task of resource management

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• Project management |
• What is resource management? A guide to ...

What is resource management? A guide to getting started

Resource management is the process of planning and scheduling your team’s resources and activities—essentially anything that helps you complete a project. Developing a resource management plan can give you visibility into team member workloads. Learn how to manage resources and improve team performance.

Making sure your team doesn’t feel overworked or underutilized is a challenge you’ll often face as a leader. It's easy to lose sight of your team's workload and bandwidth. That’s where resource management comes in. 

Developing a resource management plan can give you consistent visibility into your team’s workload. It allows you to balance all your resources effectively and to see the full picture of how your team will achieve its goals.

What is resource management?

Resource management is the process of planning out and scheduling your team’s resources to optimize utilization and ensure project success. A resource can include everything from equipment and financial funds to tech tools and employee bandwidth—basically, anything that helps you complete a project.

When you’re deciding how to manage or assign your team’s resources, consider a few questions:

What is the availability of each resource?

What are the timelines for each activity?

How many resources will be required to accomplish each activity?

Who is the best person to accomplish the activity effectively?

Effectively managing your resources ensures every project is well-equipped and every team member is appropriately allocated, paving the way for successful project completion.

How to effectively manage your team’s workload

Learn how to leverage work management to distribute work more effectively.

Why is resource management important?

Resource management allows you to make sure your team members are confident with the amount of work on their plate and equipped with the tools they need to accomplish each task. When resource management is done right, you’re empowering your team to produce high-quality work at a sustainable rate. 

Benefits of resource management

Let’s dig a little deeper into why resource management is critical to your team’s success. With effective resource management, you can:

Distribute work appropriately , ensuring all your team members are appropriately staffed—not overworked or underutilized.  

Spot potential resourcing problems in real-time and adjust accordingly, preventing staffing issues from impacting progress on projects.

Give your team clarity around their responsibilities and the responsibilities of their team members, limiting misunderstandings and promoting accountability. 

Set realistic project goals , reducing the likelihood of missing important milestones and increasing the chances of on-time project completion.

Enhance your team's profitability by optimizing resource utilization and ensuring projects are completed efficiently and within budget.

Improve future resource planning by drawing on the knowledge gained to better estimate and forecast bandwidth for upcoming projects.

Resource management techniques

Leveraging resource management techniques is all about finding the smartest ways to use your team's skills and resources. Let’s explore a few common types of resource management methods.

Resource allocation

Resource allocation is more than just allocating resources to tasks and projects; it's the process of choosing the best resource based on the project team’s skills and capacity. After all, good resource management isn’t just about making sure you have enough resources; it’s about making sure you have the right resources for the right projects. Resource allocation can help you achieve this by strategically matching your team's strengths, capabilities, and resource capacity to the specific demands of each project.

Resource utilization

Resource utilization involves using tools like utilization reports and time tracking software to identify your team’s capacity over a specific period of time. It’s a capacity planning technique that allows you to identify whether project resources are being underutilized or overallocated, so you can better manage workloads.

Resource forecasting

Resource forecasting is a resource management process that involves proactively predicting the resource requirements for future projects and initiatives. You can identify these needs by relying on past trends and project metrics, as well as your team’s current capacity and the needs of upcoming projects. Resource forecasting is typically done during the project planning stage and can help with risk management by identifying potential resource bottlenecks or gaps in your team's availability in advance.

Resource leveling

Resource leveling is a resource management solution designed to combat shortages or overallocation by leveraging underutilized resources. For example, this might mean shifting work from one team member’s plate to another who has similar skills and additional capacity. Or, it could mean taking advantage of skill sets that typically aren’t utilized, like having a website content writer create social copy.

Types of resource management

Effective resource management is pivotal in steering any organization toward its goals. This process involves a strategic approach to managing various essential resources. 

Here, we focus on three fundamental types: human, financial, and material resources. Each category plays a unique role in the broader spectrum of resource planning and is a crucial component of any resource management plan.

Human resource management (work resources)

Human resource management is the strategic approach to managing a company's most valuable assets—its employees. This involves not just recruiting and hiring but also integrating workflow and automation tools to streamline training, performance assessments, and career development planning.

Example: A software company might enhance its human resource management by using workflow automation to efficiently align its workforce with emerging technology trends. This ensures that developers are systematically trained in the latest programming languages and Agile methodologies. By automating parts of the training and development process, the company can quickly adapt to changes in the fast-paced tech industry.

Financial resource management (cost resources)

Financial resource management is the process of planning, organizing, directing, and controlling financial activities such as procurement and utilization of funds. It involves making smart decisions about allocating financial resources to various projects or departments. 

Example: Consider a multinational corporation that allocates budgets across different regions, taking into account local market conditions, operational costs, pricing strategies, and revenue projections. This strategic financial management helps to ensure high-priority initiatives receive the necessary funding and resources to thrive. These resources, such as consulting or other professional services, are instances of tactical spending that are helpful but not the main purpose of budgetary allocation.

Material resource management (material assets) 

Material resource management involves the efficient planning, sourcing, and utilization of physical resources required for business operations. It encompasses inventory management, purchasing, and supply chain optimization to support the entire project lifecycle, from initial planning to final delivery. 

Example: A manufacturing firm may use material resource management to ensure a steady supply of raw materials like metals and plastics. By doing so, the firm can avoid production delays and cost overruns, thereby maintaining product quality and meeting customer delivery timelines.

5 step resource management plan

A comprehensive resource management plan is essential for any organization looking to optimize its resources effectively. This plan involves a series of steps that ensure resources are deployed efficiently and comply with both the project lifecycle and overarching business goals. 

Below are the five key steps in developing a solid resource management plan.

Step 1: Resource planning and budgeting

The first step in effective resource management involves detailed resource planning and budgeting. This process includes forecasting resource requirements and matching them to the available budget. 

Example: A tech startup, XYZ Software, begins its journey by planning resources for its innovative project management software. They forecast the demand for qualified software engineers and marketers, set aside money for cloud infrastructure, and make sure their financial resources are distributed effectively between development and marketing.

Step 2: Identify resources (capacity planning)

Identifying the right resources is make-or-break for any project's success. This step, often referred to as capacity planning , involves understanding the availability and skills of your workforce, as well as the physical and financial resources at your disposal. It’s about decision-makers being able to match the right resources with the right tasks, ensuring that your human, financial, and material resources are aligned with your project's needs.

Example: XYZ Software conducts a thorough analysis of its team's skills and identifies the need for additional software engineers with expertise in cloud computing. The company also assesses its current financial resources to ensure sufficient funding is available for these new hires.

Step 3: Allocate resources

Once resources are identified, the next step is their effective allocation. This involves assigning resources to various tasks and projects based on their availability and suitability. Resource allocation ensures that every project gets the necessary resources without overburdening any single aspect of the business.

Example: XYZ Software allocates its existing team to initial development phases, while the newly hired cloud experts are tasked with building the cloud infrastructure. Financial resources are allocated to ensure both teams have the necessary tools and software licenses.

Step 4: Resource tracking

Tracking resources throughout the project lifecycle is essential for ensuring that everything is proceeding as planned. This involves monitoring the usage of resources, assessing if they are meeting the project's requirements, and making adjustments as needed. Effective resource tracking helps in identifying potential shortages or surpluses early, allowing for timely corrective actions.

Example: As XYZ Software's project progresses, they use project management software to track the time and resources spent on each aspect of the project. By doing so, they are able to make adjustments in real time by identifying areas where resources might be overutilized or underutilized.

Step 5: Resource optimization

The final step in the resource management plan is optimization. This involves analyzing the performance and usage of resources and making necessary adjustments to improve efficiency. 

Resource optimization might include implementing automation tools to streamline processes or revising strategies based on performance data. Using resources as efficiently as possible is the aim, which will help the organization succeed as a whole.

Example: After launching the first version of their software, XYZ Software reviews their resource usage data. They realize that automating certain testing processes can free up developer time. This enables the team to focus more on critical tasks, thereby optimizing their use of human resources for future updates.

10 resource management best practices

Follow these ten best practices to boost your team’s productivity, hit project goals, and achieve a balanced team workload. 

Use a work management platform to streamline the planning process and ensure consistent, efficient allocation of resources across projects. While traditional resource management tools, like Gantt charts or spreadsheets, are useful ways to track capacity, their limited scope can’t match the extensive capabilities offered by a comprehensive work management platform. 

Measure available resources by gauging team capacity and necessary tools. This will help you ensure realistic resource allocation and avoid rescheduling issues.

Set start and end dates so you get a realistic timeframe for how long each task will take and set realistic expectations for your team. 

Know your employees’ skill sets so you can determine the best resourcing for each task. 

Set clear, accessible project goals to help you prioritize your team's work and drive high-impact work forward.

Help your team increase their utilization rate by automating routine, low-impact tasks so your team can focus on actionable, strategic, and billable work. 

Adjust resources as necessary because tasks, project timelines, and priorities change.

Keep some team bandwidth open for new work or priorities that might come up. 

Check in on your team to ensure each team member feels their work volume is fair and achievable. 

Connect your resource management plan to your operational plan in order to effectively manage your team's time and align daily tasks with strategic objectives. 

Manage your resources more effectively with a work management platform

To ensure you’re allocating resources effectively and aligning them to your wider organizational goals, use a work management platform. By centralizing project details and team capabilities in one platform, you can ensure efficiency, clarity, and alignment at every project stage.

Resource management FAQs

Have more resource management questions? We’ve got answers.

What is a resource management plan?

A resource management plan can help you manage and assign every type of resource you need for your project. An effective plan outlines the specific resources (including human resources, financial resources, technical resources, and physical resources) and activities necessary during the course of a project or initiative. 

Why is creating and implementing a resource management plan important? 

A resource management plan will guide you by giving a holistic view of all of a project’s moving pieces: budget, staffing and workload requirements, and tech stack limitations—allowing you to easily manage, schedule, and assign every resource while maximizing resource availability. Learning how to manage resources will empower you (and your team) to run projects effectively.

Should I create a resource management plan for my project?

The short answer is yes. Resource management in project management isn’t just a nice-to-have. It’s a must-have to support your team and prevent burnout. The benefits of resource scheduling far outweigh the time it takes. 

The number of projects your team can handle, along with the quality of each, depends on it. As a project leader, resource management is your opportunity to optimize efficiency, prevent overwork, and effectively manage your team’s workload.

What is a resource management plan template?

A resource management template is a reusable guide that helps you manage team bandwidth over the course of a project. It shows you everything your team is working on—so you can see how full everyone’s plate is, if they can take on additional work, or if they need help to get project tasks done by the deadline. Thanks to your template, you don’t have to waste time setting up a resource management plan for every new project. Instead, you can just copy the template, fill it in, and start working.

What are the steps to creating a resource management plan? 

To create an effective resource management plan, leverage a tool like a work management platform, which will give you easy insight into what everyone on your team is working on, what resources are available, and how to prevent team burnout. Then, follow these steps:

Define the project’s goals to gain clarity on what each project entails and make it easier to know what resources you need and how to assign them. 

Align on the project scope by meeting with project stakeholders to define how much time and resources you should dedicate to the initiative. That will give you the best sense of the project plan and help you decide what resources are best suited for the job.

Identify the types of resources you’ll need —such as bandwidth, equipment, software, and project budget—so you can then identify what resources you have available.

Identify available resources by checking each resource you previously needed against what you have already available. Depending on the project scope, you might have to adjust your resource level and deprioritize other work to avoid putting too much on your team’s plate.

Kick off your project by clearly communicating the resource plan to your team, ensuring everyone understands their roles and the resources at their disposal.

Periodically check in on project progress to see how the project is progressing and whether you need to make adjustments to your resourcing strategy.

Related resources

Critical path method: How to use CPM for project management

15 project management interview questions, answers, and tips

Unmanaged business goals don’t work. Here’s what does.

How Asana uses work management to drive product development

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Resource Management: Process, Tools & Techniques

Businesses execute projects and to do so, they need to manage different types of resources through a process known as resource management.

What Is Resource Management?

Resource management is the process of planning, scheduling and allocating resources to complete a project. Usually, project managers oversee the resource management process, but there are other leaders who might take this responsibility. To do so, they need to use resource management tools and techniques such as project management software.

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Resource Plan Template

Use this free Resource Plan Template for Excel to manage your projects better.

Why Is Resource Management Important?

Resource management is an important process for many disciplines such as project management , portfolio management and business management. Here’s how it helps in each of those fields.

Resource Management In Project Management

Resource management is very important when managing projects. It’s important to identify your resource requirements during the initiation and planning phases of the project life cycle so you can estimate costs and create a project budget . Then it’s important to make sure you schedule the right resources at the right time so your project plan is completed on time.

Resource Management In Portfolio Management

Resource management is even more important for project portfolio management than it is for managing individual projects. The reason is program managers, portfolio managers and project management offices (PMOs) need to ensure they allocate resources strategically to manage multiple projects simultaneously. For example, they can minimize costs by using the same resources across projects.

Resource Management In Business Management

The way in which you manage your business resources greatly affects its ability to function and grow beyond project management. Managing resources effectively has a myriad of benefits for your business such as helping you cut down costs, streamlining your operations planning and maximizing your profits.

ProjectManager is a robust project management software with Gantt charts, real-time dashboards and other resource management tools to help you monitor your project resources. Get started with ProjectManager today for free.

Types of Project Resources

Project resources can be simply defined as anything that’s needed to execute project tasks , including the people executing the work. Here are some examples of project resources.

• Raw materials
• Human resources
• Machinery and equipment
• Financial resources
• Information and data

Resource Management Process

As stated above, resource management is an ongoing process that starts during the project planning phase and continues until project closure. This is known as the resource management life cycle, which is made up of four stages that project managers should understand to properly manage project resources.

• Resource analysis: The process of gauging your current resource availability to determine what resources are missing for the execution of a project or action plan.
• Resource planning: A resource plan explains what your project resource requirements are and how they’ll be met. More importantly, it guides the team when it comes to resource management, so it should include information such as general guidelines, a description of your project resources, their quantities and when they’re needed.
• Resource scheduling: You then need to ensure that those resources are readily available. To do so, you’ll need to simply align your resource schedule with your overall project schedule and have a solid supply chain in place.
• Resource allocation: Resource allocation is an ongoing process that’s simply defined as picking the right resources at the right time to achieve project tasks. For example, there are critical tasks that need to be prioritized when creating the resource schedule.
• Resource tracking: You’ll need to keep track of the performance of your team. Use timesheets, workload charts and other resource management tools to track the work of your team members.

Most project managers use resource management software to help them as they move from one phase of the resource management process to the next.

Now that we’ve learned about the different resource management phases and the techniques you can use, you’re ready to get started with resource management. This free resource management plan template is a good tool for beginners. It allows you to list your resources and keep track of their availability and costs.

However, our resource plan template needs to be manually updated and shared with the team. That’s time-consuming, which is why most project managers use resource planning software to help streamline the process.

Resource Management Techniques

Project managers implement the following resource management techniques to forecast , plan, allocate, level and optimize resources during the execution of a project.

1. Resource Forecasting

Project managers must do their best at estimating what resources are needed for a project and how those resource requirements fit with the organization’s current plans. To do this, you must define your project scope to identify all project tasks and their required resources.

2. Resource Allocation

Resource allocation consists in evaluating available resources, capacity, resource schedule and the tasks that need to be completed to find the team members with the most relevant skills and make sure they have all the project resources they need when they need them.

3. Resource Leveling

Resource leveling is the process of re-assigning work to a project team to solve overallocation or scheduling issues. By thoroughly understanding what your team members can offer, you can assign tasks based on their abilities to maximize resource efficiency.

4. Resource Utilization

Careful resource planning is equally as important as resource tracking. Project managers need to keep track of resource utilization to spot any resources that aren’t being used efficiently. Then they can simply reallocate those resources or make changes to the resource management plan.

5. Resource Smoothing

Resource smoothing simply consists in delaying non-critical tasks to complete a project on time with the available resources. This is done by using the slack or float on each of those tasks to delay them without affecting the critical path. By delaying non-critical tasks, you can move your resources for the completion of critical path tasks and circle back to the least important activities.

How ProjectManager Helps With Resource Management

Resource management was developed to manage the resources in your project, which requires visibility into resource availability, workload and more. ProjectManager is project management software that gives you real-time data to make more insightful decisions when managing resources.

Plan Resources With Interactive Gantt Charts

Resources and costs can be scheduled with tasks on our Gantt chart project view . Once you set a baseline, you can also consult the planned versus actual progress of your overall project to get a head’s up if there’s a problem with resources. The progress bar tells you the progress being made on a specific task according to the planned effort. If you’re not meeting your baseline, reallocate your resources to stay on track.

Manage Workload and Keep Teams Productive

Your team is your most valuable resource. You can set up your team’s availability, workdays, holidays and PTO regardless of where they work. Once they start working, you don’t want to burn them out or leave them idle. Our color-coded workload page lets you see at a glance whether your team members are overallocated or under-allocated. A balanced workload leads to a more productive and happy team—and happier teams are more productive.

Track Your Resources With Real-Time Dashboards and Reports

You’ve planned your resource management, but as you execute the project, you have to monitor those resources. If you don’t keep an eye on how you’re using resources, you risk going over budget or missing deadlines. Our real-time project dashboard automatically collects live data and displays it in colorful graphs that chart six project metrics. In one click, you can generate reports that go deeper into the workload, time, costs and much more. All reports can be filtered and shared with stakeholders as you see fit.

Our software helps you plan, manage and report on project resources. You can allocate and track resource costs, see your team’s availability to make assignments and monitor everything with dashboards that act as instant status reports. Get everything you need to manage resources all in one place.

Related Resource Management Content

• Best Resource Management Software Rankings
• The Ultimate Guide to Resource Planning
• Resource Scheduling in Project Management
• What Is Resource Allocation? Resource Allocation Tips
• What Is Resource Loading & Why Does It Matter
• 5 Must-Have Resource Management Tools

When you’re managing resources on a project, there are a lot of balls to keep in the air, and that process can get complicated and confusing. However, with the right online tool, you’re able to plan, monitor and report on your resources with great control and accuracy. ProjectManager is online project management software that gives you the tools you need to steer your project to successful completion. Try it for yourself.

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An inside look into resource management

You’ve probably already read tons of project management articles—the how-tos, 101s, and comprehensive guides. But what’s often overlooked in project management is the importance of resource management . So let’s zoom in on the world of resource management and how it’ll help you grow a successful project portfolio.

This article will explain what it is, why it’s important, what a resource manager does, and how you can take control of resource management planning using monday work management.

What is resource management?

Resource management involves planning, scheduling, and allocating resources such as people, skills, money, or tools in preparation for an upcoming project. The goal is to manage your resources appropriately to deliver value to your business.

Typically, project managers divide available resources into two distinct categories:

• Tangible resources are anything that you can see or touch. This could include labor, machinery, property, software, or money.
• Intangible resources  are more abstract. An intangible resource might be intellectual property (like a technology patent), an idea, or a particular set of skills required to get the job done.

Why is resource management important in project management?

Resource management is important because it enables you to plan and assess precisely what you need to complete a project. This waste-free approach increases efficiency and allows you to reuse and recycle resources as needed.

To imagine a real-world example of how you’d use resource management in project management, let’s say you’re developing a new software application for a client, and you have 3 months to get the job done. You plan out your team’s skills and availability at the project’s outset and allocate tasks on that basis. You keep track of the tasks and address potential bottlenecks before they happen.

When one team member calls in sick, you’re able to quickly reassign their tasks to another colleague. When a laptop breaks, you have another ready to go, so no delays occur. You deliver the app on time and on budget, impressing your client so much they book your company for their next development need.

That’s resource management in action. It saves your project team time, money, and hassle.

What is a resource manager?

A resource manager is a lot like a  project manager  with one key difference:

• Project managers focus on creating and assigning tasks to get a job done
• Resource managers are responsible for allocating the resources required to complete those tasks

If you’ve got a small team, your project manager and resource manager might be the same person. But bear in mind that these are two totally different hats for someone to wear.

What are the different techniques in resource management?

There are six main techniques for effective resource management: resource forecasting, resource planning, resource allocation, resource scheduling, resource leveling, and resource smoothing.

1. Resource forecasting

Resource forecasting  predicts resource requirements in the future. Accurate forecasting means less waste and faster, cheaper execution.

To make all these predictions, you’ve got to be super familiar with your project life cycle and have a firm grasp of the resource availability within your organization. A work management solution can provide this level of visibility, as well as easy access to your projects and resources all in one place.

2. Resource planning

Resource planning is all about figuring out what resources (like people, time, and money) you need to complete your project and ensuring that the right pieces are in the right place at the right time. With proper resource planning, teams can stay organized, efficient, and ready to take on any challenge that comes their way.

3. Resource allocation

Resource allocation is all about getting the most from your available resources. This means assessing all the resources at your disposal, analyzing how they can be used efficiently, and then deploying those resources to help your team get to work.

4. Resource scheduling

Resource scheduling is the process of creating a well-choreographed plan for when and where resources, like employees, equipment, and facilities, will be used. Your focus is on arranging all your resources within a timeline to ensure tasks and projects are completed on time and without any clashes. The tool you use for resource scheduling is a resource calendar – a calendar that lets you schedule, manage and allocate all your project resources so that you can meet the project milestones and deadlines.

5. Resource leveling

Resource leveling is a method managers use to uncover underused or misallocated resources and then redeploy them to optimize efficiency. In terms of stock, this would mean ensuring you have neither a shortage nor an excess of your inventory. Similarly, you might extend a project’s timeline to level out the overall costs; for example, if you need to wait for cost-effective materials to be available.

6. Resource smoothing

Resource smoothing aims to ensure resources are spread out as evenly as possible over time. When done well, project managers will still meet project deadlines and objectives, while minimizing fluctuations caused by resource overloading or underutilization. This technique involves modifying the start and finish dates of activities within a project to avoid peaks and valleys.

monday work management can make the process of forecasting, allocating, scheduling, leveling and smoothing your resources far easier to do, with a no-code, user-friendly visual interface. Check it out for free today and see for yourself!

