) were held since the start, as well as four steering committees (between the two co-managers). On top of these mechanisms, many other remote meetings were implemented, including two meetings on the adaptation of the project to COVID-19.  It is unknown if the workload implied by the participation in all these meetings is perceived as an administrative burden by the project partners. However, the project management reports that working groups were made more frequent but also more agile (i.e. only 30 minutes long) in order to effectively address specific topics (e.g. trainees’ recruitment).

COVID-19 boosted motivation. Motivation is reported to be high by the project management. Actually, the project management claims that motivation increased in Year 2 as a consequence of a united effort to overcome the implementation challenges caused by COVID-19.

Emerging lessons:

• It is renown that difficulties unite. This is apparently what happened in UFIL as initial communication problems among partners were overcome through a more frequent use of the project’s coordination mechanisms during the pandemic.
• A high number of coordination mechanisms may produce undesired side effects in terms of administrative burden for project partners but the project has mitigated this risk by setting a rather short time limit duration (30 minutes) to the meetings.

This challenge was 'red' also in Year 1. Not too much is changed with regard to monitoring and evaluation since the last reporting period. The monitoring plan has been produced in April 2020, but it is just a list of project’s milestones grouped by delivery month. The plan does not include key performance indicators. A baseline has not apparently been defined and a monitoring system for the regular collection of data and information is not in place.

The impression is that the importance of monitoring and evaluation is underestimated by the project and that the task is treated in a simplistic manner. It is reported by the project’s team that an internal mid-term review will be carried out in March 2021 (i.e. after 2.5 years of implementation) and that result indicators will then be updated. If quantitative indicators on results are rather easy to compute, qualitative indicators (such as the ones related to the perception of forests by people in general and by specific target groups in particular) are more complex and time-bound and therefore require a baseline to be defined and a monitoring system for the collection of data to be in place.

Emerging lessons:

• The usefulness of a mid-term review carried out internally is arguable. Any review, if implemented, should be carried out by an independent third party.
• The credibility and accountability of a project is based on the project’s capacity to demonstrate not only its results but also its impact to third parties. It is risky to underestimate the effort needed to collect necessary data.

This challenge was 'red' in Year 1, so its intensity has improved during Year 2. However, progress in communicating and engaging with the target groups is proceeding slowly. It is summarised and commented in the table below for each of the four target groups identified by the project.

Reaching out rather than engaging still applies. Reach out activities during the second year of the project relied on the use of web-based media. A new communication tool developed by the project is the project’s BLOG which is regularly publishing updates on implementation. Communication with the business community was not successful in identifying and selecting business sponsors. Communication to citizens was not started. In fact, just after the official launch of the project in February 2020, the COVID-19 situation worsened and paralised a number of engagement activities.

Co-implementation with third parties (still) lags behind. The project’s decision to simplify the training module by reducing from 15 to 2 the number of challenges for trainees (to be proposed by project’s partners) was a recovery strategy to address the missed engagement of business sponsors. Not too much progress in actual involvement of sponsors has been made in Year 2. Still, it is expected that contacts made with territorial stakeholders such as the Provincial Council, local action groups and relevant businesses directly or indirectly related to the forest sector will succeed in mobilising business sponsors in the second training batch planned to start in March 2021. 

Emerging lessons:

• Efforts for communication with some of the target groups started late in UFIL. It is important to start communicating with target beneficiaries at the very inception of the project, especially if the timeline of the project is short (3 years). There was a political deadlock which delayed the ‘official’ start of the project but ‘unofficial’ activities could have been considered in reaching out to civil society and the business community, especially through the ‘non-institutional’ partners.
• The lack of involvement of business sponsors seems to depend also on the lack of clarity on how to implement the challenging mechanism. The project made a series of important adaptations to the mechanism. This probably gave  to third parties  (including any potential sponsors) the impression of a ‘learning by doing’ process rather than of  a well-defined and mastered instrument.

This challenge was not classified in Year 1 because at that time it was really too early to start thinking about concrete arrangements after the project's end. But now it is official: the project started making concrete plans about its upscaling. If in the previous challenge the degree of communication and engagement activities with target groups was discussed, under this challenge the upcoming opportunities for UFIL with relevant third parties after the project’s completion are assessed. These opportunities started taking a shape during Year 2 and are summarised in the following table.

UFIL has a great potential to become a catalyst of forest-related initiatives in the territory. UFIL demonstrates an impressive networking capacity although several of the contacts and of the collaboration opportunities appear to be (still) immature. Indeed, the project management is able to link to relevant institutional actors. This is likely to end up in the conclusions of important cooperation agreements and/or synergies with other initiatives and/or actors as it happened with GLOBALCAJA. Still, so far communication and liaison with other third parties seems to be irregular and not guided by a precise idea of the future business model.

Focussing on research and innovation is essential for ensuring sustainability.  UFIL is based on a strong partnership which is favouring innovation in learning and teaching methods but which is not directly involved in research and development activities. Entry points in UFIL for innovative processes, products, materials and services are very much needed. Thus, the regional plan to develop a science and technology park which focuses on circular economy is great news for the project.

Emerging lessons:

• The innate capacity of the urban authority and of the partners to network with stakeholders outside the project proves to be precious in the light of designing the upscale of the project and the business model of UFIL after the project’s end.
• Innovation in teaching and learning techniques does not automatically turns into forest-related innovative processes, products, materials and services. The latter are usually the results of focussed research and innovation activities run by specialised centres/universities. As suggested in UFIL zoom-in # 1, projects like UFIL that do not only implement innovative (learning/teaching) approaches but that do want to create innovative entrepreneurship activities need to create  strong entry points for innovation in project’s implementation. One way to do this is to involve the industry, and the research & innovation community at the regional, national and even European level.