Project Management for Heritage

The MoRPHE Project Managers' Guide

This detailed guide sets out our general approach to project management. We have developed it for use in both pure research and applied research and development (or ‘R&D’) projects.

It is based on good practice for project management in industries as varied as construction and information technology, so can be applied to most project types.

The key points are:

• Plan carefully and consult on your plans early
• Get a project started with a well-written proposal and project design. These will help obtain funding, and agreement with partners
• State who is doing what, and what will be produced
• Take a staged approach to running the project, so that progress can be checked and plans changed if needed
• Finish well, with all results published as agreed, the project archive completed, and lessons for future projects recorded and shared

MoRPHE compliant projects

If you're going to apply for funding for your research or R&D project, you will need to make your project ‘MoRPHE Compliant’.

This means:

• Using in all communications with us the terminology for project roles, project stages and project documents covered in the MoRPHE Project Managers' Guide and any relevant project planning notes
• Providing the key documents in the format set out in Appendix 2 of the Project Managers' Guide, with an accompanying document control grid and contact details
• Following the supplementary guidance for particular project types set out in the accompanying series of Project Planning Notes
• Following the specific guidance for funding applicants

For all other researchers and R&D teams, our project management advice is provided as a service to help join up approaches to managing projects across the heritage sector.