What are 5 common types of resources in project management?

Generally speaking, as a project manager (or resource manager), there are five different types of project management resources that will occupy your time.

The people on your team who carry out project tasks are sometimes known as your human resources. HR can include a pretty broad spectrum of management tasks — from job recruitment and time management to measuring your workers’ performance and their workload against KPIs. As you’ve probably guessed, resource management is essential to accomplish these things.

monday work management can be used as a comprehensive resource management software , with WorkForms to capture job applications, a Time Tracking Widget to keep an eye on your team’s workload, and many different HR-specific templates to help you get started in a quick and organized fashion.

2. Material resources

Project materials are the tangible resources your team needs to complete a task – the consumable materials involved (such as the component parts that go into a construction project, for instance).

If you’ve got a pretty big project, you might find it challenging to track dozens of items on a spreadsheet. That’s where monday work management comes in handy.

Our Map Views enable everybody to see precise material locations and share labels for different material types on your workflow templates. You can also choose from Gantt, Kanban, Work Calendar, and Dashboard views to instantly see a resource status at any given moment.

3.  Equipment 

There is some overlap between the equipment and materials you’ll need to keep track of as a project manager. The difference between the two is that materials are used up by the project, whereas you should still have your equipment when you finish up. For instance, if you’re building a wall, you’d use up all the bricks by the end of the project, but you’d still have your trowel and your shovel.

Managing your project budget is one of the hardest parts to get right. For project managers, keeping tabs on your money involves tracking expenses, forecasting costs, and sometimes making strategic decisions to make sure you stay within budget.

Managing time as a project manager is about creating schedules and timelines for your project and your team, and then tracking tasks to make sure you hit your deadlines. The secret is to prioritize tasks and keep a close eye on progress to avoid any delays.

What are the benefits of resource management?

Resource management might sound like an extra step in an already long project process — but it’s absolutely critical if you want to optimize and best utilize your assets.

Here are the top three benefits you’ll receive if you invest upfront in resource management:

1. Resource management helps you avoid unforeseen hiccups

59% of professional services companies consider the “inability to predict project resource needs” as a top business challenge. But by taking the time to develo a firm understanding of what you have and how to put it to use, you’ll forecast any potential problems before they arise. Expect to save yourself and your team major headaches along the way.

2. Resource management minimizes team burnout

Effective resource management means you’ll avoid over-allocating resources, which would otherwise stifle your team’s productivity.

3. Resource management makes your team more effective

By optimizing the allocation of resources, your team will find it easier to complete tasks on time, and experience less wastage of resources, making you more likely to finish your projects on time and within budget.

4. Resource management offers a safety net if things head south

Let’s say your project doesn’t hit your goals due to a lack of resources. It happens. But, if you can demonstrate you planned and managed your resources appropriately, your stakeholders will know you did everything possible with your available assets, reaffirming their trust in you.

5. Resource management builds operational efficiency

Managing your resources and keeping tabs on allocation allows you to better understand how your team consumes resources. That data will enable accurate planning for your next project.

Best practice tips for resource management

If you’re just starting to work on your resource management processes, here are our three top tips:

1. Plan ahead

Just 2.5% of companies complete every project on time. If you want to be one of them, start trying to figure out your resource requirements as early as possible in the project, to avoid those last-minute scrambles.

2. Balance your team’s workloads

Don’t overload your team – that’s how mistakes get made. In fact, more than half of employees have begun to feel signs of burnout. To avoid putting too much pressure on your team, break large tasks down into smaller tasks and aim to distribute them fairly across multiple team members.

3. Be flexible

Good resource management is based on a strong awareness that change happens. KPMG found that two-thirds of project managers recognized this, and had a formal project change management process in place. So, when planning and allocating resources for your project, expect the unexpected. Be prepared that you’ll probably need to tweak your resource allocation as the project goes on.

Manage your resources efficiently with monday.com

monday work management makes the challenging balancing act of resource management easier. We help you put all your resources front and center, so you can see what’s used, how long for, and who’s responsible in real-time.

Our user-friendly, no-code work management platform lets you:

• Plan, schedule, and allocate resources to adapt to changing priorities, with resource-centric displays that give you the precise status of the resource as a snapshot.

• Use the Workload View to easily visualize and track the hours each team member takes to work on each project task. By doing this, you can gain a quick overview of over and under-utilized resources and manage your team’s time proactively. You can also use this view to track resources and equipment.

• Keep an eye on your project budget and track your expenses with our financial overview displays.

Kickstart resource management planning with monday.com

The bottom line: resource management is a critical component of project management . You can avoid all sorts of unforeseen problems by planning, scheduling and allocating your resources upfront.

monday work management allows teams to focus on executing tasks, projects, and processes efficiently and achieve shared goals at scale.

• Project resource management

Resource management

The ultimate guide to resource management

For anyone involved in project management, resource management is a crucial skill to learn. It’s how you ensure that you have the right resources to complete the project — but even more than that, it’s how you ensure that those resources don’t go to waste over the course of the project.

Because resource management ties heavily into productivity and project success, helping you and your team to deliver projects on time and within the budget, resource management could also be considered part of your risk management strategy.

But what exactly is resource management? And what are some techniques you can adopt to manage resources effectively? We’ll answer those questions and more in this guide.

What is resource management?

Resources include anything that an organization needs to complete a project or task. Think not only about things like physical supplies, but also team member skill sets, software adoption, time involved, etc.

Resource management is how you plan, manage, and budget these resources. It involves forecasting how much you will need for upcoming tasks and projects so that you can deliver the task on time and within the specified budget.

Operational vs. strategic resource management

Operational resource management and strategic resource management are similar in concept but different in terms of time frames. Strategic resource management involves high-level planning — the resources you may need over the course of the next several years. Operational resource management focuses on the short term, like the things you will need to complete an upcoming project.

Operational resource management

Operational resource management delves into specifics, like supplies needed, skills your team needs right now, or time forecasted to complete a project.

It should help you build out an accurate project budget.

It should also help you plan deadlines for an upcoming project.

Strategic resource management

Strategic resource management is about future-proofing, like planning for skills you may need in the future as trends or business objectives shift.

Rather than specifying budgets or timeframes, this type of resource management helps organizations stay current and competitive.

Why is resource management so important?

Resource management is crucial for the same reason that grocery lists are crucial to weekly meal prep. If you shop without the list, you’re bound to forget things — and that will lead to lots of wasted time and money when you find yourself rushing to the corner store late at night to pay premium pricing for the ingredients you forgot.

Imagine that happening on a grander scale throughout the course of a project. To put it simply, managing resources well keeps things streamlined throughout the project lifecycle. It’s all about having everything you need to do the job on time and within budget constraints.

When resource shortages happen, bottlenecks form, which can lead to missed deadlines and ballooning budgets. But if you’ve planned out everything you need — from the people and skills to the supplies and facilities — then your project should move smoothly from one task or phase to the next.

What are the major benefits of practicing resource management?

Broadly speaking, resources (including things like time, budgets, software, hardware, facilities, etc.), can be broken down into three categories: materials, people, and costs. While resource management lets you streamline project workflow in lots of ways to improve every aspect of a project, it’s the human part of the equation that reaps the biggest benefits. We’ll show you some of those benefits below.

Benefit #1: It prevents burnout across your team

Everyone on your team is more than a number. They’re all essential assets that help you deliver projects. Part of resource management is managing their time properly — and by that, we don’t mean micromanaging them .

Rather, it’s all about ensuring that everyone’s workload is balanced such that they’re productive without being overloaded. When you do spot overallocation, it’s time to adjust workloads to prevent burnout. Burnout is a surprisingly common thing, too. According to a recent study by Indeed, over half (52%) of respondents experienced burnout in 2021 .

When you can provide realistic schedules, you’ll find:

Your team is happier, more productive, and less stressed out.

Everyone’s calendars are weighted evenly so that everyone is at maximum productivity (no one working too hard while other team members wait their turn).

Project managers can more easily track schedules and fill empty spaces without doubling up on someone else’s schedule.

That isn’t to say that you should always be filling empty spaces on team member schedules. Actually, it’s better to ensure that everyone has at least a little free space. There will be times when stakeholders ask for changes or when unforeseen problems create delays. When you’re managing resources well — including human resources — team members should be able to work these things into their schedules without too much disruption to their lives.

Benefit #2: It helps you predict problems

It’s impossible to predict potential problems 100% of the time. If we could do that, there would never be any problems!

However, it is possible to anticipate potential problems and be prepared for them.

Think about things that can happen, or that have happened on past projects for an indication of what could happen on future projects. Ever spent a day not accomplishing much of anything because of a network or server outage? Sometimes tasks don’t get accomplished because team members get sick. Sometimes, they even quit.

Resource management makes it easier to deal with these issues. This is because part of resource allocation should be devoted to creating contingencies just in case something goes awry. Or, allocating buffer time so that you and your team have breathing room to catch up and meet deadlines without losing sleep over it.

Resource planning also lets you compare costs to your budget so that you can predict costs before a project starts. If you have a $5,000 budget and engineers cost $100 an hour, then you can forecast that you’ll need to keep engineer hours under 50 (and actually even less, since they won’t be your only project expense).

Benefit #3: It helps you utilize the right skillsets

It’s easy to look at a big picture calendar and decide that since most of the team has availability, that means you must have the capacity to take on another project. That kind of decision-making is also a hallmark of poor resource planning.

Doing it the right way means analyzing everyone’s skillset, then making the decision based on which skills are currently available. If the engineering team is currently at max capacity, for example, and the new project needs to start with some preliminary engineering, then the truth is that you don’t have the resources available to start the new project.

Resource management also helps you balance the workload across all skillsets. Think about that hypothetical engineering team, hard at work on the first steps of the project. Now ask yourself: In this scenario, what are the graphics designers doing while the engineers kick things off? What about the marketers?

If the answer to that question is, “Well, they’re just kind of waiting for information from the engineers,” then resources aren’t being managed as well as they could be.

Even if some members of the team need information from other members of the team to do some of their tasks, there are almost always tasks to start while they wait. Marketers can perform market research or develop buyer personas, for example. While graphic designers may not be able to do much as far as page or UI design yet, they can still begin collecting image assets or developing logos and other branded image files for later use.

Managing resources well means not just allocating resources, but also careful resource scheduling so that specialists or specialized groups within your team don’t find themselves overburdened at particular phases of the project.

Benefit #4: It creates transparency for everyone

Resource management keeps your resources organized and easy to view, which creates transparency — and transparency is key for several reasons. For team leaders and project managers, transparency means they’ll have an in-depth view of resources, assets, tasks, and more, which gives them the tools needed for project optimization and effective management.

For team members, transparency helps with time tracking and scheduling. Individuals can see where individual tasks are in the pipeline to gauge when those tasks will be headed to them for the next stage of completion.

Other teams value transparency, too, because it helps them assess your team’s bandwidth. In large organizations where teams are divided up by specialty, this lets other teams know when your team will have availability to lend their skills to a new project.

And then there are the stakeholders. Transparency lets them monitor progress, which in turn allows them to provide timely notice of changes that need to be made or other items that your team may need to consider.

Benefit #5: It makes early and on-time project delivery possible

When you get right down to it, effective resource management is the backbone of every project. As you can see in the benefits listed above, it helps you with project planning , resource allocation, and even with things like forecasting potential problems so that you can prepare for them in advance. It also helps the project stay organized.

And all of that put together means you can make on-time and even early delivery happen.

Better yet, you may even be able to produce deliverables with fewer billable hours and fewer resources used. That’s the power of efficiency. Managing resources well keeps your team running like a well-oiled machine, which lets your team meet or even exceed the project timeline.

Case study: Pravda Media Group

By now, some of the benefits to resource management are easy to see — but you can get an even clearer picture by examining how one agency ditched spreadsheets and email threads in favour of a much more efficient real-time resource management strategy. We’re speaking of B2B digital marketing agency Pravda Media Group.

Spreadsheets, email trails, status meetings: This was the old way of doing things for Pravda, and it caused a lot of problems in that it was a scattered, time-consuming approach. Worse, team members found it impossible to communicate clearly on each project or see what everyone was working on.

To correct the problem, Pravda invested in Teamwork for resource management.

The result was a night and day difference. Pravda’s CEO Kfir Pravda reports that teams now schedule projects in Gantt charts to keep track of tasks while using Teamwork’s Notebooks feature to store and keep track of plans and meeting notes. Filters help analyze project health by tracking resource allocation, potential bottlenecks, and budget projections, helping ensure that projects stay on track.

“Now I’m able to do what I call ‘proactive mentoring,” Pravda says, “because I have transparency with tasks and progress, I’m able to jump in and give them guidance on everything from client interactions to troubleshooting. We’re not wasting time finding information, or trying to figure out next steps, or get status reports of other people’s work. We’ll all 100% aligned now and working at full power, pushing ahead towards a clear goal.”

See what we mean? By managing resources, Pravda knows when a team member’s schedule is overbooked, and they also know when a project is running late. That’s the power of tracking and monitoring resources in real time.

3 resource management techniques to boost productivity

Resource management is a powerful way to track project metrics and predict problems. But what about specific techniques you can use to implement resource management? We’ll cover that below.

Allocate resources using data

To allocate resources, you need to be able to take a deep dive into the numbers. Start with your resource allocation reports to get a bird’s-eye view of where people are working, how full their schedules are, and what projects need to have their resources re-evaluated.

Now, imagine that you’re working on a project for a client and it’s nearly done. The team is running behind, and the first test of the software is just two days away. Looking at the project schedule, you can see that the two software designers who are working on the launch actually need three full days to prepare for the software test.

Since you can’t add more to the software designers’ schedules, you’ll need to search your team’s availability to see if there is someone else with the right skillset who can drop their current tasks to do the urgent one — and that’s a bad place to find yourself, since it means you have no available resources and you have to risk derailing a different task or project just to tend to this one.

When you’re allocating resources, incorporate a buffer into everyone’s schedule. If everyone’s calendar has a buffer, you can resolve these issues before they derail a project. This gives everyone the breathing room needed when tasks are running late or other things happen, like when clients ask for extra features.

Level up your unused resources

Project management is a constant juggling act to make sure everyone’s schedules have an even workload. In reality, that’s easier said than done. It’s normal to have at least some underutilized resources — but you don’t want that to go too far.

And a technique called “resource leveling” is one way to approach this problem.

Resource leveling is simple. Start by searching for underused resources within your team. To verify that these resources are actually underutilized, check that they’re not:

Working on other tasks

On vacation or off sick

Asleep (because they’re in another time zone)

If none of the above applies, it’s a sure sign that these team members have underutilized time on their calendars — and it’s time to fill those calendars up.

Next, consider the skillset of each team member with underutilized time, and evaluate why that skillset isn’t being used. For instance, let’s say you have a graphic designer on your team. Maybe their schedule is thin because at the moment, there is little in the way of graphical work to do — they’re waiting for someone else to finish up tasks before they can get going on the next batch of graphics.

In this situation, is there something else the graphic designer can do? Can they create marketing content or start building different skills, like product promotion?

If that’s a possibility, then allocate them some tasks like writing blog posts or brainstorming ideas for new products and services. This solves two problems: Your underutilized team member will make the most of their schedule while building new skills, and you won’t have to hire more staff to handle the brainstorming or blog writing.

Track every budget

Staying on budget is one of the hardest parts of project management — and these statistics underscore the problem:

Seventy percent of projects fail.

Fifty-five percent of project managers say that budget overruns are the reason for project failure.

Ouch, right?

That’s why budget management is such a huge part of resource management — and budget management has its own set of components to track. You’ll need to forecast resource utilization by estimating how many people you’ll need to complete the project, you’ll need to keep project scope in check, and you’ll need to predict (or account for) unforeseen problems and risks.

Fortunately, Teamwork saves the day by giving you a resource management tool kit to better manage budgets as part of your overall resource management plan. Use it to create budgets based on:

Billable time

Non-billable time

Billed time

Unbilled time

After project kick-off, each time a team member logs time working on that project, Teamwork automatically deducts that time from the right budget based on the team member’s rate. Then, through Teamwork’s dashboard, you can check the health of the project budget, seeing how much time you estimated for the project and how much of that time has been used to date.

This gives you a better way to analyze project profitability since you have a simplified view of your team’s billable time — and with that info, you can prioritize high-value clients. It also gives you transparency, which means you’ll be better at resource forecasting . That equips you to accurately create proposals, timelines, and cost forecasts for future projects.

What to look for in a resource management tool

Now that we’ve covered the basics, it’s time to consider what you’ll need in a resource management tool. The right software should offer a blend of key features, which we’ll dive into below.

Provides real-time data and insights

Real-time data and insights are crucial. This data not only helps you stay on top of resource availability at any given time, but it also lets you spot trends that can point to potential bottlenecks or problems that may be coming in the future.

Enables seamless resource scheduling

Resource management software should give you not only the tools to track each project resource, but also the tools to schedule and allocate them. You can reduce your workload, increase transparency, and keep everything organized when you can update budgets, schedule tasks, and more, all in one space.

Offers organization-wide visibility

Organization-wide visibility is critical when you’re balancing resources across multiple projects . You’ll need to be able to assess each team member’s availability no matter what projects they’re currently working on so that you can allocate as needed. The right workload planning tool will let you see availability across all projects — and handle scheduling, budget management, and other key metrics across each of your projects.

Integrates with other go-to tools

Are spreadsheets still part of your resource management process? What about other software suites? Chances are, no matter what resource management tool you use, you’ll still use other types of software to drill down on budgets, billable hours, and other numbers. To that end, your resource management tool of choice should offer integrations for all of the apps you plan to use.

Ready to implement better resource management?

Then Teamwork has what you need. We’re a fully featured, easily configurable app that lets you automate processes and workflows while centralizing project data all in one place — including the data you need to effectively manage resources.

Ready to give it a shot? Learn more about how marketing teams leverage Teamwork for resource management and try us out!

Ben is a Senior Content Marketing Specialist at Teamwork.com. Having held content roles at agencies and SaaS companies for the past 8 years, Ben loves writing about the latest tech trends and work hacks in the agency space.

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Resource Management Is People Management: Principles, Systems, and Plans

By Joe Weller | November 15, 2017 (updated November 28, 2022)

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The “resource” in resource management can refer to many things, including money, materials, and equipment — but the most important resource is people. Learn about resource management, download free templates, and hear from experts in the field. 

Included on This Page:

What Is Resource Management?

Why is resource management important, comprehensive resource management best practices, types of resource management and managers.

• Resource Management Templates 

A component of project management, resource management is a process designed to use human and tangible assets — finances, materials, and equipment — efficiently, effectively, and economically. Because the goal of resource management is to utilize 100% of resources, it is one of the most difficult processes to control, maintain, and achieve success. 

Resource management is the art and science of organizing finite resources, including human resources, to get your project to the finish line. You can use Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, or project management software (either individually or in combination) to handle what can be a chaotic process. Whatever tools you use, you need to stay on top of resources, from day one to the planned completion date, to ensure that you successfully meet budgets and timelines.

Looking for a better way to manage your resources? Look no further.

Resource Management by Smartsheet empowers your people to more effectively manage teams across projects, track time accurately, and forecast with confidence so you can make better, more informed decisions with a clear view of every project.

Watch the demo

“Resource management is essential for long- or short-term projects of any kind, because the final deliverable is only as good as the team and assets you’ve assembled. The right team working on the project is fundamental to its success,” says Fiona Remley , business operations and program management expert and VP, Global Agency Delivery Services for Rational Interaction. “The team also needs to know that they are getting the right talent for each deliverable. For example, at our agency, hoping a designer can do illustration is just that: a hope. It isn't going to enable the designer to do the work the team requires. Finding and casting talent is an essential component of the resource manager’s skill set.”

“It’s important to have a clear goal in mind when developing any business process, particularly resource management,” says Alan Zucker, Founding Principal of Project Management Essentials LLC . Zucker applies over 25 years of experience working in Fortune 100 companies, and is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP) and Agile Professional (PMI-ACP).

Resource management is all about ‘working back’ from a final project objective and creating a plan that maximises, as closely as possible, any and all resources, both human and non-human. “As Stephen Covey famously said, ‘start with the end in mind,’” says Zucker.

Heather Hunter , Vice President, Project Management at Edelman, develops project management processes, including strategic resource and staff planning, capacity planning, process development and implementation, and billability/utilization reporting management and planning. “Resource and project management involves many different moving parts, but the end goal is to support an excellent client experience for every project that meets budgetary expectations,” she says.

Industries that commonly use resource management include large-scale manufacturing, construction, high-tech, software, advertising, marketing, research, and consulting/professional services. In smaller companies, team members may double or triple up on duties to handle the workload, while in larger firms managers may be in charge of coordinating specific areas of responsibility. 

The following list includes different types of resource managements and some templates to help get you started:

• Resource Management: Resource managers chart the course that guides resources to the right places, sometimes months or years in advance. Resource managers usually  work in collaboration with a PMO ( project management office ) and its project managers to scrutinize costs, resource availability, and deadlines as they navigate the optimal deployment of people to projects. In many organizations, project managers also act as resource managers. To learn more about resource management on a large scale, read “Transform Your Business with Enterprise Resource Planning.”
• Project Management: Project managers control tasks and teams to achieve predetermined goals in clearly defined sequences and time frames. When an organization has a PMO, it sets up and maintains standards for project managers to follow. Often, PMO standards are aligned with best practices guidelines in the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) from the Project Management Institute (PMI). For free tools and tips, check out these p roject management resources and marketing solutions .
• Human Resources Management: People are the main resource of any company, and finding and managing team members that ‘fit’ is of strategic and tactical importance. Human resources management deals with recruiting and selecting the right people, providing appropriate onboarding , and developing performance appraisals and compensation and benefits. Human resources management is also concerned with staff motivation, safety and welfare, and complying with labor regulations. Human resource managers and teams are evolving beyond a traditional, task-oriented position to a more strategic organizational role. To learn more, read “ Human Resource Management 101: Functions, Policies & Procedures ” and “ Welcome to the HR Revolution: Strategic Human Resources Management .”  
• Natural Resource Management: This is the stewardship of resources like land and soil, water, and plants and trees, so they’ll be available for future generations.
• Financial Resource Management: This pertains to anything related to money, including assets (cash, stock, bonds, etc.) and debts (like loans). 
• Enterprise Asset Management: This refers to directing the capital assets of an enterprise, like a corporation or non-profit.
• Public Asset Management: Directing the capital asset of a government, like city, county, state, or a nation. 
• Digital Asset Management: Maintaining the storage and security of digital items (e.g. corporate documents, media).
• Facility Management: This is related to the operation of buildings like offices, data centers, warehouses, and hospitals. 
• Infrastructure Management: Building, operation, and maintenance of structures like roads, bridges, electrical grids, and sewers.
• Inventory Management: Maintaining the inventory of a business to maximize profitability and customer satisfaction.
• IT Service Management: Overseeing the information technology assets and services for an organization, often by a third party via an SLA-based contract. 

