ABSTRACT
Conservation and restoration of built heritage sites are difficult projects to manage, due to high uncertainty and complex landscape of governance, which is apparent from the frequent cases of cost overruns and delays in such projects. Though budget for conservation of built heritage is generally less compared to new construction projects, due to the high uncertainty and complexities, a well defined project governance framework is a key requirement for success of heritage conservation projects.
India has a rich cultural diversity, with innumerable built heritage sites spread across the length and breadth of the country. The heritage conservation sector in India is highly fragmented, with a wide range of stakeholders from Central Government to local authorities to conservation groups involved in the process of conservation. These agencies have varied sources of funding, different set of rules and norms to be followed, and use different project delivery models for the various heritage conservation projects. National Monuments are mostly protected by Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) departmentally, using their own workforce and supply contracts. Most of the projects governed by other government departments or private agencies are executed through traditional Bill of Quantity (BOQ) contracts. Other modes of delivery observed include Build Operate Transfer (BOT), Cost Plus, Lump-sum Turnkey, etc. The complicated management structure causes loss of efficiency of the conservation program, resulting in poor performance of heritage conservation projects in terms of cost, time and quality. However, there has been very limited attempt in India to study the heritage conservation sector from the perspective of project management. The objective of this paper is to map the project governance framework for various categories of heritage conservation projects in India and document the roles and responsibilities of various stakeholders.
First, an overview of the regulatory framework explaining the different categories of built heritage in India and the laws governing their conservation is given. The paper then presents the findings of an exploratory study conducted on 50 built heritage sites, where conservation or restoration works are currently being executed or have been recently completed. For each of these projects, the available project documents have been reviewed and conservation professionals and other main stakeholders of the project have been interviewed. The primary and secondary data thus collected have been used to map the project governance framework used. A comparative analysis has been done to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the various project delivery types, when used for built heritage projects.
