We All are Europe - AESAEC

Module 7 – How to Implement a Project Successfully
Unit 7.2.
Unit in a nutshell
Achievements
Project meetings and international visits
Understanding the spirit and main purposes of transnational project
meetings
Consideration of key elements and workflow when preparing and implementing
a meeting
Instruments and tools for meeting preparation and implementation
After this unit you will be able to:
successfully plan, design and implement a transnational project meeting
or longer transnational visits
decide which instruments and tools are needed for these purposes
use transnational project meetings as a powerful strategic instrument of
modern EU project management
Coming together is a beginning - Keeping together is progress - Working together is success
(Henry Ford)
Warming up:
Visit www.bpb.de/fsd/europapuzzle/puzzle_flash1.html, where you can put
together the EU country by country. If you wish, hold a contest in small
groups, to see who is the quickest and needs less attempts. Please also discuss
with which countries you would like to do a project and why.
7.2.1. The project meetings – hints and practical arrangements
Listen / Read / Discuss
One of the greatest challenges in EU project management is the burden of long distance relationships
between partners. Knowing how difficult it sometimes is to cooperate with the person next
door in your organisation, you can imagine what might happen if all of your partners sit hundreds of
kilometres away from you. Of course, there are also times when you see the partners (mainly project
meetings, bi-lateral visits), and it is extremely important to make as much use of these opportunities
as possible for management issues. Therefore, they should be treated, prepared and implemented
with great accuracy and care!
Planning and implementing a project meeting or a bilateral visit is a project in itself, following the
same regulations and workflow. Speaking philosophically, from some angles project management
can be rather similar to doing a jigsaw: there are a number of individual pieces which make little
sense at the beginning but finally – when put together correctly - you will have a completed picture.
In our case the picture is a project meeting, and the pieces are the following key elements:
Fixing the meeting date
Dates for meetings and visits should be fixed as early as possible (half a year in advance is quite
standard) and never changed once they are fixed! Note - finding an appropriate date might be more
difficult than it sounds, when considering the schedules of all the partners, national holidays of all
the countries involved, the timescale of the project etc.
Choice of country / hosting organisation
Usually, the first meeting takes place in the promoter’s country and partners will then take turns in
organising the subsequent meetings. If you have more countries than meetings it might be delicate
to decide where to meet and where not to. However you decide, making sure that the meeting venues
make sense according to the project’s topic, that they reflect Europe’s cultural diversity and
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