Resource management is an ongoing process that requires constant monitoring and adjustment based on resource availability, the demands of varying projects, and changes in priorities. Following the practices below can make resource management a more effective tool:

• Create a centralized resources pool to aid allocation of resources among projects and support a common approach to prioritizing projects and work. 
• Track resource allocation and availability throughout the life of each project to maximize resource usage and prevent delays.
• Track not just human resources, but also financial, inventory, and material resources. 
• Keep each human resource's skills and strengths up to date as skill sets change, to ensure these resources are used effectively and to help with resource leveling.
• Don’t over-allocate resources, as this will limit multi-tasking and burnout.
• Plan around the availability of constrained resources in order to prevent them from being overcommitted.
• Prioritize tasks and projects, and then strategically allocate resources to support KPIs and align with business needs.
• Determine which resources will be in short supply in the future and plan to increase them.
• Support different work styles across the organization to increase efficiency.
• Ensure non-project time is tracked to prevent over-allocation of resources and delays in work.
• Keep the most valuable assets happy and productive.
• Never forget that human resources are people that require a sense of stability and security, fair compensation based on their performance, and opportunity for advancement. 

In a research article titled “Relationship Between Human Resource Management Practices, Enterprise Strategy and Company Outcomes: Service Industry of China,” authors Nausheen Syed, Lin Xiaoyan, Syed Kamran Ajmal, and Khan Mansoor Shaukat posit the following hypotheses:

• Human resource management practices are closely linked with performance of service companies.
• There is a close association between HRM practices and business strategies of service companies.
• Strategic orientation is related to higher company performance.
• Incorporating HRM practices with enterprise strategy will be significantly and positively linked with company performance of service firms.

Using data gathered while studying companies in China, the researchers were then able to show that the use of practices like strategic allocation of resources, keeping valuable assets happy, and providing opportunities for advancement lead to increased organizational performance. 

Key Facets of Human Resource Management

In their book Assessment Centers in Human Resource Management , George C. Thornton III and Deborah E. Rupp lay out the high-level functions of a strong human resource management  program. While the main focus of the book is using assessment centers in the process, these categories apply to HR management in general. 

• Recruitment: Seek out people that might fill open positions (both current and future).
• Selection: Choose the most qualified candidates from those recruited.
• Placement: Match each hired candidate to the position best suited to their skills and abilities. 
• Training and Development: Give people the tools, skills, and training they need to succeed and advance.
• Performance Appraisal: Evaluate the accomplishments and competence of people, and make a plan to improve those that are lacking.
• Organizational Development: Make changes to the organizational structure to improve efficiency and productivity.   
• Human Resource Planning: Ensure that there will be enough people available in the future. 
• Promotion and Transfer: Move people to new positions as their skills and the needs of the organization changes. 
• Layoffs: The process of reducing headcount is not pleasant, but it needs to be accounted for when outside forces or changes in priorities result in too many employees or employees whose skills no longer meet the needs of the organization.

Resource Management Templates

The templates below help create a structure to track resource deployment. You’ll be able to see resource availability and allocation, track instances of overallocation. 

Staffing or Recruiting Plan

Finding the right people to join your team is one of the most important components of resource management and organizational success. A staffing plan ensures that you have the right people at the right time. This template is an at-a-glance resource to make organizing your staff more manageable with goals, budgets, and status and comment columns. This template can also be customized and updated based on your staffing needs.

  ‌  Download Staffing Plan Template - Excel

Financial Resources Management

Finances are planned, organized, controlled, and monitored to achieve organizational targets. For funds to be used most effectively, teams set and agree upon objectives, develop and evaluate policies, and put strategies, tactics and actions in place. Financial managers are responsible for the financial health of an organization and consult with the C-Suite in decision making. For more information on financial resources management, take a look at “ Free Financial Planning Templates ” and “ Free Business Budget Templates for Any Company .”

Project Budget Template

This practical template makes it easier to manage costs by project and tasks. Depending on the type of project, you may include equipment costs, contract employees, supplies, and other job-specific expenses. Tracking actual costs against estimates is also useful in modeling budgets for future projects.

Download Project Budget Template

Excel | Smartsheet

Distribution Management or Distribution Management Planning

Distribution management is a systematic process to make the delivery of goods more efficient by determining which items, in what amounts, and at what location, are needed to meet forecasted demand. The aim is to reduce ordering, transporting, and holding inventory to reduce costs and minimize shortages. The distribution manager forecasts inventory depletion and plans replenishment so no shortages occur. In this role, the distribution manager has to be conversant with complex telecommunications and IT systems, and often acts as a liaison with manufacturers, suppliers, retailers, and consumers.

Inventory Management Template

Inventory management is the supervision of stock items and non-capitalized assets. Inventory managers supervise the movement of goods from manufacturers to warehouses and then to the point of sale. Detailed daily records are kept for both new and returned items. Inventory management can be complex, no matter the size of an organization, but there should always be set processes in place to follow. Inventory managers lead inventory or warehouse teams, hire staff, write schedules, and monitor stock levels so they know when to replenish supplies. They are also time focused and aim for perfection: zero shortages. Learn more and download templates at “ Inventory Management 101: From Simple Inventory to Cloud-Based Management .”

This template enables inventory level monitoring, order requests, and re-order history in a single view. Set alerts for low stock quantities, check status on your mobile device, and track resupply orders.

Download Inventory Management Template

Space Management

Space management refers to managing physical space for maximum efficiency. It seems simple, but it’s complicated in practice. In manufacturing and warehouse environments (think of Amazon’s gigantic operations in multiple locations), space planning can be a major undertaking. It’s also an important part of retail environments to improve margins, make displays more appealing to customers, and increase overall sales. Typically, space managers have interior design, architectural, or engineering experience.

Information Technology Management

Information technology (IT) management aligns business strategies with company technology. To generate the most value, IT managers strive for a silo-free technology environment. IT managers create synergistic, creative collaboration between IT functions and infrastructure environments and converge facilities, management, security, servers, networking, and storage. Integrating and automating IT means companies of every size can get applications in operation sooner. Like any resource management process, one of the benefits IT management brings is the ability to adjust resources more quickly to meet unpredictable business demands. 

Utilization Management

“Utilization management is highly specialized — it’s about patient care and health insurance usage,” says Zucker. Also known as utilization review, utilization management evaluates the suitability and medical requirement of health care procedures, services, and facilities using evidence-based criteria under the provisions of an applicable health insurance plan. Utilization management helps minimize costs and determine if the recommended treatment is appropriate. Typically, utilization managers work collaboratively in a medical setting with a variety of administrative personnel and clinicians.

Techniques and Principles of Effective Resource Management

“We monitor team utilization and billability as well as staffing skills, which all informs capacity,” says Hunter. “Our teams are primarily project based, so the tools we use are important in managing our day-to-day utilization and load balancing, and to keep on track. “We use data to determine utilization rates. Project management partners closely track data with finance reporting to ensure our forecasted revenue and utilization is on target.” 

Managing resources effectively requires bringing together many different tools, techniques, principles, and disciplines, which are discussed below.

• Resource Planning: Begin by creating a detailed list of every resource, human and non-human, you need to complete the project. Involve team members in the process, since some aspects of the project may require resources you don’t know about. It’s better to plan for every possible item and not use them than to underestimate your needs, and end up scrambling and paying a premium at the last minute. In many ways, resource planning is financial planning. 
• Estimating and Forecasting: Perfection is nearly impossible to achieve in resource management, but you should still aim for it. Once project priorities have been clarified, take adequate time to estimate schedules and budget. Look to completed projects, including what went wrong, to help develop reasonable estimates and forecasts. Additionally, while you need to listen to management, estimates and forecasting should be realistic, and not simply fit management targets or unreasonable time frames. Update estimates periodically to reflect changes such as new decisions, shifts in resources, and the impact of these changes on the project as they happen. 

Keeping an eye on all the moving parts of a project ensures that you maintain control of time, tasks, risk, and changes. Visually representing data in one place facilitates transparency and communication with team members, and holds the line on schedules and approved budgets.

‌ ‌Download Project Management Dashboard Template - Excel

• Resource Breakdown and Prioritization: Use your original resource planning list to assess each item and give it a priority ranking. It’s up to you to identify hierarchies relevant to your project and business. This prioritization process compares the relative urgency and importance of requirements to cope with finite project resources. Careful prioritization ensures that the most critical requirements are immediately addressed if time or budgets change.
• Responsibility Assignment Matrix: Once you prioritize the needed resources, define the people who are responsible for task or overall project completion with a responsibility assignment matrix (RAM). Use the matrix to clarify roles and responsibilities for the full scope of the project. RAMs are often simple RACI charts (responsible, accountable, consulted,” and informed). Charts can be created by naming the individual or role. Learn more in “ A Comprehensive Project Management Guide for Everything RACI .”
• Resource Overallocation: Overallocation means that a team member can’t finish the assignment in the scheduled time frame. This can lead to overtime costs, or in the worst case scenario, can derail the project. Resource balance is critical, so monitor your team’s workload throughout the project’s lifecycle, and check workloads on a regular if not daily basis.

A resource histogram is a visual representation of the project team. Seeing status in this format helps prevent overallocation. If you see an area of concern, take action and shift tasks to a team member with a lighter workload. This template combines a weekly check sheet with a histogram for a graphical representation of resource management and allocation status. Adapt the template to your specific needs for human, supply, equipment, or other resources. Enter data, and the histogram will automatically be created for further analysis. 

‌ ‌Download Resource Histogram Template - Excel

• Resource Dependency and Scheduling: Resource dependency refers to an unhealthy over-reliance on one team to accomplish core work — this is particularly negative if it’s an external resource. Resource dependency can lead to backups and resource shortages. You can mitigate problems by spreading tasks across multiple resources, or having contingency plans in place should resources become unavailable. Since team members are likely working on multiple projects, it’s important to consider all their projects to effectively manage resources. For scheduling templates that provide visibility into team capacity, read “ Free Work Schedule Templates for Word and Excel .”   
• Resource Leveling or Smoothing: Leveling resources, also known as resource smoothing , is part of the resource management juggling act. It means you are aware of and managing resource availability across a single project or multiple projects. You can extend planned timeframes for specific tasks, avoid over- or under-allocating team members, and prevent team burnout. 
• Utilization Rate: This number tells you exactly what percentage of a team member’s time resources are being based on your time allocation. The goal is to work to full capacity so you don’t waste any time (or money). To calculate utilization rate, take the number of hours a resource worked relative to the total number of hours they had available to work. For example, if a consultant works 80 out of 100 available hours, she has an 80% utilization rate. Therefore, the consultant’s hours may need to be adjusted, since they haven’t worked to 100% utilization.  

Resource Management Concepts and Strategies

With so many elements to consider, it’s helpful to have techniques to take further control of projects. Below are some helpful tools and strategies to help you with your process.

Fishbone Diagram: When things go wrong with a project, you want to identify the root of the problem so you can learn from it and work towards a solution. To understand the root cause, you can use the fishbone diagram (also called an Ishikawa diagram ) invented by Dr. Kaoru Ishikawa, a Japanese quality control expert. 

This exercise helps teams avoid solutions that merely address the symptoms of a much larger problem. It can be used if trial and error is too time consuming, if the problem is very complicated, if you want to understand the root causes, or if there are many potential possible causes for a problem. One of the benefits of using a fishbone diagram is the visual layout, which makes it easy to compile and view information, and see the relationships between different elements. 

‌ ‌Download Fishbone Diagram Template - Excel

Complexity, Flexibility, and Planning for the Unknown: Remley says that dealing with unknowns is the norm in resource management, and that managers need to be flexible and able to deal with complexity. “For example, despite the client services team’s best efforts, there is no way we can scope all of the deliverables for a six or 12 month retainer. Even though part of the retainer scope is a staffing plan, we cannot be sure that they are the right resources until the work commences,” she says. “We determined that we would staff to 50% of the retainer roles at the start, with a further 25% roles added as the work increased. The final 25% of the staffing plan budget is always reserved for contingent staff or talent with unique skills who are bought in for the duration of the deliverable only.”  

Risk Management: “Resource management carries a high risk element as it is an issue that agencies face every day,” says Remley. “Resources are ‘borrowed’ from existing teams to work on new projects, high visibility projects, and new business all the time, and the resource manager is forced to ‘recast’ the teams. There is a lot of negotiation between teams for the same talent, and the resource manager is central to that negotiation. Oftentimes, the client service leads need to be part of this negotiation, as it may require rolling delivery dates in order for the talent to be able to move from deliverable to deliverable.”

Change Management: A project can bring about change in the workplace. Every milestone must be assessed for positive and negative impacts to the project itself and the overall work environment. Measure and monitor impacts, and report them to project sponsors and team members. Resource managers also have a part in organizational change, as companies continue to innovate processes and systems, staff roles and responsibilities, and incorporate technology for greater efficiency. 

KPIs in Resource Management: “Once the goal is well understood, we can begin to develop processes to meet the goal,” says Zucker. “As the processes are being envisioned, we should ask, ‘How does this step or process generate value?’ It’s important to ask whether the metrics provide actionable information. ‘Do these metrics or KPIs incentivize behaviors that actually align to the strategic objective?’” 

Zucker says that resource management organizations often create metrics that incentivize the wrong behavior. “For example, executives set a goal that resources be fully allocated to project work for the year,” says Zucker. “Most projects may only last three to four months, so resource managers know the current assignment and the next planned assignment. But they don’t know what project people will be working on in eight or nine months. To appear compliant with the organization’s goals, they may assign people to phantom projects just to make sure they’re not laid off or reassigned.” 

Remley is concerned with staffing. “KPIs for resource management differ according to the type of engagement. For large-scale retainers, it’s about auditing the utilization of the retained team to ensure that they are delivering at the scope agreed upon,” she says. “Accuracy in utilization reporting may be a KPI. Conversely, if the team is handling multiple individual projects, the KPIs may be focused on controlling contingent staff costs. Effective resource management is about knowing the different types of teams required, and mapping skill sets to those teams. When resourcing contingent staff, it’s around finding the right talent at the right price so the agency can deliver on its promises and stay within profit margins. If the contingent staff is billing $150 an hour and you are only able to charge your client that amount, the talent is effectively working at zero profit, which is not optimum.”

Soft Skills and Staff Motivation:  Most ‘resources’ are people, and people are ultimately responsible for a successful project. “Resource and project managers need to be master negotiators as they navigate between multiple project management teams who (of course) each consider their project to be the highest priority,” says Remley. “The manager needs to balance the (often conflicting) needs of each team and project and chart a course through. Sometimes success looks like everyone being equally annoyed, as their projects can be deprioritized in order to achieve everything that needs to be completed.”  

Hunter agrees. She says, “Resource managers must be pragmatic as well as empathetic. Pressures come from all sides and competing priorities often require the resource manager to cut through the emotional clutter to make the best decision for the work, the client and the organization.”

Apply Agile: An Agile proponent, Zucker thinks the methodology is an excellent resource management tool for technical and non-technical projects because it values people. “Agile values the creation of cross-functional, empowered teams. The teams are kept together so that they can become high-performing,” says Zucker. “The work is prioritized and the team works down the product backlog starting with the most valuable items. In this model the team is set. The monthly run rate is known and constant. So, resource planning and estimation are very easy in Agile project management. It is the number of people times their monthly rate. The team remains as a resistant team as long as there is work for them to perform.”

How to Create Your Own Resource Management Plan

“I don’t have any tricks, just years of experience and a desire to develop a plan that is realistic and provides the right staffing mix — both in levels and skills — to get the work done,” says Hunter. “Resource management and project management plans must be something all stakeholders can live with, so I find vetting them with the folks that are accountable is critical.” 

Hunter has found what works for her PMO. “We have a tried and true repeatable process that includes Smartsheet as our primary tool for day to day load balancing. Smartsheet allows teams to leverage a web-based solution that is easy to use and keeps everyone informed of their workload. We use tools like Smartsheet to compare planned work (allocations) against forecasted effort to ensure the teams are properly planned.” 

For Remley, it’s all about people. “The key principles of writing a resource or talent plan are to work through all the elements of the program plan and ensure that you have the correct team to deliver on that plan. Do you need auxiliary staff? Key skill sets that are not available in house? Would it be wise to outsource some of the project? You need to know all the deliverables ]to ensure you have the skills you need. If the marketing campaign has a temporary website, does it require UX? Is your marquee content a video and who can do the storyboards needed to sell the concept to the client? This is what effective resource management entails: thinking through all the elements, and reviewing all of them against the skill set of the internal team.” As for tools, she says, “We use a combination of MS Project for the project plans, 10,000Ft to register utilization, and Power Bi to track costs against the projects.”

Resource Management Systems for Efficiency and Visibility

There are many different types of tools and systems to help individuals and teams with the multifarious aspects of resource management from conception to completion. You can create your own with Excel, or choose among the hundreds of programs available, from free online solutions to complex enterprise products. These systems are designed to track the development of long-term projects by providing managers and other team members a single access point for all the relevant information. 

Best-in-class software includes all the nuts and bolts from planning, budgeting, invoicing, managing inventory, assigning human resources, managing tasks (including assigning and tracking tasks to completion), and file sharing. The primary goal is to increase company efficiency by providing increased project visibility from the start for every team member. 

Improve Resource Management Efforts with Smartsheet

Resource Management by Smartsheet is a powerful resource management software that helps to effectively manage the who, the what, and the when behind projects.

With Resource Management by Smartsheet, you can more easily build the best team for a project, keep project schedules and budgets on track, and confidently forecast business needs.

When teams have clarity into the work getting done and by whom, there’s no telling how much more they can accomplish in the same amount of time. Watch a free demo to learn more about Resource Management by Smartsheet.

Make better operational decisions with a powerful resource management tool.

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• Optimize Conversion and Adoption

What is resource management?

Consider this scenario: You need to move a heavy, large couch from one room to another. You need two strong people to complete the job, so you enlist another strong person to help you with the task. If you didn’t plan this ahead of time, then you wouldn’t be able to move the couch.

Resource management has a similar impact on organizations. It evaluates what needs to be done for a project, assigns people to tasks, and manages the resources available. Without proactive and careful planning, organizations can run into frequent disruptions which can lead to missing deadlines and unhappy stakeholders.

Resource management is the process of ensuring you have all the materials, headcount, and other things you require to complete a project or business objective. Resources can include finances, employees, physical materials, computing power, data storage, and more.

Evaluating your resources and ensuring they are efficiently used helps your organization maximize its ROI and minimize expenses.

Why is resource management so important?

Successful resource management can help you accelerate response times to customer requests, improve your team’s flexibility to change, and streamline operations. It helps you ensure projects are delivered on time and on budget.

Evaluating employees’ capacity and skill sets enables you to project realistic timelines and anticipate potential disruptions. It also helps teams and stakeholders stay on the same page by lending transparency and visibility into the team’s workload.

Preventing employee burnout is also crucial to ensuring their productivity and job satisfaction. Resource management enables you to match employees with tasks that maximize their skills and predict availability for new tasks and projects.

To summarize, resource management enables organizations to:

• Set expectations for customers on project delivery
• Identify gaps in resources
• Efficiently uses finances, technology, and space
• Increase agility and ability to pivot
• Eliminate waste and task duplication
• Streamline and automates processes
• Prevent excess costs

What does a good resource manager do?

A resource manager typically manages resources across an organization. While some organizations may have a specific person for this job, other roles can also have resource management as part of their job responsibilities. For example, an office administrator may be responsible for ensuring office supplies are available or restocked.

Project and product managers may also find themselves in similar positions as resource managers. These roles have to balance tasks, timelines, employee capacity, and other elements to ensure projects are completed. The key difference is that project managers tend to be responsible for individual projects while resource managers are in charge of resources for the entire company.

What are the 3 main areas of resource management?

There are three main resource management techniques:

• Forecasting

1. Allocation

As the name suggests, allocation assigns resources to tasks. But there are many elements to consider to make the right decisions. A resource manager will need to evaluate employee availability, skills, timelines, personality, and activities when assigning people to a project.

2. Leveling

Resource leveling is about balancing demand and supply. It’s a technique to maximize the resources you currently have before you consider hiring more employees.

Evaluating your current resources enables you to upskill employees, adjust timelines, and fill any gaps with other employee resources as needed.

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3. Forecasting

Resource management helps you identify your current capacity, evaluate future projects, and make adjustments to ensure goals are met. It also helps prevent issues like bottlenecks, overallocation, and employee shortages.

Resource allocation vs. resource leveling

While resource allocation and resource leveling both involve assigning people to tasks, they are used at different times.

• Resource leveling is often used when uneven allocation has occurred and adjustments are needed to fix the balance. It’s frequently used to ensure day-to-day tasks are accomplished
• Resource allocation concerns itself with the bigger picture of resource management

What does good resource management look like?

The goal is to achieve 100 percent utilization while minimizing costs. It’s a bit of an unrealistic goal, but the intention is to maximize your resources without increasing your expenses.

