Governance and Management of the Holy Edicule Rehabilitation Project

Abstract

This paper presents the key aspects of Governance and Management of the project that rehabilitated, reinforced and conserved the Holy Edicule in the Holy Church of the Resurrection in Jerusalem. The overall approach was based on the continuous communication and collaboration with the three Christian communities who share the principal responsibility for the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. This was combined with full transparency on all aspects of the project and intense publicity and external communication so that the progress of the work would be shared and publicized to the media of the world at large. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the Holy Edicule have been monuments of ecumenical love and devotion throughout the centuries and we wanted to accentuate this by making the project available to the world. The coordination of the scientific and the managerial team was founded on frequent meetings where all key people would participate and contribute to the resolution of the issues and sound decision making. The quality of the work and the decision making was made possible by the analysis and storage of all emergent data with the full deployment of scientific equipment and digital technologies. The high level of uncertainty in the first four months of the project made it necessary to adopt an agile approach to decision making and management. The stakeholders and the project teams should be ready and able to respond quickly to emergent data about the monument and its features, by making the necessary adjustments to the project plan, schedule and budget, and ensuring that we would put the knowledge gained to good use. The project was successfully completed on time and with a small increase of total expenditure compared to the original budget.