Sustainable Water Management through Flexible Method Management

Water management projects are complex and contain many dimensions, including the nature of the problem, technologicalchallenges, and political relevance. Experts and consultants in water management usually work with a limited set of analysis and project planning methods. This implies that expertsand consultants have a restricted spectrum for bidding on watermanagement projects and that the engagement of a specific expertor consultant introduces a biased approach to water management.To alleviate these limitations, experts and consultants shouldhave a readily accessible collection of analysis and project management methods at their disposal, coupled with guidelinesfor combining these methods to best approach a water managementproject. In this paper we propose a taxonomy for classifying methods used in water management. Using this taxonomy, we derivea Project Management Specification Model (PMSM) to help expertsselect, combine, and operationalize methods to match best therequirements posed by a project. The taxonomy and PMSM were derived and validated by analyzing more than 90 methods togetherwith experts in the field of water management, and by using themwithin two new project proposals made by an engineering company.We could conclude that PMSM's broad view on water managementhelps experts and consultants choose flexible analysis and project management approaches, and that it increases the involvement of, and acceptance by, all parties involved in water management. Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers 2000