While resource management technology is crucial for success, communication is also a key area. Transparency is needed to ensure employees and other resources aren’t overwhelmed, and communication between team members is necessary to ensure productivity.

Flexibility is another important element that often gets overlooked. Plans may need to change at the last minute, and resource management is essential to pivoting without compromising workflows. An accurate overview of your resources makes it easier to stay agile.

How to create a resource management plan

A resource management plan will his designed to help you identify your resources, what is needed for a project, and predict any potential problems.

Here are five steps to creating a resource plan:

• Identify the resources you need to complete the task or project. This can include everything from material supplies to financial costs and employee capacity
• Assign tasks to the best-suited employees. Ensure you are utilizing your employees’ skills and abilities by matching them to tasks they can handle
• Calculate the estimated costs of your resources
• Create a realistic project timeline with expectations on when tasks should be completed and how long it should take to complete them
• Identify risks and potential problems that could occur. You may also want to develop ideas on how to manage these issues

Once you have created a resource management plan, remember to check in on the progress and remain flexible. For example, an employee may be out on vacation, and you may need to adjust your project timeline accordingly. Staying involved with employees and having clear communication is crucial to managing resources and projects.

More great articles from LogRocket:

• How to implement issue management to improve your product
• 8 ways to reduce cycle time and build a better product
• What is a PERT chart and how to make one
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• Explore six tried and true product management frameworks you should know
• Advisory boards aren’t just for executives. Join LogRocket’s Content Advisory Board. You’ll help inform the type of content we create and get access to exclusive meetups, social accreditation, and swag.

Challenges of resource management

Let’s review common issues that arise around resource management and how to overcome them:

Lack of visibility

Allocating tasks to the wrong employees, poor capacity planning, siloed resources.

Managers need a high-level overview of a team’s workload. Without it, they risk assigning too much work to employees causing burnout and missed deadlines. Having a work management tool can help managers visualize an employee’s capacity.

A manager may assume an employee has a skillset to complete a task, but in reality, they don’t. Not having an awareness of an employee’s skills and abilities can lead to assigning tasks they aren’t equipped to handle effectively.

Managers can counteract this by understanding their employees’ knowledge and what tasks they are good at completing.

Predicting what work is coming up in the pipeline can be a difficult task. It’s especially true when you need to assign tasks to employees without overwhelming them. Creating open lines of communication with other teams and departments can help you forecast what tasks are going to be needed from your team soon.

In large organizations, you may not be aware of all of your resources and capabilities. It can lead to not utilizing your resources to its full potential. Having transparency and visibility into an organization’s resources is crucial to preventing this scenario.

What is an example of resource management?

Let’s take a look at a real-life example of how better resource management led to improved product delivery.

A telecommunications company had difficulty planning capacity for its large team with 30–40 projects running concurrently. It lacked visibility into the team’s workload and project priorities and needed a better way besides spreadsheets for capacity planning.

The organization decided to adopt a resource management tool to assess resource constraints, which helped improve communication with stakeholders about what was happening with projects. With better tools for capacity planning, the team had better work distribution and more time to focus on other aspects of their jobs.

Key takeaways

Without a firm grasp of resource management, organizations risk increasing their expenses, failing to deliver products, and decreasing customer satisfaction. Organizations need to understand what resources are available to them, what they need to accomplish tasks and projects, and how to utilize their resources efficiently.

Resource management allows organizations to understand their capacity and find ways to maximize their ROI on their resources. It also helps to build a better work culture which can ensure employee productivity and satisfaction.

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The ultimate guide to resource management

11 Jan 2022 By David Turnbull

In this article 📖

Resource management sounds like an administrative task, but it’s inherently human. Resource management is about using your most important resource—people—in an empowering and efficient way.

Effective resource management is key to ensuring a happier, more fulfilling workplace where projects are completed on time while leaving room for employees to enjoy the work they are doing. Done right, it helps your employees avoid long hours, tight deadlines, and heavy workloads. But overlook this important aspect of business, and you incur expenses in overtime and risk losing talented people to burnout and job dissatisfaction.

Resources include people, budgets, equipment, meeting rooms—everything that facilitates projects. But your human resources are the ones driving the projects forward, so managing them well is critical to both employee experience and organizational growth.

What is resource management?

Resource management is a process that involves scheduling and allocating resources to optimize your team’s time and keep projects on track without overbooking people. It helps you distribute resources where they are needed so that you have a clear idea of who is doing what, when, and where.

At its core, resource management is about balancing cost, scope, and time such that employees are smoothly able to achieve the final, high-quality output. Often referred to as the “ iron triangle ” or the golden triangle of project management, the three elements of cost, scope, and time are interrelated, and changing one will have an impact on one or both of the other two.

For instance, if you book an employee for a project, but they don’t have availability, it will mean a missed deadline and will impact project timelines. You may need to rush hire a freelancer to cover for the employee, raising costs and running the risk of producing low-quality work.

With effective resource management, you can schedule, allocate, and use people so that you have complete visibility even before you overbook an employee. It helps you maintain harmony between the elements instead of having them compete with one another.

4 ways to apply resource management

Resource management comprises planning and allocating for current needs, forecasting future needs, and monitoring resource use with the help of reports. We go into detail on each:

1. Resource planning and forecasting

A resource management plan helps identify the number and type of resources required for each element of your project, so you stay on budget and on deadline. Every project size is different and needs different people and skills to complete. Resource forecasting helps anticipate those needs in advance so that you can identify gaps in availability. It can help you determine whether you have the skills in-house or if you need to hire freelancers, and whether you have the budget to cover those costs.

Download a free resource planning template

2. Resource allocation and scheduling

Resource allocation is the act of distributing and scheduling tasks so that each task is assigned to a team member, has start and end dates, and a status. But it’s not as simple as it sounds. Two different projects may require the same team members, the scope of the project may change, and some employees may unexpectedly get sick or be unavailable for the duration of the project. Without a tool to do this with, this can be a time-intensive task, especially if you’re manually updating spreadsheets.

3. Resource leveling and smoothing

Resource leveling means creating reasonable workloads for your employees. However, this method only skims the surface and doesn’t account for buffer time for employees. Resource smoothing is the smarter way to manage employee time— allocate fewer hours to begin with. This type of mindful resource utilization views resources as human, with schedules, abilities, and attention spans that are subject to change.

When you are cognizant of this fluidity and create buffers, employees are left with some time to catch up on a backlog, put in more hours when it’s really needed, and don’t get terribly behind when they need to take a sick day or attend to a personal situation. It ensures that your employees aren’t stretched thin, and deadlines are still being met. Ultimately, resource smoothing and resource utilization are critical to the success of your project.

4. Resource reporting

Resource reporting uses metrics to give you insights into how your resources are being used and how much capacity you have. It is a great way to distribute workloads evenly and use your human resources in a way that leaves room for innovation, knowledge sharing, and continuous learning.

“Resource Guru has the perfect balance of simplicity and detail. It’s easy to see where issues might arise.” Alex Matthews Head of Creative Technology

Employee satisfaction depends on effective resource management

Providing a great employee experience is one of the biggest challenges for the modern workplace, and it hinges on effective resource management. Especially in a pandemic that has overturned past ways of working and reset expectations about work-life balance , employers need to prioritize job satisfaction and happiness at work.

Resource management doesn’t just let you manage employee time effectively; it enables you to adopt a human approach to managing people. When an employee is able to stay on top of tasks, meet deadlines without stress, and maintain a work-life balance, it makes them more productive and engaged, leading to higher job satisfaction . When employees have a happy environment where completing projects is possible and feels good, it builds trust that the employer cares about their well-being and, in turn, boosts retention.

In the absence of efficient resource management, workloads become unevenly distributed, and employees end up overbooked and exhausted. An unsustainable workload is one of the main causes of burnout among employees. Burned out and dissatisfied employees struggle to perform well with customers. In a survey of 1,000 employees , 64% said that their “employee experience impacts their ability to serve customers.” Ultimately, this has a ripple effect on your bottom line.

Benefits of using software for resource management

Resource management software is technology that allows you to plan, schedule, allocate, and shuffle resources as needed.

Traditionally, companies have relied on spreadsheets , calendars, whiteboards, and even paper. These approaches might work with small teams, but as projects scale in size and complexity, it is time consuming, labor intensive, and prone to errors. Imagine trying to schedule a 50-person project with varying skills sets, time zones, and availability onto a single spreadsheet.

Specialized resource scheduling software will give you the ability to filter your schedule by skills, letting you see who has the skills required and is available for the work. Specifically, resource management software makes business processes easier with many benefits:

• Improved project management: You need a single source of truth to ensure projects move seamlessly between different employees and departments. The right resource management tool keeps project and client details in one place so that anyone involved has visibility into progress.
• Account for unforeseen pivots: Your resources are people with commitments outside of work. You need to ensure that when unforeseen circumstances pop up, they don’t affect schedules and cause delays. With a tool, you can drag and drop bookings as needed when someone is sick, or an important meeting is moved.
• Save time and costs: When you add up the potential time saved using a dedicated tool over a spreadsheet, you’ll quickly see large savings in both time and cost. As an example, if resource management software helps a team of 25 people charged out at an average hourly rate of $112 to save just 15 minutes each per day, the company will end up saving 125 hours, or $14,000, per month.
• Leave management: Accounting for vacation days can be a tedious task. Be it parental leave or vacation; a tool can make leave management a breeze by planning workloads in the context of your team’s absence.

Empower employees with resource management instead of stretching them thin

As organizations continue to manage the effects of the pandemic, eight out of ten employees feel they’ve been asked to do more and are struggling to keep up with their workflow. Done right, resource management can help counter this trend by empowering you to maintain a work-life balance for employees and drive growth for your business.

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David Turnbull

Hi, I'm David, I work in Growth Marketing at Resource Guru. Please feel free to leave comments or get in touch - I'd love to hear from you.

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Resource Management: Types, Stages, and Optimization Tips 

Imagine you’re about to renovate your home. Your ultimate goal would be to get the desired results within the time and budget you have available.

But, to achieve your final outcome, you’ll need to manage: 

• Human resources (the specialists involved in renovation), 
• Financial resources (the budget available for renovation), and 
• Physical resources (materials required for this project).

This scenario is a simplified version of resource management. The reality is that managing resources becomes even more challenging in a business context — especially when managing large or complex projects. To add to the problem, resources, such as talent and money, are often limited.

So, how to do more with less? 

You can find the answer in this guide as we cover these points:

• The types of resource management, 
• The stages involved in managing resources, and 
• Some expert tips to help you optimize your resource management.

Let’s get started.

Table of Contents

What is resource management? 

Resource management refers to a set of practices and tools that help businesses make the best use of their resources, such as time, money, and people. The goal of resource management is to ensure the right resources are available at the right time for the right task or project.

Let’s put it another way.

Ever played a video game called Tetris? In this game, players must manipulate falling blocks of different shapes to fit them together efficiently within a confined space. If the blocks pile up and reach the top of the screen, the game ends.

Now, let’s replace the falling blocks with vital resources: 

• Time, 
• Money, 
• People,  
• Information, and 
• Materials. 

Resource management is all about skillfully putting these blocks together efficiently to achieve project success. 

For instance, if you are building a house, you will need to put together resources, such as:

• People (contractor or subcontractor),
• Time (2 years),
• Money ($350,000),
• Materials (bricks, tiles, paint, furniture, etc.), and 
• Information (knowledge about building permits and safety regulations).

Just as in Tetris, if you don’t manage these resources well, your project (and business) can suffer. The harsh consequences of poor resource management can include financial losses, missed opportunities, and even project failures. 

But, how exactly do you master the art of resource management?  

Before we get into the strategies, let’s first look at the types and stages of resource management.

What are the 5 types of resource management?

When we talk about the types of resource management, we are essentially talking about managing different types of resources. 

As we all know, people, time, and money are the most important resources every business needs. But, you may need other resources for efficient project management , such as raw materials and information.

Let’s look at these resources in some detail.

Type #1: Human resource management (HRM)

As the term suggests, human resource management is all about managing the most important resource of organizations — the human capital. In other words, HRM involves a set of practices and tools a company uses to: 

• Employ, 
• Compensate, 
• Train, 
• Nurture, and 
• Retain employees.

In their book Human Resource Management: The Key Concepts , authors Chris Rowley and Keith Jackson categorize HRM activities into these four groups:

• Employee resourcing — workforce planning, recruitment, candidate assessment, contracts of employment, and onboarding,
• Employee rewards — compensation strategies, performance evaluation, benefits, motivation, and rewards,
• Employee development — skills development, knowledge transfer, career and leadership development, and
• Employee relations — creating and implementing policies about workplace safety, discrimination and bullying, time tracking, legal compliance, work-life balance.

The purpose of HRM is to nurture and engage employees. According to Gartner’s research , a nurturing environment can then help businesses: 

• Achieve organizational goals,
• Manage other resources (such as money, materials, and data),
• Boost productivity,
• Retain top talent,
• Enhance customer satisfaction, and
• Improve revenue growth. 

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Transform the way you manage your in-house and remote workforce with expert tips and insights. Get started with this blog post now:

• Differences between managing in-house and remote employees

Type #2: Financial resource management (FRM)

Financial resource management involves efficient handling of a business’ cash flow and other assets. Financial resources can include both:

• Internal resources — profits generated by sales, capital funding, investments, and assets that can be converted into cash, and
• External resources — credit and loans from banks, government agencies, and other external sources.

FRM includes the following activities:

• Budgeting — setting financial plans and limits for income and expenditures,
• Financial planning and forecasting — creating strategies for future financial performance,
• Cost control — reducing expenses to ensure the business stays profitable,
• Bookkeeping and accounting — recording, analyzing, and reporting financial transactions,
• Resource allocation — allocating funds and assets to different departments within an organization, 
• Financial risk assessment — evaluating potential financial threats and developing strategies to manage them,
• Asset management — monitoring and managing the inventory to maximize return on investment, and
• Regulatory compliance — adhering to legal and industry-specific financial regulations and standards.

The main goal of FRM is to ensure the business uses its cash and assets to stay profitable and competitive. This is more important than ever with lack of cash flow being the top reason for business failure, according to a 2022 Skynova survey .

On top of that, a different study found that 65.2% of businesses stayed profitable by optimizing their cash management practices.

These findings highlight the importance of effective FRM that helps businesses maximize their profitability and stay competitive.

Discover easy ways to track and take control of your expenses. Click here to learn more.

• How to keep track of expenses

Type #3: Time resource management (TRM)

Next up in our list is time management , which involves tools and strategies to make the most efficient use of time.

TRM involves the following activities and processes:

• Goal-setting — prioritizing and focusing on essential tasks and goals,
• Task scheduling — allocating time to activities to ensure each moment is purposefully assigned,
• Streamlining processes — reducing complexity to help utilize time efficiently,
• Promoting time discipline — encouraging a culture where everyone values efficient time management, 
• Adjusting workloads and priorities — using feedback to optimize workloads and schedules to boost productivity, and
• Tracking time — using time tracking apps to measure progress and allocate resources.

On top of all the other benefits each time management strategy comes with, time management techniques can also help individuals and organizations reduce procrastination and improve productivity.  

In fact, a study by Bain & Company found that efficient time management can help improve employee engagement while lowering costs and boosting productivity.

Another study titled Does time management work? A meta-analysis found that time management helps enhance employees’ job performance and well-being.

Learn the art and craft of creating project timelines and download free templates. Dive into our in-depth blog post:

• How to create a project timeline (+ free templates)

Type #4: Information resource management (IRM)

As defined in a research paper on information resource management , “ IRM is a complex process involving the planning, developing, controlling, operating, and utilizing of organizational information resources.”

The purpose of IRM is to efficiently manage data resources to achieve business goals. For example, by gathering and analyzing customer purchase history, businesses can create personalized marketing messages to improve customer experience.

In the example we gave above, you saw that a house owner needs to possess specific information, such as knowledge of building permits, price of materials, etc., to complete their project.

Here are the aspects of information resource management:

• Knowledge management — organizing and facilitating access to data in the form of documents, digital content, reports, and intellectual assets,
• Data analytics — making informed decisions based on data and analytics,
• Data cleansing — removing duplicate or unwanted data to improve data quality, 
• Maintaining data repositories — creating a centralized database to offer a unified view of the company’s data, 
• Data governance — establishing policies and standardized practices related to data management, 
• Data security and compliance — protecting critical data by using methods, such as access control, encryption, and other security measures, and
• Information infrastructure — managing the tools that store and handle data, such as software, hardware, and network resources.

Type #5: Physical resource management

This type of resource management involves managing your business’ tangible physical assets — office equipment, building, vehicles, and raw materials. 

For instance, a business that offers laundry services will need to manage physical resources, such as washing machines, dryers, irons, steamers, tables, etc.

The primary goal of physical resource management is to use these assets efficiently to achieve the desired goals. 

These are some of the aspects and activities linked to physical resource management:

• Acquiring resources — purchasing or renting new physical resources as needed,
• Asset maintenance — scheduling regular maintenance to optimize the assets’ functionality and lifespan,
• Inventory control — managing inventory levels to ensure that essential materials and supplies are available when needed,
• Asset tracking — using technology, such as asset tracking systems or software, to monitor the location, condition, and usage of physical resources, and
• Resource optimization — identifying opportunities to enhance the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of physical assets.

What are the stages of resource management?

The stages involved in resource management can depend on the complexity of the project and the type of resources being managed.  

For instance, in the case of software product design, it all starts with understanding the project scope, according to Zoran Vizmeg , Project Manager at CAKE.com. He lists the following stages of resource management:

• Step #1: Identifying resource needs — the project team, the product team, and the codebase team discuss the project requirements, complexity, and feasibility.
• Step #2: Assessing and planning resources — with the help of the team, the project manager then creates a project roadmap, defines each task, and estimates the resource requirements.
• Step #3: Allocating resources — the project manager assigns tasks to individual developers or teams.
• Step #4: Scheduling resources — the manager creates a detailed schedule for each task with the help of a scheduling tool, such as Clockify.
• Step #5: Monitoring resources — the project team monitors the project and resources. 
• Step #6: Adapting based on feedback — based on feedback from the codebase team, developers, and the project team, the project manager fine tunes resource management.

Thanks to his expertise in project management, Zoran helped us craft the stages of resource management. Let’s look at these various stages involved in resource management in some detail. 

Stage 1: Identifying resource needs

In this initial stage, organizations identify the resources required to achieve specific goals or projects. This can include human resources, financial resources, specific materials, equipment, and others.

The following questions can help you identify the resources you need for the project:

• What is the scope of the project (budget, timeline, goals, and deliverables)?
• What resources do we need to successfully complete the project?
• How much of these resources do we need and when do we need them?
• Do we need any external resources, such as specialized equipment or experts?
• What skills are necessary to complete the project tasks? 
• How can we access the required resources?
• Do we need backup resources and if yes, where do we find them?

Project managers can use several tools and techniques to estimate project resource needs:

• Expert judgment — consulting experts well-versed in the type of project,
• Alternative analysis — comparing different ways to accomplish tasks and identifying the most suitable or cost-effective resources,
• Published industry data — looking at published data on project resource estimation in industry-specific journals, books, articles, and surveys,
• Project management software — selecting the right software with features that help them find the best combination of resources they need, and
• Historic internal data — drawing insights from the organization’s historical data, such as purchase, time tracking, and accounting records.

Master project cost management and keep your projects on budget. Learn the basics here:

• Project cost management: The basics, steps, and the main goals

Stage 2: Assessing and planning resources

The next step is to conduct a thorough assessment of required resources. This involves determining the: 

• Availability, 
• Quantity, 
• Quality, and 
• Capabilities of the required resources.  

If your organization does not have all the resources you need, you may need to invest in the required resources.

For instance, an initial assessment of available human resources helps a company understand if there is a lack of necessary skills for an IT project. The company can now make informed decisions on hiring skilled developers or upskilling its team members. 

This is also the stage where project managers create a detailed project roadmap to understand the resource requirements, according to Zoran.

Take your resource planning to the next level with Clockify’s powerful features. Check out this detailed guide:

• How to use Clockify for effective resource planning

Stage 3: Allocating resources 

Now that you know what resources you need, the next step is to assign them (human, financial, time resources, materials, etc.) to each task or project. The goal of resource allocation is to distribute resources in the best possible way to optimize productivity, lower costs, and achieve the desired results.

For example, a junior graphic designer may need 2 days to complete a design task, while an experienced designer may need only 3 hours. If your design project has a tight deadline, assigning the senior designer is obviously the best way to ensure the task gets completed on time.

As Zoran Vizmeg, our contributor, explains, the third stage of resource management in the IT company means communicating with the development team in order to assign those newly created tasks to developers and confirming estimation. 

Here’s a real-world example of successful resource allocation from the book Human Resource Management: Linking Strategy to Practice . 

Trader Joe’s, a grocery store, is known for its customer-centric approach. With an aim of making their shoppers happy, they choose employees who are naturally outgoing, upbeat, and have a strong customer focus, in addition to a sense of humor. 

Therefore, by allocating their resources the best possible way and selecting the right person for the job, the company gained a competitive advantage and remained profitable.

Maximize project efficiency with resource allocation know-how. Check out this blog post:

• How to track resource allocation

Stage 4: Scheduling resources

Resource scheduling involves creating a timeline or schedule explaining when and how you will use resources. This process ensures that resources are allocated at the right time and in the right amounts.

While there are many methods you can use to schedule your resources, two of the most commonly used ones are Gantt chart and Critical Path Method (CPM). 

A Gantt chart provides you with a visual representation of your tasks and their timelines.

For example, in the Gantt chart given below, you can see the time taken to complete each task and associated activities. The responsible departments are color-coded along with the assignees for each activity.

On the other hand, Critical Path Method (CPM) involves identifying the logical sequence of tasks and dependencies in a project. In other words, each project usually consists of multiple tasks, and some tasks may be dependent on other tasks. 

For instance, if the project is to build a botanical garden, you cannot plant trees until the site is leveled and soil is prepared. 

