Green campus initiatives as projects: can creating conducive internal university project environment a key to success?

Abstract

Green campus initiatives are becoming integral part of modern day's university systems. However, their management remains slow, cumbersome and limited scope process. Review of related literature suggests that the effective and efficient management of these initiatives require incorporation of project management (PM) principles and thus the need to establish a framework to manage green campus initiatives as projects. Hence the existence of sub-processes likes initiation, continuous coordination, control and ending of green projects. These green campus initiatives (projects) should be part of university strategic management system. In the light of this background, an attempt is made in this paper to describe how to apply project management framework within the University system. The central argument in this paper is about Universities moving away from traditional approaches in embracing green initiatives to establishing a formal process where a sequence of tasks is developed with clear defined objectives and a defined start and end event. It is further argued that the success of any green campus project depends on performing PM professionally. The paper provides an initial framework for implementation of green campus project in contemporary higher education institutions.