Stage 5: Monitoring and control

Once resources are allocated and tasks are underway, ongoing monitoring is essential. This process involves: 

• Tracking resource usage and project progress, and 
• Making adjustments as needed to ensure that goals are met.

According to Zoran, this is also the time when the team “ solves bumps on the road that they didn’t see during the planning phase .”

Let’s say a construction project is underway. As the project progresses, the project manager closely monitors how employees use resources. They could use construction timesheets , such as Clockify, to ensure that workers are on-site as scheduled and are productive.

Resource monitoring also includes tracking costs associated with labor, equipment, and materials. If actual costs exceed the budgeted costs for a resource category, the project manager can then take corrective actions. These actions can include measures to identify areas that require cost optimization, seeking approval for budget adjustments, or reallocating resources.

For instance, if the material costs are over budget for a construction project, the project team may decide to use alternative materials to meet the project requirements.

Stage 6: Feedback and adaptation

At defined intervals, organizations need to evaluate the performance and results achieved. This feedback helps improve future resource planning efforts.

Zoran believes communication and constructive feedback are the keys to identifying areas for improvement:

“Communication is important in every part of our lives, especially at work. If we want to grow, we need to get feedback in order to recognise which part of our personal development needs to be improved. If we don’t get any constructive feedback, we can hardly detect what can be improved.”

Sometimes, projects or priorities change, or unforeseen circumstances arise. In such cases, project managers need to reallocate resources to address new needs or challenges.

Based on the evaluation and lessons learned, organizations adapt their resource planning strategies and processes for future projects or planning cycles.

Why is resource management important?

Given that lack of talent, time, and budget are the key obstacles to organizational success , managing these limited resources is more important now than ever.

Let’s see why it’s crucial for project managers and companies to manage their resources properly: 

• Improvement in productivity and profitability — when companies use resources efficiently, they can boost productivity and revenue. A McKinsey study shows that firms that prioritize human capital development earn a profit of over $1 million and emerge as “superstars.”
• Securing a competitive advantage — organizations that manage their resources well are often more competitive. For instance, smart data management helped 53% of manufacturers create a competitive advantage for their companies, according to IBM research . 
• Increasing employee engagement — making the best use of the time, skills, and competencies of employees can boost morale and job satisfaction. 

Yet, most organizations struggle to manage their resources, with the consequences often being profound. In an analysis of 16,000 projects, Bent Flyvbjerg, co-author of How Big Things Get Done , found that just 8.5% of companies were able to stick to their planned budgets and timelines.

Underutilizing resources can also have negative consequences, particularly in big projects. For example, when oil rigs use just 77% of their production resources, the industry suffers a revenue loss of $200 billion each year, according to a McKinsey study .  

This brings us to the question: how to improve resource management?

How to improve resource management? 

The key to effective resource management is to understand the project’s scope and resource requirements thoroughly. To help you out with that, here are some tips for optimizing resource management.

Tip #1: Be proactive and keep an eye on progress

In the sections above, you learned about the typical stages of a software designing project that Zoran described. By following an established process, Zoran can avoid last-minute scrambles and shortage of resources for any future projects.

While resource managers cannot foresee every possible outcome, being proactive and planning ahead can help them manage resources wisely.

One way to manage resources efficiently is to create a resource management policy. Here are some questions that your resource management policy needs to address:

• Who is responsible for managing resources? 
• How will you assess resource requirements?
• How will you allocate resources?
• What procedures will you put in place to address resource shortages?
• What tools will you use to monitor resource utilization?

Another way to be proactive is to anticipate future resource needs. 

An easy way to anticipate future resource needs is to use a project forecasting tool such as Clockify. The software uses current data on budget, time, and schedules to make predictions about how the project is likely to perform in the future.

In Clockify, you can keep an eye on project progress 

In fact, a case study on streamlining resource management further confirms the importance of estimating future resource needs. 

Namely, an IT company owner sets the monthly estimates for projects at the beginning of each month which helps them forecast the hours of work the team needs to achieve these estimates. This habit helps the owner know exactly how the project is going and whether it is taking up more time than expected. It also helps establish a time management culture in the company.

Tip #2: Foster open communication and coordination

While resource or project managers are typically accountable for resource management, it is important to involve all stakeholders in the process. Depending on the type of project, the stakeholders can include the project team, HR, finance, and purchase departments. 

In addition to creating a collaborative environment, it is important to encourage ongoing communication between these stakeholders.

Ongoing communication makes it easy for team members to share resource needs, challenges, and ideas to improve resource management.

According to Michael Shick , PMP and assistant professor of project management at Western Carolina University, the foundation for open communication needs to be set in the project initiation stage:

“ Open communication and feedback helps to decrease misunderstandings, which in turn should promote enhanced work performance and productivity. Additionally, open communication helps to build trust and fosters understanding, suggesting the significance of open dialogue.”

We can see how important ongoing communication and coordination is by looking at  the often quoted example of the Airbus A380 (the world’s largest passenger airplane) project.

Airbus had hired multiple design teams and component manufacturers spread across countries to manufacture Airbus A380. A lack of clear and transparent communication between various teams led to multiple issues during the aircraft’s production. As a result, the project suffered delays, cost overruns, material, and manpower shortages.

Tip #3: Track and monitor resource utilization on a regular basis

Resource monitoring and control play a vital role in ensuring that you are utilizing the resources in the best possible way. 

But how frequently should you monitor resource utilization? A survey on resource utilization by the Resource Management Institute (RMI) shows that most organizations measure resource utilization on a weekly or monthly basis. This is also a recommended practice.

Regular monitoring is also a great way of preventing issues, such as underutilization or overutilization of resources and resource-related delays or cost overruns.

For example, by monitoring overtime hours, companies can identify how they distribute overtime and whether some employees can take over more work so that others don’t work overtime. This can help prevent burnout and keep employees motivated.

In addition, tracking the time spent on each task can easily help identify wasted time and make additional changes where needed. 

Tip #4: Train resource managers

Resource managers need to have a broad skill set — ranging from project management related skills to the ability to communicate and manage people. 

However, RMI’s survey titled Profession of Being an RM/RMO Leader shows that 92% of organizations find it hard or very hard to find skilled resource managers. And, this is one of the key factors that can hamper effective resource management.

The good news is, like most other skills, learning and practicing are the keys to mastering resource management.

By investing in resource management training, organizations can empower their workforce with the essential skill sets. These training initiatives can include: 

• Courses in resource allocation methodologies, 
• Project management frameworks, and 
• Soft skills development.

According to Elizabeth Harrin , experienced project manager and author of Managing Multiple Projects , one of the biggest challenges lies in making sure all members of the team, particularly the less experienced, have the opportunity to learn. 

“We’d all like the best, most experienced, well-trained people to be on our projects, but that would mean junior and less experienced people would never get a chance to practice their skills. If you want your staff to stay with you long term, you should look for ways to provide them with experiences that stretch their abilities and help them develop as professionals.”

How to manage resources with Clockify 

Why do you need tools such as Clockify to manage resources? Here’s a compelling reason — the above-mentioned RMI’s survey on resource utilization found that the lack of automation tools is one of the biggest inhibitors of effective resource management. 

Surprisingly, 57% of survey respondents said they rely on spreadsheets for resource management despite the availability of resource management tools.

As a resource management software , Clockify streamlines various aspects of resource management. From scheduling tasks to tracking project progress, there are many features that help you fast-track resource management. Let’s see how.

Clockify enables you to plan and visualize your projects and milestones. You can:

• Organize your projects by clients, 
• Create tasks within these projects, and 
• Define the timelines for each task and project.

With Clockify, you can quickly determine who on your team is busy and who is available for new assignments. Later on, you can easily assign new tasks and define work schedules. This visibility is crucial for resource allocation and ensuring that work is evenly distributed.

Clockify offers time tracking capabilities — allowing your team to log their hours accurately. This feature helps you monitor work progress, productivity, and time utilization.

This tool also allows you to set budgets for each task and project. You can then track and compare the actual versus estimated time and expenses to optimize resource management.

Conclusion: Plan ahead and track to optimize resource management

Given the constraints of time, money, and talent in today’s business landscape, effective resource management is the key to project success. 

To ensure you’re making the most of your resources, remember to: 

• Understand the project scope, 
• Plan ahead, 
• Allocate wisely, and 
• Continuously track resource usage. 

By implementing the strategies we’ve listed, not only can you optimize resource management, but you can also boost productivity and gain a competitive edge.

Above all, be strategically hawk-eyed on your resources and invest in training resource managers. Now, you’ll be well on your way to achieving your organizational goals.

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Resource Management Plan: What Is It And How To Make One?

“We don’t have enough capacity next month. Looks like we’ll have to reprioritize our projects.”

It’s a project manager’s nightmare having to explain to clients why something won’t be done by the deadline.

But imagine if it was more like:

“Some of us are away on a vacation next month, but we have time to move people around or adjust our schedule to meet the deadline.”

A solid resource management plan is what prepares you for such eventualities.

When done correctly, a resource management plan enables agencies to identify and solve resource gaps before they affect:

• Client relationships and timelines
• Team relationships and burnout
• Revenue and profit

And we’re here to show you that what, why, and how of a resource management plan.

Let’s dive in.

What is a resource management plan?

A resource management plan helps project managers account for, allocate , manage, and release resources needed to meet project deadlines.

It also enables project managers to identify upcoming capacity gaps and ensure there’s wiggle room for any last-minute changes or delays.

A resource management plan should clearly present the number of deliverables in the pipeline, the resources required to produce them, and the resources currently available within the team.

But that’s only part of it.

To function effectively, a resource management plan must highlight:

• Team availability
• Resource gaps or surpluses
• Task allocation

Why are project resource management plans important?

A project resource management plan is your friend because it:

• Brings visibility to the long-term project resource needs (so you’re more prepared at all stages and don’t overly depend on the short fixes)
• Avoids project failure due to over or under allocation of resources (you evenly distribute resources, so all projects and tasks are covered)
• Avoids unexpected risks and hurdles slapping your project’s face
• Helps keep your employees mentally fit, happy, and un-burned out
• Promotes transparency and open communication
• Helps you spot immediate gaps before you start so you don’t scramble for the solutions later
• Highlights opportunities to support/train employees who need it and reward those who are smashing their responsibilities and increasing capacity
• Helps you manage team workload and prevents burnout

In summary, it helps plan resource for a project and helps ensure that you have the right resource available at the right time.

How does a resource management plan help an agency?

Let’s say you run a blog writing agency. Here’s what a typical month looks like:

Since your capacity matches the client’s demands, there’s no gap. It’s a perfect month.

Unfortunately, that’s now how things work in real life.

• A client may demand more (or less) blog articles in a month
• Or a writer may need to take time off for a vacation

In such situations, Your resource management plan is the difference between “okay, time for plan B” and “balls, how will we recover?”.

At the same time, it helps you maximize your resource utilization while ensuring that no one is overworked.

For example, here are some ways you can come up with a plan B:

Resource management plan vs project management plan

We’ve covered what a resource management plan is. So let’s look at how it’s different than a project management plan . Here’s a quick comparison.

To summarize:

A project management plan maps out the project’s schedule on a timeline and assigns resources. On the other hand, a resource management plan helps you match demand with capacity.

In the case of our blog writing agency, a project plan describes the schedule to deliver the articles to the client by a deadline. On the other hand, a resource management plan guides you specifically on:

What’s included in a resource management plan?

Time for some details.

What exactly does project management resource planning include?

Here is your basic breakdown with some examples:

How to create a resource management plan in 5 steps

A resource management plan is rarely a single document. Often it’s a collection of documents including:

• Resource capacity planner
• Team availability tracker
• Resource allocation tracker
• Project resource planner
• Timesheet tracker

Don’t start your resource planning from a blank slate. Use these 5 handy resource management and planning templates to get started.

Keep in mind that resource plan might look different for each agency.

So instead of a step-by-step guide, here’s a high-level roadmap to help you create a resource management plan that matches your agency’s needs .

1. Map out your project timeline

If you don’t know your new design client is your biggest project ever and requires a whole fleet to be done on time, you might quickly find yourself under-staffed and ill-equipped for the job. So start by defining the scope and creating a timeline :

Make sure you’re clear on when deliverables are due, as well as what a finished one looks like and who’s in charge of it.

Break it into tasks and estimate how long each one will take .

Then, you can see what it will take to get it done.

2. Identify needed project resources

Think about all it takes to complete the project successfully and comfortably .

• What resources do you need to complete each task?
• How many people do you need on the task?
• Do you need any specific tools or equipment?
• Do you already have these resources or would you acquire them?
• What about employee training?

Keep in mind: surprises and risks are inevitable along the way. Make plans considering these hurdles.

Now stack it up against your current resources.

3. Find the availability and capacity of existing resources

It helps if you can visualize your team’s schedule to identify any imbalances or scheduling conflicts ahead of time.

Considering your team’s current capacity, other projects, and preferences, how much work can they each take on?

Do you have enough manpower for the project?

Are you missing any skills or just more people on the team?

Is it just the short-term situation or will you need backup on an ongoing basis?

This is where you figure out how to fill the gaps.

For example, if you have 30 tasks to complete by the end of each month, but your team can only cover 25 at full capacity, your resource management plan will instantly underline that you need reinforcements.

4. Plan for hiring more resources (if necessary)

Hiring is in itself a process you need to plan out to avoid wasting your time and money.

So don’t rush into interviewing.

It’s better to sit down and think it through:

• What skill/task/role are you hiring for?
• How long do you need help?
• How will you evaluate a great hire?
• Who’s in charge of interviewing the candidates?
• How much can you spend on testing and onboarding?
• What’s your onboarding plan? Do you have all the documentation ready?
• When can you start and finish the process, and who’s going to do it?

5. Map resources to project tasks

Finally, once you have all the resources, you need to connect the dots.

And this doesn’t mean just putting people on tasks at random.

You need to evaluate:

• Who’s best suited for which job and what their preferences are (for best utilization)
• What type of support they might need to deliver the product/task
• Who will do the quality control/help them along the way if needed

For example, a writer will be creating a blog, the editor is there for quality control, and then you’ll be overseeing the general timeline and making sure everything falls into place.

In Toggl Plan , you can start by adding tasks to a timeline. Then you can add assignees. If needed you can also assign multiple people to a task.

This way, everyone who’s collaborating on the task is always up to date with its status. They can communicate on the spot, and you can have an easy overview of the big picture.

In theory, that’s your preparation for everything to go right.

Now, not meaning to sound grim, but things still probably won’t go 100% according to plan… so how can you prepare yourself for potential problems?

How to mitigate resource planning risks

The best way to build resilience against project failure is to visualize everything that could go wrong, then build a contingency plan.

So, hope for the best and prepare for the worst.

Below are some examples.

Common resource planning risks

Budget changes.

In web design, projects are usually once and done.

Imagine you planned for 10 projects of varying scales. But then—oh no—the biggest client has canceled!

Now you have to figure out what to do with the contractors or employees you had organized to do the job.

There are two great ways to mitigate this risk:

• Include cancellation clauses in your contracts (meaning clients are less likely to drop out, and you still get paid if they do)
• Keep internal tasks in the backlog (you could re-allocate those resources to working on your own site, for example)

Changes in resource availability

An employee could get sick.

Or a contractors could go on holiday and would not be available.

Changes like these happen all the time, which is why resource management planning needs to be a monthly/regular thing.

Task delays

For example, a client might take longer than usual to approve something, and this means that the project kickoff is pushed to the next month.

So, you still have the project, but the delay might mean you have to lose certain time-bound resources.

Who’s going to jump in and save the day?

Strong project and timeline management skills are the key to mitigating this risk.

Resource management planning tips to reduce risks

Here are a few other helpful ways to fend off the attacks and keep your project on the right track:

• Get a project scope sign-off— scope creep could plague your project otherwise
• Adapt an agile approach to delivering incrementally (the plan is your foundation but the reality rarely turns out exactly like the theory)
• Avoid over or under-allocating resources—open communication can help you get the real feel of how your team is doing
• Keep an eye on employee availability (other projects, time off, public holidays) and workloads
• Monitor project progress and flag off any delays—don’t wait and see what happens
• Don’t become reliant on short term fixes—like having people do things that aren’t their job or preference
• Prepare for the worst—rehearse for any project disaster you can imagine
• Over-communicate—it’s better to double-check that everyone understands the situation, so there are fewer errors. Plus, you might have volunteers to help when shit hits the fan

Turn your resource management plan into a repeatable process 

Resource management and planning templates can help you start planning quickly.

But your resource management plan is the sort of document you’ll be tweaking every month.

Ideally, that should be a smooth, standardized, sustainable process—otherwise, you’ll be wasting a lot of time on it.

So here are some better resource management tools that could help cover your bases instead.

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Microsoft 365 Life Hacks > Organization > What is resource management and why is it important?

What is resource management and why is it important?

When it comes to managing a project or an organization, it’s vital to keep track of all the tools, objectives, and moving parts that are involved. Learn about the significance of resource management and why it is so important for achieving long-term goals.

How can resource management help your organization?

Resource management refers to the process of planning, allocating, and overseeing resources to achieve specific objectives. These resources can encompass a wide range of assets, including financial capital, human talent, time, technology, and physical infrastructure. The primary goal of resource management is to optimize the utilization of these assets to ensure that they are allocated efficiently to meet organizational goals and objectives.

Types of resource management

There are many types of resource management, and each type plays an important role in an organization. Here’s how each type works:

Financial resource management

Effective handling of financial resources is a key part of resource management. Organizations must carefully plan and allocate their budgets to cover operating expenses, investments, and unforeseen circumstances. By applying budgetary controls, organizations can prevent wasteful spending, enhance financial stability, and allocate funds strategically to areas that will yield the highest return on investment.

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Human resource management

The success of any organization is closely tied to the performance and well-being of its people. Human resource management involves recruiting, training, and retaining talented individuals while maintaining a positive work environment. Effective human resource management ensures that employees are well-equipped to perform their tasks, which in turn helps with reducing turnover rates and enhancing overall productivity.

Time management

Effective time management is important for organizational success. Planning and prioritizing tasks, setting realistic deadlines , and optimizing workflow processes are integral aspects of time management. When time is managed effectively, projects are completed in a timely manner to help reduce bottlenecks and increase efficiency. Time management can also help with preventing burnout among employees, as a well-balanced workload contributes to a healthier and more productive workforce.

Technological resource management

Efficient management of technological resources involves keeping up with the latest technological advancements, investing in the right tools, and ensuring that technology is aligned with organizational goals. This ensures that the organization remains competitive, adaptable to industry changes, and capable of leveraging technology for improved efficiency and innovation.

The benefits of implementing resource management

Proper resource management can lead to good results throughout your organization. Some potential benefits of resource management include the following:

• Optimized efficiency: Resource management allows organizations to identify inefficiencies in their operations and streamline processes for improved productivity. Using a digital project management tool can increase efficiency and make it easier to share information on resources.
• Cost reduction: Effective resource management leads to cost reduction by cutting down on wasteful spending and optimizing resource allocation. This, in turn, contributes to improved financial stability and sustainability.
• Strategic planning: By aligning resource allocation with organizational goals, businesses can ensure that their efforts are directed towards achieving long-term success.
• Risk mitigation: Careful resource management helps organizations anticipate and mitigate potential risks. Whether financial, human, or technological, having a good understanding of resource utilization enables risk management.
• Competitive advantage: In a highly competitive business environment, effective resource management can provide a significant competitive advantage. Organizations that allocate resources strategically are better positioned to adapt to market changes and capitalize on emerging opportunities.

Keep your organization in check with resource management

Knowing how to manage your resources is a big part of organizational success. Effective management ensures that all assets are properly utilized to achieve long-term goals. Prioritizing resource management and other project management techniques in your organization is essential for sustainable growth, competitiveness, and overall success.

Looking for more ways to efficiently manage your team? Browse our organization tips to find more ideas for making sure things are running smoothly.

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What is Work Package in Project Management? Structure, Benefits

Home Blog Project Management What is Work Package in Project Management? Structure, Benefits

Do you find projects too big and hard to handle? Breaking them into smaller parts can help a lot. Work package in project management are the parts that you need to do one thing well. I use them to make my project work easier and faster. Work packages make sure you have everything you need to do one thing well, such as people, things, stuff, money, and time. Work packages help you to plan, do, check, and act on each part of the project. Work packaging in project management makes the project work easier and faster by dividing it into smaller parts. Work packages are used throughout the project life cycle, from initiation to closure.

What is a Work Package in Project Management?

A work package in Project Management is a group of related tasks that leads to a deliverable in a project. It is a sub-project of the larger project and helps with scope, schedule, cost and risk management. Imagine a work package as a mini project within your larger project. It's a group of related tasks that deliver a specific outcome. Think of it as building a lego castle: each package focuses on constructing a specific section, like the towers or walls. In our software project, a work package could be developing the login functionality or implementing a database connection.

Work Package Structure

A work package structure is a way of organizing the work packages in a project according to their logical relationships and dependencies. A work package in project management helps to define the scope, schedule, cost, and quality of each work package, as well as the roles and responsibilities of the team members involved. A work package structure can be represented by a hierarchical diagram, a table, or a matrix, depending on the complexity and size of the project. A work package structure can also be aligned with the project life cycle phases, such as initiation, planning, execution, monitoring and control, and closure. To delve deeper into the world of work packages and other project management techniques, consider enrolling in Project Management courses . A well-defined project work package structure is like a robust foundation for your project. It keeps things organized, focused, and ultimately, leads to a successful and completed castle – or whatever amazing project you're building!

Project Work Package Example

Let’s take an example for creating work package in project management as a Website Login Page Creation.

 Objective: Develop a secure and user-friendly login page for our website.

 Activities:

• Design: Create a responsive design for the login page, ensuring it aligns with our brand aesthetics.
• Development: Code the frontend using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Implement form validation to enhance user experience.
• Backend Integration: Connect the frontend with the backend. Use secure protocols for data transmission.
• Testing: Conduct thorough testing for functionality, usability, and security. Fix any identified bugs.
• Deployment: Deploy the login page to the live website.

Deliverables : A fully functional, tested, and deployed login page.

Estimated Time : 2 weeks.

Acceptance Criteria:

• Users can successfully log in with valid credentials.
• The login page is secure and prevents unauthorized access.
• Login page displays clear error messages for invalid attempts.
• Login page is visually appealing and user-friendly across all devices.

This work package example clearly outlines the tasks, deliverables, and estimated timeline, providing a roadmap for the project team. It’s crucial to keep all stakeholders informed about progress and any potential issues that may arise.

The Benefits of Work Packages

Work package in project management have many benefits, such as :

•  They help to define the scope, schedule, cost, and quality of each deliverable in a project.
• They facilitate the estimation of the resources, time, and budget required for each deliverable.
• They enable the assignment of roles and responsibilities to the project team members and stakeholders.
• They allow the identification and mitigation of the risks and issues associated with each deliverable.
• They support the monitoring and reporting of the progress and performance of each deliverable.
• They enhance communication and coordination among the project team members and stakeholders.

The image above has three levels of planning: overall planning, which sets the project goals, phases, and milestones; high-level planning, which creates a work breakdown structure with work and planning packages; and low-level planning, which details the work package descriptions and activities.

By using work packages in project management, project managers can ensure that the project scope is clear, realistic, and manageable. Work packages can also help to improve the efficiency, effectiveness, and quality of project delivery. For those seeking to learn more about work packages and further their project management expertise, consider exploring PMP certification online training . Work packages are essential tools for planning, executing, controlling, and closing a project successfully.

What Is Included in a Work Package?

A work package in project management is a small part of a big project. It has everything you need to do one thing well. You need to put some things in your work package to help your team. Let’s see what those things are:

• Description: This tells you what your work package is about and what you want to do.
• Tasks: These are the things you need to do to finish your work package.
• Resources: These are the people, things, and stuff you need to do your work package.
• Budget: This is how much money you need to spend to do your work package.
• Timeline: This is when you need to finish your work package by. It is like the deadline for your box task.
• Dependencies: These are the things that depend on other work packages or that other work packages depend on. If you're seeking a structured approach to project management consider exploring the world of PRINCE2 Foundation and Practitioner certificate programs.
• Acceptance Criteria: These are the rules for doing a good job. They are like a checklist for your box task - does it match what you wanted?
• Owner : This is the person or group who is in charge of the work package.

By putting these things in your work package, you make a strong and helpful work package that helps your team, makes communication easier, and leads to project success.

Characteristics of a Work Package

Here are the hallmarks of a well-defined work package in project management:

• It is deliverable within the WBS. It represents a specific output or outcome that contributes to the project scope and objectives.
• It has an owner who is responsible for its completion. The owner is usually a team member or a stakeholder who has the authority and accountability to manage the work package.
• It has a start and end date. It defines the time frame for completing the work package, as well as the milestones and dependencies associated with it.
• It has resources and costs associated with it. It identifies the skills, expertise, materials, equipment, and tools required to perform the work package, as well as the budget and expenses involved.
• It has risks associated with it. It analyzes the potential threats and opportunities that may affect the work package, as well as the mitigation and contingency plans to deal with them.
• It has acceptance criteria. It specifies the standards and quality measures for evaluating the work package and determining its completion.

Thus, it enhances communication and coordination among the project team members and stakeholders.

How to Create a work package? [Step-by-Step]

Creating work package in project management requires careful planning:

• Define Project Scope: Clearly outline the project's goals and deliverables.
• Develop WBS: Break down the project into manageable phases and sections.
• Identify Work Packages: Within each section, define individual packages with clear deliverables.
• Estimate Effort and Resources: Assign realistic time and resource estimates for each package.
• Assign Responsibility: Assign each package to a specific team member or team.

Let me explain the same with an example of creating a Login Page for a website.

1. Define Scope and Deliverables

•   Objective: Clearly state the goal of the login page (e.g., user authentication for secure access).
• Login form design (mockup or prototype).
• User authentication functionality (backend code).
• Error handling and validation messages.
• Responsive design for different devices.

2. Break Down into Tasks

• Create wireframes or mockups for the login form layout.
• Design input fields for username and password.
• Include "Remember me" option and "Forgot password" link.
• Implement user authentication logic (e.g., password hashing ).
• Integrate with user database or authentication system.
• Handle form submissions and validation.
• Implement error messages for invalid login attempts.
• Test login functionality with valid and invalid credentials.
• Check responsiveness on different devices.
• Ensure accessibility for users with disabilities.

3. Estimate Effort and Resources

•  Time: Assign realistic time estimates for each task based on complexity.
• Resources: Identify required personnel (e.g., designers, developers, testers).
• Tools: Specify any software or tools needed (e.g., design software, development frameworks).

4. Assign Responsibility and Timeline

• Owner: Assign each task to a specific team member or team.
• Timeline: Set deadlines for completing individual tasks and the overall package.

5. Create a Work Package Document

• Document: Compile all the above information into a formal document.
• Use a Template: Consider using project management tools or templates for consistency.

Best Practice for Work Packages

Below are some of the best practices which you can carry out while creating or managing work package in project management:

• Right-Sizing is Key: I've found that breaking down tasks into work packages that can be completed by a single team member within a reasonable timeframe (like 1-2 weeks) works best. This fosters a sense of ownership and reduces the administrative burden. While the 8/80 rule is a common industry guideline, I've learned to adapt it based on the project's specific needs.
• Estimates Based on Reality: In current projects, I leverage data from past projects and involve subject-matter experts to create realistic time and resource estimates for each work package. This upfront effort prevents mid-course surprises and keeps the project flowing smoothly.
• Ownership Matters: It’s essential that I assign a clear owner to each work package. I become accountable for delivery, equipped with the necessary authority and resources to complete the tasks. By encouraging collaboration among work package owners like myself, we ensure seamless integration within the project.
• Uniqueness is Essential: Each work package should be distinct and contribute to the project's overall goals. I've learned to avoid duplicating efforts and clearly define any dependencies between work packages to streamline the workflow.
• Communication is King: I find that documenting each work package using a work breakdown structure (WBS) or a table is invaluable. It allows me to maintain transparency, keeping stakeholders informed and enabling me to track progress throughout the project efficiently.

Essential Tips for Work Packages in Project Management

Some essential tips for work package in project management:

• Involve your team members in defining the work breakdown structure and identifying the work packages. They can provide valuable insights and feedback on the scope, schedule, and resources of the work packages.
• Use work packages to estimate and allocate the project costs and time and optimize the project budget and schedule. Work packages can help you track and control the project expenses and duration and avoid overruns and delays.
• Assign one person accountable for each work package, and ensure that they have the authority, responsibility, and resources to manage and execute the work package. This can improve the communication, coordination, and quality of the work packages.
• Make sure that each work package is unique and independent of other work packages, except for the dependencies that are clearly defined and managed. This can avoid duplication, confusion, and conflict among the work packages.
• Document and communicate the scope, deliverable, activities, tasks, milestones, schedule, budget, resources, quality standards, acceptance criteria, dependencies, assumptions, and risks of each work package. This can ensure clarity, transparency, and visibility of the work packages, and facilitate the monitoring and control of the project progress and performance.

Work packaging in project management is essential for success. They are more than just tools for breaking down tasks; they are a way of thinking that brings clarity, efficiency, and accountability to your project. With KnowledgeHut's project management courses , you turn your project into a clear and structured journey, where each step has a purpose and an owner. You can handle complex situations, anticipate problems, and adjust quickly. You can communicate smoothly, use your resources wisely, and ensure high quality. As your project progresses, work packages help you stay on track and focused. They mark your achievements, highlight your challenges, and lead you to your project goals. Moreover, work packages foster collaboration by clearly defining roles and responsibilities, ensuring everyone knows what they need to do and when. Lastly, they provide a framework for continuous improvement, allowing you to learn from each project and apply those lessons to future endeavors.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

A work package is a mini project with a deliverable. An activity is a step in a work package. A task is a detail in an activity.

What are the key components of a work package? 

• A clear description of the work to be done and the deliverable 
• A schedule for the work to be completed, including milestones and due dates 
• A budget for the work to be completed, including costs and resources

To define the scope of a work package, you need to: 

• Identify the deliverable and its components 
• Specify the quality and acceptance criteria 
• Estimate the resources, time, and cost 
• Identify the dependencies, assumptions, and risks 
• Document the scope in a WBS dictionary 

A work package manager (WPM) manages a work package within a project. A WPM oversees the execution, monitors progress, and reports to the project management team.

Mary Tresa Gabriel

Mary Tresa Gabriel is a PMP Certified Project Manager and Career Coach.She has worked in various big MNCs like UST, Muraai, Dell, etc. Being a PMP-certified project manager she is now a career coach who is helping professionals to start their career in project management jobs. She has been coordinating with her team and assisting them in completing the project on time while maintaining high quality for the customers.

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Title: rethinking resource management in edge learning: a joint pre-training and fine-tuning design paradigm.

Abstract: In some applications, edge learning is experiencing a shift in focusing from conventional learning from scratch to new two-stage learning unifying pre-training and task-specific fine-tuning. This paper considers the problem of joint communication and computation resource management in a two-stage edge learning system. In this system, model pre-training is first conducted at an edge server via centralized learning on local pre-stored general data, and then task-specific fine-tuning is performed at edge devices based on the pre-trained model via federated edge learning. For the two-stage learning model, we first analyze the convergence behavior (in terms of the average squared gradient norm bound), which characterizes the impacts of various system parameters such as the number of learning rounds and batch sizes in the two stages on the convergence rate. Based on our analytical results, we then propose a joint communication and computation resource management design to minimize an average squared gradient norm bound, subject to constraints on the transmit power, overall system energy consumption, and training delay. The decision variables include the number of learning rounds, batch sizes, clock frequencies, and transmit power control for both pre-training and fine-tuning stages. Finally, numerical results are provided to evaluate the effectiveness of our proposed design. It is shown that the proposed joint resource management over the pre-training and fine-tuning stages well balances the system performance trade-off among the training accuracy, delay, and energy consumption. The proposed design is also shown to effectively leverage the inherent trade-off between pre-training and fine-tuning, which arises from the differences in data distribution between pre-stored general data versus real-time task-specific data, thus efficiently optimizing overall system performance.

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Municipal solid waste management in Russia: potentials of climate change mitigation

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• Published: 29 July 2021
• Volume 19 , pages 27–42, ( 2022 )

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The goal of this study was to assess the impact of the introduction of various waste management methods on the amount of greenhouse gas emissions from these activities. The assessment was carried out on the example of the Russian waste management sector. For this purpose, three scenarios had been elaborated for the development of the Russian waste management sector: Basic scenario, Reactive scenario and Innovative scenario. For each of the scenarios, the amount of greenhouse gas emissions generated during waste management was calculated. The calculation was based on the 2006 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories. The results of the greenhouse gas net emissions calculation are as follows: 64 Mt CO 2 -eq./a for the basic scenario, 12.8 Mt CO 2 -eq./a for the reactive scenario, and 3.7 Mt CO 2 -eq./a for the innovative scenario. An assessment was made of the impact of the introduction of various waste treatment technologies on the amounts of greenhouse gas emissions generated in the waste management sector. An important factor influencing the reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from landfills is the recovery and thermal utilization of 60% of the generated landfill gas. The introduction of a separate collection system that allows to separately collect 20% of the total amount of generated municipal solid waste along with twofold increase in the share of incinerated waste leads to a more than threefold reduction in total greenhouse gas emissions from the waste management sector.

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Municipal solid waste management and landfilling technologies: a review

Sonil Nanda & Franco Berruti

Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.

Introduction

Population growth, urbanization and changing life style have resulted in increased amounts of generated solid waste, which poses serious challenges for many cities and authorities around the world (Abu Qdais et al. 2019 ; Chen 2018 ; Dedinec et al. 2015 ). In 2011, world cities generated about 1.3 Gt of solid waste; this amount is expected to increase to 2.2 Gt by 2025 (Hoornweg and Bhada-Tata 2012 ). Unless properly managed on a national level, solid waste causes several environmental and public health problems, which is adversely reflected on the economic development of a country (Abu Qdais 2007 ; Kaza et al. 2018 ).

One of the important environmental impact of the waste management sector are the generated greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. These emissions come mostly from the release of methane from organic waste decomposition in landfills (Wuensch and Kocina 2019 ). The waste management sector is responsible for 1.6 Gt carbon dioxide equivalents (CO 2 -eq.) of the global GHG direct anthropogenic emissions per year (Fischedick et al. 2014 ), which accounts for approx. 4% of the global GHG emissions (Papageorgiou et al. 2009 ; Vergara and Tchobanoglous 2012 ). The disposal of municipal solid waste (MSW) contributes to 0.67 Gt CO 2 -eq./a worldwide (Fischedick et al. 2014 ), which is approx. 1.4% of the global GHG emissions. Per capita emissions in developed countries are estimated to be about 500 kg CO 2 -eq./a (Wuensch and Kocina 2019 ), while in the developing and emerging countries, it is around 100 kg CO 2 -eq./a per person. This low contribution of waste management sector comparing to other sectors of the economy, such as energy and transportation, might be the reason for the small amount of research that aims to study GHG emissions from the waste management sector (Chung et al. 2018 ).

However, it is important to consider that the mitigation of GHG emissions from waste management sector is relatively simple and cost-effective as compared to other sectors of the economy. Several studies proved that separate waste collection and composting of biowaste as well as landfilling with landfill gas recovery is currently found to be one of the most effective and economically sound GHG emissions mitigation options (Chen 2018 ; EI-Fadel and Sbayti 2000 ; Yedla and Sindhu 2016 ; Yılmaz and Abdulvahitoğlu 2019 ). Metz et al. 2001 estimated that 75% of the savings of methane recovered from landfills can be achieved at net negative direct cost, and 25% at cost of about 20 US$/Mg CO 2 -eq./a. In any country of the world, the potential of the waste management sector is not yet fully utilized; the implementation of relatively simple and inexpensive waste treatment technologies might contribute to national GHG mitigation goals and convert the sector from a net emitter into a net reducer of GHG emissions (Crawford et al. 2009 ; Voigt et al. 2015 ; Wuensch and Simon 2017 ).

While there are many well-established solutions and technologies for the reduction in GHG emitted from the waste sector, there is no universal set of options that suits all the countries. When thinking to adapt certain solutions of GHG mitigation, it is important to take into account local circumstances such as waste quantities and composition, available infrastructure, economic resources and climate (Crawford et al. 2009 ).

It is expedient to assess how the introduction of modern waste management methods affects the amount of GHG emissions from the waste management process by the example of those countries in which the waste management sector is undergoing reform. These countries include the Russian Federation, where the values of targets for the waste management industry until 2030 are legally established (Government of the Russian Federation 2018 ). In addition, on February 8, 2021, Russia issued a Presidential Decree “On Measures to Implement State Scientific and Technical Policy in the Field of Ecology and Climate,” which prescribes the creation of a Federal Program for the Creation and Implementation of Science-Intensive Technologies to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions (Decree of the President of the Russian Federation 2021 ).

The goal of this study was to quantify the impact of the introduction of various modern waste treatment methods on the volume of GHG emissions from the waste management sector using the example of Russia. To achieve this goal, the following objectives were set and solved:

Elaborate scenarios for the development of the waste management industry, based on the established Industry Development Strategy for the period up to 2030 (Government of the Russian Federation 2018 )

Determine the weighted average morphological composition of MSW;

Select emission factors for various waste treatment methods;

Calculate GHG emissions under each scenario and analyze the calculation results.

The study was conducted from November 2019 to May 2020; the text was updated in March 2021 in connection with the changed situation, as climate change issues began to play an important role on the agenda in Russia. The study and its calculations are theoretical in nature and did not involve experimental research. It was carried out by the authors at their place of work—in Germany (Technische Universität Dresden, Merseburg University of Applied Sciences) and in Russia (Perm National Research Polytechnic University).

Greenhouse gas emissions related to municipal solid waste management sector in Russia

According to the State Report on the Status of Environmental Protection of the Russian Federation of 2018 (Ministry of Natural Resources and Ecology of the Russian Federation 2019 ), the volume of generated MSW has increased by 17% from 235.4 to 275.4 m 3 (49.9 to 58.4 Mt) during the time period 2010 to 2018. With approx. 147 million inhabitants, the annual per capita generation rate is about 400 kg. Until now, MSW management in Russia has been disposal driven. More than 90% of MSW generated is transported to landfills and open dump sites; 30% of the landfills do not meet sanitary requirements (Korobova et al. 2014 ; Tulokhonova and Ulanova 2013 ). According to the State Register of the Waste Disposal Facilities in Russia, there were 1,038 MSW landfills and 2,275 unregistered dump sites at the end of 2018 (Rosprirodnadzor 2019 ). Such waste management practices are neither safe nor sustainable (Fedotkina et al. 2019 ), as they pose high public health and environmental risks and lead to the loss of valuable recyclable materials such as paper, glass, metals and plastics which account for an annual amount of about 15 Mt (Korobova et al. 2014 ).

According to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) requirements, the signatory parties of the convention need to prepare and submit national communication reports that document GHG emissions and sinks in each country by conducting an inventory based on Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) guidelines (UNFCCC 2006 ). Being the fourth biggest global emitter of GHG emissions, Russia submitted its latest National Inventory Report (NIR) to UNFCCC in April 2019. The report documents national GHG emissions by source and removals by sink (Russian Federation 2019 ). The total emissions had been decreased from 3.2 Gt in 1990 to about 2.2 Gt of CO 2 -eq. in 2017, which implies 30% reduction over a period of 27 years. At the same time, the emissions from the disposal of solid waste increased from 33 Mt in 1990 by more than 100% to 69 Mt CO 2 -eq. in 2017. In terms of methane emissions, Russian solid waste disposal sector is the second largest emitter in the country and accounts for 18.1% of the total emitted methane mostly in the form of landfill gas, while the energy sector is responsible for 61.2% of methane emissions (Russian Federation 2019 ).

Landfill gas recovery from MSW landfills is not widely practiced in the Russian Federation. According to the statistics of the Russian Ministry of Natural Resources and Ecology, the share of landfill gas energy in the total renewable energy produced in Russia was 8.61%, 5.43%, 2.77% and 2.59% in 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014, respectively (Arkharov et al. 2016 ). Different studies show that the potential of recovering energy from landfill gas in the Russian Federation is high (Arkharov et al. 2016 ; Sliusar and Armisheva 2013 ; Starostina et al. 2018 ; Volynkina et al. 2009 ).

Waste-to-energy technology is still in its infancy in Russia; the country is lagging in this area (Tugov 2013 ). Despite that, there is a great interest among the public as well as the private sector in the possibilities of the recovery of energy from MSW. In April 2014, the State Program “Energy Efficiency and Energy Development” was approved, which includes a subprogram on the development of renewable energy sources in the Russian Federation (Government of the Russian Federation 2014 ). In this program, MSW was considered as a source of renewable energy. Until the year 2017, there were only four waste incineration plants in Moscow region processing 655,000 Mg MSW per year, with only one incinerator recovering energy in form of heat and electricity (Dashieva 2017 ). In the nearest future, the construction of four additional incinerators in Moscow region and one in the city of Kazan is planned. The annual total combined capacity of the four new plants in Moscow will be about 2.8 Mt (Bioenergy International 2019 ). In the Kazan incinerator, 0.55 Mt of MSW will be treated annually, which eventually will allow ceasing of landfilling of solid waste in the Republic of Tatarstan (Bioenergy International 2019 ; Regnum 2017 ). The construction of these five new incineration plants is part of the Comprehensive Municipal Solid Waste Strategy adopted by the Russian government in 2013 (Plastinina et al. 2019 ). The focus of this strategy is the reduction in the amount of landfilled waste by creating an integrated management system and industrial recycling of waste.

Separate collection of MSW and the recycling of different waste fractions at the moment plays only a negligible role in the Russian Federation.

Materials and methods

Scenarios of the development of municipal solid waste management system.

To assess the current situation and the potential for reducing GHG emissions from the MSW management industry, three scenarios of the development of the Russian waste management system had been elaborated. The developed scenarios are based on the official statistics data on the amount of waste generated and treated, and also on the adopted legislative acts that determine the development directions of the Russian waste management system and set targets in these areas (Council for Strategic Development and National Projects 2018 ). That is why the developed scenarios include such measures to improve the waste management system as elimination of unauthorized dump sites, introduction of landfill gas collection and utilization systems at the landfills, incineration of waste with energy recovery, separate collection of waste, and recycling of utilizable waste fractions, and do not include other waste-to-energy technologies and waste treatment strategies contributing to climate change mitigation. Separate collection and treatment of biowaste is not applied in the national waste management strategy of the Russian Federation (Government of the Russian Federation 2018 ) and therefore was beyond the scope of the elaborated scenarios. For the purpose of the current study, three scenarios had been developed.

Scenario 1: BASIC (business as usual)

This scenario is based on the current waste management practices, under which 90% of the generated mixed MSW is disposed of on landfills and dump sites. According to the 6th National Communication Report of the Russian Federation to UNFCCC, the total MSW generated that found its way to managed landfills Footnote 1 was 49.209 Mt in 2009, while the amount of MSW disposed in unmanaged disposal sites (dumps) was 5.067 Mt. In 2017, the amount of MSW generated was 58.4 Mt with 10% being diverted from landfills: 3% incinerated and 7% recycled (Ministry of Natural Resources and Ecology of the Russian Federation 2019 ). According to Russian Federation 2019 , landfill gas recovery is not taking place at Russian landfills. This scenario implies the closure of unorganized dump sites, with all the waste to be disposed of on managed dump sites or landfills only.

Scenario 2: REACTIVE (moderate development)

The reactive scenario implies a moderate development of the waste management sector, based on the construction of several large incinerators, a small increase in the share of waste to be recycled and the disposal of remaining waste at sanitary landfills, Footnote 2 with the closure of all the existing unorganized dump sites. In this scenario, all Russian regions were divided into two clusters: the first cluster included the city of Moscow and the Republic of Tatarstan, where new waste incinerators are being built, and the second cluster which includes — all the other cities and regions.

Moscow and the Republic of Tatarstan

In Moscow and Tatarstan together, 8.586 Mt of mixed MSW is generated annually (Cabinet of Ministers of the Republic of Tatarstan 2018 ; Department of Housing and Communal Services of the city of Moscow 2019 ). In an attempt to introduce the waste-to-energy technology in Russia, an international consortium that consists of Swiss, Japanese and Russian firms is currently involved in constructing five state-of-the-art incineration plants in these two areas. Four incinerators are to be built in the Moscow region and one in Kazan, the capital of the Republic of Tatarstan. The annual combined capacity of the four plants in Moscow will be about 2.8 Mt of MSW, and the one of Kazan 0.55 Mt (Bioenergy International 2019 ; Regnum 2017 ). In this scenario, it is assumed that compared to the basic scenario, the share of waste undergone recycling is increased to 10%, i.e., 0.859 Mt annually. Furthermore, these 10% would be transferred to recycling plants to recover secondary raw materials. The remaining 4.377 Mt of mixed MSW would be disposed of in sanitary landfills.

Other cities and regions

In the other cities and regions of Russia, in accordance with the Development Strategy of Waste Recycling Industry until 2030 (Government of the Russian Federation 2018 ), over two hundred new eco-techno parks (i.e., waste recycling complexes) will be built. These facilities will receive mixed MSW that will be sorted there for recycling purposes. Under this scenario, it is also assumed that compared to the basic scenario, the share of waste undergone recycling is increased to 10%, thus transferring 4.982 Mt annually of the mixed MSW to recycling plants. The remaining 44.932 Mt of MSW are disposed of in sanitary landfills.

Scenario 3: INNOVATIVE (active development)

This scenario is based on the legally established priority areas for the development of the industry (Council for Strategic Development and National Projects 2018 ; Government of the Russian Federation 2018 ). The scenario implies deep changes in the industry with the introduction of technologies for incineration, separate collection and recycling of waste. In this scenario, the regions of Russia are divided into three clusters, in accordance with the possibilities of improving the infrastructure for waste management and the need for secondary resources and energy received during the processing of waste. When determining the share of waste to which this or that treatment method is applied, federal targets (Council for Strategic Development and National Projects 2018 ; Government of the Russian Federation 2018 ) and estimates made by the World Bank (Korobova et al. 2014 ) were used.

The first cluster includes two huge, densely populated urban agglomerations in which large incineration plants are under construction: Moscow and Tatarstan. With the construction of new waste incinerators, 3.35 Mt of mixed MSW will be incinerated annually. It is assumed that some 10% of mixed MSW (0.859 Mt) generated in these two regions is to be transferred to eco-techno parks for secondary raw material recovery. Some 20% of the MSW (1.712 Mt) is to be recovered from separately collected waste, and the rest of 2.66 Mt (31%) to be disposed of in sanitary landfills.

Cities with more than 0.5 million inhabitants

This cluster includes large urban agglomerations with developed industry and high demand for materials and energy resources. In this cluster, approx. 28 Mt of MSW is generated annually (Korobova et al. 2014 ). Under this scenario, it is assumed that waste incineration plants are also built in some larger cities, besides Moscow and Kazan. However, the exact quantity and capacity of these plants is yet unknown; it was assumed that in comparison with the basic scenario, in this scenario, the share of incinerated waste increased to 10%, the share of recycled waste to 15%, and a separate waste collection system is partially implemented. Hereby, 10% of the generated mixed MSW (2.79 Mt) is undergoing incineration, 15% (4.185 Mt) is transferred to sorting facilities for secondary raw material recovery, some 20% of the MSW (5.58 Mt) is recovered from separately collected waste and the rest 55% (15.345 Mt) is disposed of in sanitary landfills.

Smaller cities with less than 0.5 million inhabitants and rural areas

This cluster includes smaller cities and towns with some industrial enterprises, as well as rural areas. The amount of waste generated annually in this group of settlements is 21.914 Mt. It is assumed that no waste is incinerated, 15% of the mixed MSW (3.287 Mt) is transferred to sorting facilities for secondary raw material recovery, 10% (2.191 Mt) is recovered from separately collected waste, and the rest 75% (16.435 Mt) is disposed of in sanitary landfills.

Waste flow diagrams corresponding to the three scenarios with their input and output flows are shown in Fig.  1 .

MSW management scenarios with model inputs and outputs

In all the three scenarios, mixed MSW is transferred to sorting facilities where the recovery of valuable materials by mostly hand sorting takes place. Detailed accounts of process efficiency for material recovery facilities, in terms of recovery rates and quality of recovered materials, are scarce in the published literature (Cimpan et al. 2015 ). In the study of Cimpan et al., 2015 , at least three data sets were evaluated with the result that 13–45% of paper, 3–49% of glass, 35–84% of metals and 1–73% of plastics were recovered from the plant input of these materials. Two other studies report similar recovery rates between 60 and 95% for paper, glass, plastic and aluminum for hand and automatic sorting test trials (CalRecovery, Inc and PEER Consultants 1993 ; Hryb 2015 ). Based on this data and the results of the authors’ own experimental studies on manual waste sorting in Russia, the recovery rates for the most valuable waste fractions, including paper/cardboard, glass, metals and plastics had been calculated (Table 1 ). In the Scenario 3, separate collection of paper/cardboard, glass and plastic is introduced. Recovery rates related to the input of the corresponding waste type into each waste management cluster (see Table 1 ) for Moscow and Tatarstan as well as for the cities with more than 0.5 million inhabitants are considered to be higher than for the settlements with less than 0.5 million inhabitants.

For the comparison of GHG emissions of the three elaborated scenarios, a specific assessment model was elaborated.

Model structure

The calculation of the amounts of released and avoided GHG emissions for the different considered waste treatment technologies are based on the 2006 IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories. The IPCC methodology is scientifically widely recognized and used internationally, which makes the results easy comprehensible and easier to compare with other studies.

For the elaboration of the model that would allow calculating the GHG balance emissions, the upstream-operating-downstream (UOD) framework (Gentil et al. 2009 ) was used, where direct emissions from waste management procedures and indirect emissions from upstream and downstream activities are differentiated. On the upstream side, the indirect GHG emissions, like those related to fuel and material extraction, processing and transport as well as plant construction and commissioning, are excluded from the consideration. Indirect emissions from infrastructure construction on the downstream side are outside the system boundaries and not accounted for as they are relatively low (Boldrin et al. 2009 ; Mohareb et al. 2011 ). Direct GHG emissions from the waste transport are also excluded from the system boundaries since they are negligible comparing to the direct emissions from the waste processing/treatment (Weitz et al. 2002 ; Wuensch and Simon 2017 ). Since indirect GHG emissions avoided due to energy and material substitution, as well as carbon sequestration in the downstream processes is significant, they are included into the model. The conceptual framework of the model and its boundaries are shown in Fig.  2 .

Conceptual framework of the model showing upstream and downstream processes along with the system boundaries [derived from Abu Qdais et al. ( 2019 )]

The inputs to the model are waste (its quantity, composition, carbon content fixed in biomass and no-biomass), as well as energy and fuel that are used in the waste treatment processes (see Table 2 and Figs.  1 , 2 and 3 ). The outputs include generated and delivered electricity, recovered secondary materials and sequestrated carbon.

Compensatory system for the substitution of primary materials and energy [derived from Abu Qdais et al. ( 2019 )]

The analysis of MSW composition is not regularly done in Russia, and only a limited number of studies on this subject are published. Since waste composition is the basis for the determination of direct GHG emissions from waste management activities, accurate data is desirable. The Russian Federation is a huge country with both densely populated urban areas and sparsely populated rural areas. Due to the different settlement structures, the waste compositions also differ a lot. It is not expedient to assume an average composition for the entire country. Therefore, hereinafter three clusters had been considered to define waste compositions. The first cluster includes Moscow and the Republic of Tatarstan, since in these regions, a larger amount of mixed MSW is/will be incinerated in the nearest future. The second cluster includes the cities with the population of more than 0.5 million people, and the third cluster includes the settlements with the population of less than 0.5 million people. The waste compositions for these three clusters given in Table 2 are weighted averages of the results of a number of experimental studies of waste composition which were found in sources of the literature published after 2010 and further analyzed. Weighted average here means that the respective data on waste composition that was found for a city or region was included in the weighted average with the proportion that the amount of MSW generated in the city or region takes up as part of the total mass of MSW generated in the respective cluster.

To determine the avoidance of GHG emissions in the downstream processes by means of energy and material substitution as well as carbon sequestration, a compensatory system must be used. In Fig.  3 , the compensatory system for the substitution of energy and primary materials is shown.

Emission factors

Waste incineration.

It is necessary to know the emission factors when calculating GHG emissions from thermal treatment of waste, and also when compiling national emissions inventories (Larsen and Astrup 2011 ). Information on GHG emission factors of various solid waste treatment technologies for each country is of great importance for the assessment of GHGs emitted as a result of adopting a certain technology. However, such factors are not available for the Russian Federation, which implies using the data available in the literature for the countries with the conditions similar to the Russian ones, examining local circumstances of solid waste management system (Friedrich and Trois 2013 ; Larsen and Astrup 2011 ; Noya et al. 2018 ).

There are different factors affecting GHG emission levels from waste incineration. One of the most important factors in determining CO 2 emissions is the amount of fossil carbon in the waste stream meant for incineration. Non-CO 2 emissions are more dependent on the incineration technology and conditions, and for modern waste incinerators, the amounts of non-CO 2 emissions are negligible (Johnke 2001 ; Sabin Guendehou et al. 2006 ).

The amount of fossil carbon was calculated based on waste composition, carbon content and share of fossil carbon given in Table 2 ; the resulting fossil carbon content in wet waste was 0.117 kg C/kg. For the indirectly avoided GHG emissions, the recovery of electricity with a net efficiency of 24% for all the scenarios and for the Scenario 3 also from metals contained in the incinerator slag to substitute primary metals was considered. The recovery of heat in form of process steam or district heat was not considered in the scenarios (Dashieva 2017 ). Further parameters for the calculation of GHG emissions from waste incineration are given in Table 3 .

For the calculation of the impact of the methane released from landfills to climate change over a 100 years’ time horizon, the first-order decay kinetics model was used. Almost 80% of the Russian MSW landfills occupy an area larger than 10 ha (Volynkina and Zaytseva 2010 ). Here, it is assumed that all the MSW is highly compacted and disposed of in deep landfills under anaerobic conditions without the recovery of landfill gas (Govor 2017 ). Since no landfill gas is recovered, in Scenario 1, only the sequestrated non-biodegradable biogenic carbon in the landfill results in avoided GHG emissions. There is an intention in Russia to introduce the collection of landfill gas as the primary measure to reduce GHG emissions from the waste management sector (Government of the Russian Federation 2018 ; Ministry of Natural Resources and Ecology of the Russian Federation 2013 ) within the next years. In the literature, methane recovery rates between 9% (Scharff et al. 2003 ) and 90% (Spokas et al. 2006 ) are reported. For example, most US landfills are well-controlled and managed; in particular, in California, gas collection efficiencies are as high as 82.5% (Kong et al. 2012 ). Based on these values, for both Scenario 2 and Scenario 3, landfill gas recovery is introduced with a recovery rate of 60%. Under these two scenarios, in addition to carbon sequestration, the recovered landfill gas is used to produce electricity, which results in avoided indirect GHG emissions. Other parameters used for the calculation are mainly taken from the latest Russian National Inventory Report where IPCC default parameters were used (Pipatti et al. 2006 ; Russian Federation 2019 ). The parameters used for the calculation of GHG emissions from landfills for all the three scenarios are shown in Table 4 .

• Material recovery

In all the scenarios, some part of mixed MSW is treated in eco-techno parks, where valuable secondary raw materials like metals, paper, glass and plastics are recovered, and the sorting residues are forwarded to landfills. In addition, separate collection of some amounts of paper, glass, and plastics in the Scenario 3 is presumed. The corresponding recovery rates are already given in Table 1 . Each recovered secondary material substitutes a certain amount of primary material. Since the production of primary materials is usually connected with higher energy and raw material consumption than that of the secondary materials, more GHGs are released during the production of the former ones. Therefore, every unit of recovered secondary material obtained leads to a reduction in released GHGs.

GHG emission or substitution factors are developed for specific geographical areas and technologies, and their appropriateness to other circumstances may be questionable (Turner et al. 2015 ). The application of one specific emission factor for a recovered material in the whole Russian Federation would already be debatable due to the size of the country. Perhaps that is why emission factors for Russia cannot be found in the literature. For this study, the average values of GHG emission/substitution factors determined for other industrial countries from the study of (Turner et al. 2015 ) were used. The amounts of avoided GHG, i.e., the values of the emission factors in CO 2 equivalents for the recovered valuable waste fractions, including steel, aluminum, paper/cardboard, glass and plastic, are given in Table 5 .

In Table 5 , the used equivalent factor (Global Warming Potential over a time horizon of 100 years) of released methane versus carbon dioxide, the emission factor of the use of fuel oil in the waste incineration process and the substitution factor of delivered electrical power are shown. The emission factor of the generated electricity in the Russian Federation is relatively low, since approx. half (52%) of the electricity is produced by natural gas and approx. 13% by hydro- and nuclear power, while only 13% is produced by coal (British Petrolium 2019 ; U.S. Energy Information Administration 2017 ). The electricity mix factor is therefore only 0.358 Mg CO 2 -eq./MWh generated electricity (Gimadi et al. 2019 ).

Results and discussion

The population of the Russian Federation is expected to decrease in the next decades (United Nations 2019 ), but due to the economic growth, the amount of waste generated per capita is expected to increase in the same ratio; that is why the calculation of the GHG emissions for all the three scenarios was based on an assumed fixed annually amount of 58.4 Mt of MSW. Average waste compositions were calculated for this study on the basis of eleven waste analyses conducted in different Russian cities between 2010 and 2017 and grouped into three clusters (Moscow and Tatarstan, cities with more than 0.5 million inhabitants and cities/settlements with less than 0.5 million inhabitants). From the available literature data for the countries with conditions similar to Russian ones, emission factors were adopted to be further used in calculations of GHG emissions from waste disposal on managed and sanitary landfills, waste incineration and waste recycling with the recovery of secondary raw materials.

In Fig.  4 , the amounts of CO 2 -equivalent emissions per year that contribute to global warming for each of the three scenarios considered in the study are shown. Since the emissions related to the collection and transportation of waste, as well as energy consumption in the upstream side, are almost similar for all the treatment processes (Komakech et al. 2015 ), and as they are relatively small compared to the operational and downstream emissions (Boldrin et al. 2009 ; Friedrich and Trois 2011 ), they were not considered in the model. Avoided and sequestrated emissions were subtracted from the direct emissions to calculate GHG net emission values.

Global warming contribution of the three considered scenarios

The basic scenario (mostly managed landfilling without landfill gas recovery) gives the highest GHG net emissions among all the analyzed scenarios of approx. 64 Mt CO 2 -eq./a, followed by the reactive scenario (mostly sanitary landfilling with landfill gas recovery) with approx. 12.8 Mt CO 2 -eq./a of GHG net emissions. The innovative scenario (sanitary landfilling with landfill gas recovery and increased shares of MSW incineration, separate collection and material recovery) had shown an almost neutral GHG balance with approx. 3.7 Mt CO 2 -eq./a of GHG net emissions.

To assess the impact of the introduction of various waste treatment methods on the amount of GHG emissions from the waste management sector, the specific GHG emissions for each scenario as a whole was calculated, as well as “within” scenarios for each considered waste management process/method (Table 6 ).

The amount of specific total GHG emissions under Scenario 2 is five times less than under Scenario 1. Such a large difference is due to the modernization of existing managed dumpsites (Scenario 1), instead of which MSW is disposed of at sanitary landfills equipped with landfill gas and leachate collection systems, with intermediate insulating layers and top capping (Scenario 2). Such a transition from managed dumpsites to sanitary landfills leads not only to a decrease in the amount of specific released GHG emissions by approx. 1 Mg CO 2 -eq./Mg MSW, but also to a decrease in total emissions due to avoided emissions in the amount of 0.053 Mg CO 2 -eq./Mg MSW generated by energy recovery.

The amount of specific total GHG emissions under Scenario 3 is 3.4 times less than under Scenario 2. This reduction is mainly due to an almost twofold increase in the volume of waste incinerated, along with the introduction of a separate waste collection system (Scenario 3). At the same time, in Scenario 3, the share of plastic in the mixed waste stream sent to incineration is less than in Scenarios 1 and 2 (see Fig.  1 ). Climate-related GHG from waste incineration are generated mainly due to the plastic contained in the waste. Therefore, in Scenario 3, less GHG emissions are released during waste incineration. Reduction in GHG emissions from waste incineration is also facilitated by the recovery of metals from the bottom ash, which occurs only in Scenario 3.

In Scenario 3, the total amount of recycled material is larger than in Scenario 2, since not only part of the mixed waste is recycled, but also separately collected. According to the Scenario 3, metals are not included in the waste fractions collected separately. Metals have a comparably high GHG substitution factor (see Table 5 ); this explains the slight decrease in avoided GHG emissions due to material recovery in Scenario 3 compared to Scenario 2 because of a decreased share of metals in the total waste stream sent for recycling.

Many studies confirm GHG emissions reduction by the application of these waste treatment concepts. It is shown that the recovery of landfill gas from managed landfills has a high potential to reduce GHG emissions from landfills (EI-Fadel and Sbayti 2000 ; Friedrich and Trois 2016 ; Lee et al. 2017 ; Starostina et al. 2014 ). The transfer from the disposal of mixed MSW on landfills to the incineration on waste incineration or waste-to-energy plants leads to further reduction in GHG emissions (Bilitewski and Wuensch 2012 ; Chen 2018 ; Voigt et al. 2015 ). The recovery of secondary materials from MSW allows avoiding additional amounts of GHG emissions (Björklund and Finnveden 2005 ; Franchetti and Kilaru 2012 ; Turner et al. 2015 ; Wuensch and Simon 2017 ).

It should be noted that the calculated results of the direct GHG emissions from landfilling and waste incineration are subject to uncertainties. Waste composition (Table 2 ) and the parameters set/assumed for the landfills (Table 4 ) and waste incineration (Table 3 ) affect the level of the results. Indirect downstream emissions from recovered secondary materials and substituted energy cannot be provided with accuracy, as indicated by missing data for the substitution factors of recovered secondary materials in Russia and the variability of the scenarios for substituted electricity. To get an impression about the possible fluctuation range of the determined results, a sensitivity analysis was carried out. Therefore, all values shown in Tables 1 , 3 , 4 and 5 were ones decreased by 10% and once increased by 10%. The impact of the sensitivity analysis on the GHG net emissions is shown as error bars in Fig.  4 . The results of the sensitivity analysis show a range for the GHG net emissions of the basic scenario between 35.129 and 91.446 Mt CO 2 -eq./a, for the reactive scenario between 5.133 and 16.324 Mt CO 2 -eq./a and for the innovative scenario from − 1.516 to 4.871 Mt CO 2 -eq./a.

All the exact values of the final results shown in Fig.  4 as well as the graphical representation of the results of the sensitivity analysis can be checked in the provided supplementary materials.

The most recent data about global GHG emissions from solid waste disposal shows that direct emissions contribute with 0.67 Gt CO 2 -eq./a (Fischedick et al. 2014 ) to about 1.4% of the total anthropogenic GHG emissions of 49 Gt CO 2 -eq./a (Edenhofer et al. 2015 ). For the Russian Federation, the contribution of the direct emissions from the MSW management accounts for approx. 3.7% of the total GHG emissions of the country of around 2.2 Gt CO 2 -eq./a (Russian Federation 2019 ). In this study, the potential of different waste management methods in relation to climate change impact was assessed using the example of the Russian waste management industry. For this purpose, three scenarios had been developed and analyzed:

Basic scenario (business as usual), based on the existing waste management practices. The scenario implies that 90% of the generated mixed MSW is disposed of on managed dumpsites, 7% is undergone material recovery and 3% incinerated. All the unorganized dumpsites are closed; on managed dumpsites, there is no landfill gas recovery.

Reactive scenario (moderate development). This scenario implies construction of a number of large waste incineration plants and an increase in the share of waste to be recycled so that 84.3% of generated MSW is disposed of in sanitary landfills, 10% is sent to recycling plants for material recovery, and 5.7% is incinerated.

Innovative scenario (active development). This scenario assumes partial implementation of a separate waste collection system and broader introduction of waste processing technologies. As a result, 20% of the total generated MSW is collected separately and then recycled, 14.3% undergoes material recovery, 55.2% is disposed of in sanitary landfills, and 10.5% is incinerated.

For determining weighed average morphological composition of MSW, three clusters of human settlements had been considered, and the respective data on waste compositions had been analyzed. The first cluster includes Moscow and the Republic of Tatarstan, the second cluster includes the major cities (those with the population of more than 0.5 million people), and the third cluster includes the minor cities and rural areas.

For determining emission factors, both own calculation results and reference data from the National Inventory Report and other sources were used. Thus, the amount of fossil carbon, being one of the most important factors determining CO 2 emissions from waste incineration, was calculated based on the waste composition, carbon content and the share of fossil carbon in the waste. For the calculation of the amount of CH 4 released from MSW landfills, the first-order decay kinetics model was used. Avoided GHG emissions are the result of sequestrated non-biodegradable biogenic carbon in landfills (all the scenarios) and recovered landfill gas used to produce electricity (Scenarios 2 and 3). With the use of emission factors for material recovery included those for the recovered valuable waste fractions steel, aluminum, paper and cardboard, glass and plastic, GHG emissions were calculated under each scenario. As it was expected, the basic scenario gives the highest amount of total GHG net emissions of approx. 64 Mt CO 2 -eq./a (1.096 Mg CO 2 -eq./Mg MSW). Under the reactive scenario, the amount of total GHG net emissions is approx. 12.8 Mt CO 2 -eq./a (0.219 Mg CO 2 -eq./Mg MSW), and under the innovative scenario, it is about 3.7 Mt CO 2 -eq./a (0.064 Mg CO 2 -eq./Mg MSW).

The calculation of specific GHG emissions made it possible to assess the extent to which the introduction of various waste treatment methods makes it possible to reduce GHG emissions resulting from the respective waste treatment processes. Analysis of the results of these calculations showed that the transition from managed dumpsites to sanitary landfills can reduce total GHG emissions from the Russian waste management sector by up to 5 times. The introduction of a separate collection system (in which 20% of waste is collected separately) with a simultaneous twofold increase in the share of waste incinerated has led to a more than threefold reduction in total GHG emissions from the sector of Russian waste management. Another factor influencing the reduction in GHG emissions from waste incineration is the recovery of metals from the bottom ash.

Direct GHG emissions can be further reduced with a shift from landfilling to treatment of mixed MSW in material recovery facilities and waste incinerators or even to separate collection and treatment of MSW. In addition, indirect downstream emissions can be avoided by a significant amount via energy and material recovery. With a separate collection and treatment of biowaste and the recovery of district heat from waste incineration process, further GHG mitigation can be obtained. With these additional measures, the MSW industry of the Russian Federation could become a net avoider from a net emitter.

For this study, a number of parameters and emission factors from the literature where used, which does not precisely reflect the situation in Russia. Conducting further research for determining country specific, for a huge country like Russia, possibly even region-specific data and emission factors resulting in the development of a corresponding database would be useful to minimize these uncertainties.

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Wünsch, C., Tsybina, A. Municipal solid waste management in Russia: potentials of climate change mitigation. Int. J. Environ. Sci. Technol. 19 , 27–42 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13762-021-03542-5

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s13762-021-03542-5

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Chapter: 14 problems of waste management in the moscow region, problems of waste management in the moscow region.

Department of Natural Resources of the Central Region of Russia

The scientific and technological revolution of the twentieth century has turned the world over, transformed it, and presented humankind with new knowledge and innovative technologies that previously seemed to be fantasies. Man, made in the Creator’s own image, has indeed become in many respects similar to the Creator. Primitive thinking and consumerism as to nature and natural resources seem to be in contrast to this background. Drastic deterioration of the environment has become the other side of the coin that gave the possibility, so pleasant for the average person, to buy practically everything that is needed.

A vivid example of man’s impact as “a geological force” (as Academician V. I. Vernadsky described contemporary mankind) is poisoning of the soil, surface and underground waters, and atmosphere with floods of waste that threaten to sweep over the Earth. Ecosystems of our planet are no longer capable of “digesting” ever-increasing volumes of waste and new synthetic chemicals alien to nature.

One of the most important principles in achieving sustainable development is to limit the appetite of public consumption. A logical corollary of this principle suggests that the notion “waste” or “refuse” should be excluded not only from professional terminology, but also from the minds of people, with “secondary material resources” as a substitute concept for them. In my presentation I would like to dwell on a number of aspects of waste disposal. It is an ecological, economic, and social problem for the Moscow megalopolis in present-day conditions.

PRESENT SITUATION WITH WASTE IN MOSCOW

Tens of thousand of enterprises and research organizations of practically all branches of the economy are amassed over the territory of 100,000 hectares: facilities of energy, chemistry and petrochemistry; metallurgical and machine-building works; and light industrial and food processing plants. Moscow is occupying one of the leading places in the Russian Federation for the level of industrial production. The city is the greatest traffic center and bears a heavy load in a broad spectrum of responsibilities as capital of the State. The burden of technogenesis on the environment of the city of Moscow and the Moscow region is very considerable, and it is caused by all those factors mentioned above. One of the most acute problems is the adverse effect of the huge volumes of industrial and consumer wastes. Industrial waste has a great variety of chemical components.

For the last ten years we witnessed mainly negative trends in industrial production in Moscow due to the economic crisis in the country. In Moscow the largest industrial works came practically to a standstill, and production of manufactured goods declined sharply. At the same time, a comparative analysis in 1998–99 of the indexes of goods and services output and of resource potential showed that the coefficient of the practical use of natural resources per unit of product, which had been by all means rather low in previous years, proceeded gradually to decrease further. At present we have only 25 percent of the industrial output that we had in 1990, but the volume of water intake remains at the same level. Fuel consumption has come down only by 18 percent, and the amassed production waste diminished by only 50 percent. These figures indicate the growing indexes of resource consumption and increases in wastes from industrial production.

Every year about 13 million tons of different kinds of waste are accumulated in Moscow: 42 percent from water preparation and sewage treatment, 25 percent from industry, 13 percent from the construction sector, and 20 percent from the municipal economy.

The main problem of waste management in Moscow city comes from the existing situation whereby a number of sites for recycling and disposal of certain types of industrial waste and facilities for storage of inert industrial and building wastes are situated outside the city in Moscow Region, which is subject to other laws of the Russian Federation. Management of inert industrial and building wastes, which make up the largest part of the general volume of wastes and of solid domestic wastes (SDW), simply means in everyday practice their disposal at 46 sites (polygons) in Moscow Region and at 200 disposal locations that are completely unsuitable from the ecological point of view.

The volume of recycled waste is less than 10–15 percent of the volume that is needed. Only 8 percent of solid domestic refuse is destroyed (by incineration). If we group industrial waste according to risk factor classes, refuse that is not

dangerous makes up 80 percent of the total volume, 4th class low-hazard wastes 14 percent, and 1st-3rd classes of dangerous wastes amount to 3.5 percent. The largest part of the waste is not dangerous—up to 32 percent. Construction refuse, iron and steel scrap, and non-ferrous metal scrap are 15 percent. Paper is 12 percent, and scrap lumber is 4 percent. Metal scrap under the 4th class of risk factor makes up 37 percent; wood, paper, and polymers more than 8 percent; and all-rubber scrap 15 percent. So, most refuse can be successfully recycled and brought back into manufacturing.

This is related to SDW too. The morphological composition of SDW in Moscow is characterized by a high proportion of utilizable waste: 37.6 percent in paper refuse, 35.2 percent in food waste, 10 percent in polymeric materials, 7 percent in glass scrap, and about 5 percent in iron, steel, and non-ferrous metal scrap. The paper portion in commercial wastes amounts to 70 percent of the SDW volume.

A number of programs initiated by the Government of Moscow are underway for the collection and utilization of refuse and for neutralization of industrial and domestic waste. A waste-recycling industry is being developed in the city of Moscow, mostly for manufacturing recycled products and goods. One of the most important ecological problems is the establishment in the region of ecologically safe facilities for the disposal of dangerous wastes of 1st and 2nd class risk factors.

Pre-planned industrial capacities for thermal neutralization of SDW will be able to take 30 percent of domestic waste and dangerous industrial waste. Construction of rubbish-burning works according to the old traditional approach is not worthwhile and should come to an end. Waste-handling stations have been under construction in the city for the last five years. In two years there will be six such stations which will make it possible to reduce the number of garbage trucks from 1,156 to 379 and to reduce the amount of atmospheric pollution they produce. In addition the switch to building stations with capacity of briquetting one ton of waste into a cubic meter will decrease the burden on waste disposal sites and prolong their life span by 4–5 fold. Trash hauling enterprises will also make profit because of lower transportation costs.

Putting into operation waste-segregation complexes (10–12 sites) would reduce volumes of refuse to disposal sites by 40 percent—that is 1,200,000 tons per year. The total volume of burned or recycled SDW would reach 2,770,000 tons a year. A total of 210,000 tons of waste per year would be buried. So, in the course of a five year period, full industrial recycling of SDW could be achieved in practice.

Collection of segregated waste is one of the important elements in effective disposal and utilization of SDW. It facilitates recycling of waste and return of secondary material into the manufacturing process. Future trends in segregation and collection of SDW will demand wide popularization and improvement of the ecological culture and everyday behavior of people.

In recent years the high increase in the number of cars in Moscow has brought about not only higher pollution of the atmosphere, but also an avalanche-like accumulation of refuse from vehicles. Besides littering residential and recreation areas, cars represent a source for toxic pollution of land and reservoirs. At the same time, automobile wastes are a good source for recycled products. In the short-term outlook, Moscow has to resolve the problem of collection and utilization of decommissioned vehicles and automobile wastes with particular emphasis on activities of the private sector. Setting up a system for collection and utilization of bulky domestic waste and electronic equipment refuse is also on the priority list.

In 1999 in Moscow the following volumes of secondary raw materials were produced or used in the city or were recycled: 300,000 tons of construction waste, 296,000 tons of metal scrap, 265 tons of car battery lead, 21,000 tons of glass, 62,500 tons of paper waste, 4,328 tons of oil-bearing waste, and 306 tons of refuse from galvanizing plants.

Such traditional secondary materials as metal scrap and paper waste are not recycled in Moscow but are shipped to other regions of Russia.

The worldwide practice of sorting and recycling industrial and domestic wastes demands the establishment of an industry for secondary recycling. Otherwise segregation of waste becomes ineffective.

There are restraining factors for the development of an effective system of assorted selection, segregation, and use of secondary raw resources, namely lack of sufficient manufacturing capacities and of suitable technologies for secondary recycling.

The problem of utilization of wastes is closely linked with the problem of modernization and sometimes even demands fundamental restructuring of industries. The practical use of equipment for less energy consumption and a smaller volume of wastes and a transition to the use of alternative raw materials are needed. Large enterprises—the main producers of dangerous wastes—are in a difficult financial situation now, which is an impediment for proceeding along these lines.

Private and medium-size enterprises are becoming gradually aware of the economic profitability in rational use of waste. For example, the firm Satory started as a transportation organization specialized in removal of scrap from demolished buildings and those undergoing reconstruction. It now benefits from recycling of waste, having developed an appropriate technology for the dismantling of buildings with segregation of building waste. So, as it has been already mentioned above, the first task for Moscow is to establish a basis for waste recycling.

HOW TO CHANGE THE SITUATION WITH WASTE

Transition to modern technologies in the utilization of wastes requires either sufficient investments or a considerable increase in repayment for waste on the part of the population. Obviously, these two approaches are not likely to be realized in the near future.

The recovery of one ton of SDW with the use of ecologically acceptable technology requires not less than $70–100.

Given the average per capita income in 1999 and the likely increase up to the year of 2005, in 2005 it will be possible to receive from a citizen not more than $14 per year. This means that the cost of technology should not exceed $40 per ton of recycled waste. Unfortunately, this requirement can fit only unsegregated waste disposal at the polygons (taking into account an increase in transportation costs by the year 2005).

Such being the case, it looks like there is only one acceptable solution for Russia to solve the problem of waste in an up-to-date manner: to introduce trade-in value on packaging and on some manufactured articles.

In recent years domestic waste includes more and more beverage containers. Plastic and glass bottles, aluminium cans, and packs like Tetrapak stockpiled at disposal sites will soon reach the same volumes as in western countries. In Canada, for example, this kind of waste amounts to one-third of all domestic waste.

A characteristic feature of this kind of waste is that the packaging for beverages is extremely durable and expensive. Manufactured from polyethylene terephthalate (PTA) and aluminum, it is sometimes more expensive than the beverage it contains.

What are the ways for solving the problem? Practically all of them are well-known, but most will not work in Russia in present conditions. The first problem relates to collection of segregated waste in the urban sector and in the services sector. A number of reasons make this system unrealistic, specifically in large cities. Sorting of waste at waste-briquetting sites and at polygons is possible. But if we take into account the present cost of secondary resources, this system turns out to be economically unprofitable and cannot be widely introduced.

The introduction of deposits on containers for beverages is at present the most acceptable option for Russia. This system turned out to be most effective in a number of countries that have much in common with Russia. In fact this option is not at all new for us. Surely, all people remember the price of beer or kefir bottles. A system of deposit for glass bottles was in operation in the USSR, and waste sites were free from hundreds of millions of glass bottles and jars. We simply need to reinstate this system at present in the new economic conditions according to new types and modes of packaging. Deposits could be introduced also on glass bottles and jars, PTA and other plastic bottles, aluminium cans, and Tetrapak packing.

Let us investigate several non-ecological aspects of this problem, because the ecological impact of secondary recycling of billions of bottles, cans, and packs is quite obvious.

Most of the population in Russia lives below the poverty line. When people buy bottles of vodka, beer, or soft drinks, they will have to pay a deposit value (10–20 kopeks for a bottle). The poorest people will carry the bottles to receiving points. A system of collection of packaging will function by itself. Only receiving points are needed. Millions of rubles that are collected will be redistributed among the poorest people for their benefit, and a social problem of the poor will be solved to a certain extent not by charity, but with normal economic means.

A second point is also well-known. In a market economy one of the most important problems is that of employment. What happens when the trade-in value is introduced?

Thousands of new jobs are created at receiving points and at enterprises that recycle glass, plastics, etc. And we don’t need a single penny from the state budget. More than that, these enterprises will pay taxes and consume products of other branches of industry, thus yielding a return to the budget, not to mention income tax from new jobs.

There is another aspect of the matter. Considerable funding is needed from budgets of local governments, including communal repayments for waste collection and disposal at polygons and incinerators. Reduction of expenses for utilization of waste can be significant support for housing and communal reform in general.

It is practically impossible to evaluate in general an ecological effect when thousands of tons of waste will cease to occupy plots of land near cities as long-term disposal sites. Operation costs of receiving points and transportation costs could be covered by funds obtained from manufacturers and from returned packaging. Besides, when a waste recycling industry develops and becomes profitable, recycling factories will be able to render partial support to receiving points.

Trade-in value can be introduced on all types of packaging except milk products and products for children. It could amount to 15 or 30 kopecks per container, depending on its size. If all plastic bottles with water and beer are sold with trade-in value only in Moscow, the total sum will reach 450 million rubles a year. If we include glass bottles, aluminum cans, and packets, the sum will be one billion rubles. This sum will be redistributed at receiving points among people with scanty means when they receive the money for used packaging and jobs at receiving points and at recycling factories.

The bottleneck of the problem now is the absence in Russia of high technology industries for waste recycling. It can be resolved rather easily. At the first stage, used packaging can be sold as raw material for enterprises, including those overseas. There is unrestricted demand for PTA and aluminum on the part

of foreign firms. When waste collection mechanisms are established, there will be limited investments in this branch of industry.

With regard to the inexhaustible source of free raw material, this recycling industry will become one of the most reliable from the point of view of recoupment of investments. The Government, regional authorities, the population, and of course ecologists should all be interested in having such a law.

The same should be done with sales of cars, tires, and car batteries. Prices of every tire or battery should be higher by 30–50 rubles. These sums of money should be returned back to a buyer or credited when he buys a new tire or a new battery. For sure, such being the case we will not find used batteries thrown about the city dumps. In this case the task is even simpler because there are already a number of facilities for the recycling of tires and batteries.

In fact, a law of trade-in value can change the situation with waste in Russia in a fundamental way. Russian legislation has already been prepared, and the concept of an ecological tax has been introduced in the new Internal Revenue Code. Now it needs to be competently introduced. The outlay for waste recycling has to become a type of ecological tax. To realize this task much work has to be done among the deputies and with the Government. Public ecological organizations, including international ones, should play a leading role.

ACTIVITY OF PUBLIC ORGANIZATIONS IN THE SPHERE OF WASTE MANAGEMENT IN THE MOSCOW REGION

We know examples of the ever increasing role of the general public in the solution of the problem of waste utilization, first of all in those countries that have well-developed democratic institutions. “Fight Against Waste” is one of the popular slogans of public organizations abroad. Public opinion has brought about measures of sanitary cleaning in cities, secured better work by municipal services, shut down hazardous industries, and restricted and prohibited incineration facilities. Nevertheless, the struggle against wastes in the economically developed countries, being a manifestation of an advanced attitude towards the environment, has in the long run brought about a paradoxical result. Transfer of hazardous industries to countries with lower environmental standards and inadequate public support—Russia, as an example—has made the world even more dangerous from the ecological point of view.

Russia has just embarked on the path of formation of environmental public movements by the establishment of nongovernmental organizations. Representatives of nongovernmental organizations from Russia took part in the international gathering in Bonn in March 2000 of nongovernmental organizations that are members of the International Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) Elimination Network. A declaration against incineration was adopted in

Bonn by nongovernmental organizations, which called for elaboration of effective alternative technologies for utilization of waste and safe technologies for elimination of existing stockpiles of POP.

Quite a number of environmental organizations are operating now in Moscow. First to be mentioned is the All-Russia Society for the Conservation of Nature, which was established in Soviet times. There are other nongovernmental organizations: Ecosoglasiye, Ecolain, Ecological Union, and the Russian branches of Green Cross and Greenpeace. All these organizations collect and popularize environmental information and organize protest actions against policies of the Government or local administrations on ecological matters. A new political party—Russia’s Movement of the Greens—is being formed.

Laws currently in force in the Russian Federation (“On Protection of the Environment,” “On State Ecological Examination by Experts,” “On Production and Consumption of Waste”) declare the right of the public to participate in environmental examination of projects that are to be implemented, including those on the establishment of facilities for elimination and disposition of waste. Public examinations can be organized by the initiative of citizens and public associations. For example, under the law of Moscow “On Protection of the Rights of Citizens while Implementing Decisions on Construction Projects in Moscow,” public hearings are organized by the city’s boards. Decisions taken by local authorities, at referenda and public meetings, may be the very reason for carrying out public examinations. Such examinations are conducted mainly by commissions, collectives, or ad hoc groups of experts. Members of public examination panels are responsible for the accuracy and validity of their expert evaluations in accordance with the legislation of the Russian Federation. A decision of a public environmental panel has an informative nature as a recommendation, but it becomes legally mandatory after its approval by the appropriate body of the State. Besides, the opinion of the public is taken into account when a project submitted for state environmental review has undergone public examinations and there are supporting materials.

Public environmental examination is supposed to draw the attention of state bodies to a definite site or facility and to disseminate well-grounded information about potential ecological risks. This important facet of public environmental organizations in Moscow and in Russia is very weak. To a large extent, it can be explained by an insufficient level of specific and general knowledge of ecology even on the part of the environmentalists themselves. Lack of knowledge on the part of ordinary citizens and public groups and inadequate information (for various reasons) produce alarm-motivated behavior by those who harm the organization of environmental activity in general and waste management in particular.

There are nevertheless positive examples of public participation in designing policies of local authorities in the waste management sphere.

Speaking about the Moscow region we can point to the very productive work of the Public Ecological Commission attached to the Council of Deputies in Pushchino, in Moscow Oblast.

The population of Pushchino is 21,000. The polygon for solid biological wastes (SBW) has practically exhausted its capacities. In 1996, in order to find a way out, the Administration of the town showed an interest in a proposal made by the Austrian firm FMW to support financially the construction of an electric power station in the vicinity of the town that would operate using both fuel briquettes and SBW of the town. The briquettes would be manufactured in Turkey and would contain 70 percent Austrian industrial waste with added oil sludge. It was also envisaged that during the construction period of the electric power station, 300,000 tons of briquettes would be shipped and stockpiled. The original positive decision was annulled due to an independent evaluation of the project organized by the Public Ecological Commission.

The general public of Puschino put forward a counter proposal before the Administration in order to reduce volumes of SBW disposal at the polygon and to prolong its operation—segregation of SBW (food waste, paper refuse, fabrics, metal, glass, used car batteries). As a result, a new scheme for sanitary measures in the town was worked out in 1998, which on the basis of segregation of waste provided for a considerable decrease in refuse flow to the polygon. Unfortunately, for lack of finances in the town budget, the scheme has not been introduced to the full extent. But in spite of severe shortages of special containers for segregated wastes, a network of receiving points for secondary materials was set up.

One of the pressing tasks for greater public activity is wide popularization of environmental knowledge on waste management, especially among the young generation. There is a very important role for public organizations to play in this domain when enlightenment and education are becoming a primary concern of nongovernmental organizations. Referring again to the example of the Public Ecological Commission in Pushchino, I have to underline that this organization is taking an active part in the enlightenment of the population through organizing exhibitions, placing publications in the press, and spurring school children into action to encourage cleaning of the town by means of environmental contests, seminars, and conferences. Children help the Commission organize mobile receiving points for secondary material. They even prepare announcements and post them around the town calling on the citizens to take valuable amounts of domestic wastes and car batteries to receiving points.

There are other examples of a growing influence of public organizations on the policy of administration in the sphere of waste management in the Moscow region. The Moscow Children’s Ecological Center has worked out the Program “You, He, She and I—All Together Make Moscow Clean,” which is being introduced with the support of the Moscow Government. In the framework of this program, children collect waste paper at schools, and they are taught how to

be careful about the environment and material resources. The storage facilities agreed to support the initiative. They buy waste paper at a special price for school children. Then, the schools spend the earned money for excursions, laboratory equipment, books, and plant greenery.

Another example of an enlightened activity is a project realized in 1999 by the firm Ecoconcord on producing video-clips for TV about the adverse effects of waste incineration and the illegality of unauthorized storage of waste.

The name Ecoconcord speaks for the main purpose of this organization—to achieve mutual understanding between the general public and governmental organizations, to encourage public involvement in decision-making, and to promote the formation of policy bodies that would not let public opinion be ignored.

Proceeding from the global task of integrating the activities of interested parties in lessening adverse waste pollution, public organizations have to cooperate with authorities and not stand against them. Cooperation and consensus between governmental and nongovernmental organizations in working out strategies and tactics in waste management should become a prerequisite in successful realization of state policy in this sphere in the Russian Federation.

An NRC committee was established to work with a Russian counterpart group in conducting a workshop in Moscow on the effectiveness of Russian environmental NGOs in environmental decision-making and prepared proceedings of this workshop, highlighting the successes and difficulties faced by NGOs in Russia and the United States.

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