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GRONTMIJ | CARL BRO PROVIDES SCHOOL FOR TURKISH GIRLS AND TRAINING FOR 76,000 TEACHERS
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01/04/2008 |
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19,833 man days and 153 buildings on 97 sites in 16 provinces. These are the main figures of the Support to Basic Education Programme, which will upgrade and modernise the Turkish school system.
How are you going to construct 81 schools with 775 classrooms and a total floorage of 226,000 m2 ? And upgrade the teaching skills of 76,000 teachers ? This is the challenge that has faced a team of consultants over the last five years with Grontmij | Carl Bro as the lead consultant. With approximately 90 man years, corresponding to an average of 18 full-time employees a year, the EU-financed ‘Support to Basic Education Programme’ (SBEP) is one of the largest projects undertaken by Grontmij | Carl Bro.
On 27 and 28 November 2007, the major official “Project Closing Conference” took place in Ankara with participants from the Turkish Ministry of Education, the EU Ambassador and the Danish Ambassador.
The art of solving a puzzleThe giant task has been solved in cooperation with two other consultancy firms who are specialised in teaching and education, namely SPAN from the Netherlands and CE from the UK. Project Manager Carsten Ring Petersen, explains about his role and that of his colleagues:
“Grontmij | Carl Bro has been responsible for 68 per cent of this “technical assistance” project and we were responsible for a “soft” as well as a “hard” component of the project as well as for ensuring optimum administration of the specified number of manpower resources. In other words, we had to find out how best to deploy 2,816 man days for international long-term consultants, 5,644 man days for international short-term consultants and 11,373 man days for local short-term consultants.”
 76,000 teachers back at school
The “soft” part of the project covered assistance in preparing new teaching materials for the public school system which now consists of eight classes, as well as developing and upgrading the teachers’ skills to enable them to use the new school textbooks. Specifically, the process consisted of holding a number of seminars and workshops focusing, among other things, on preparing new textbooks – the skills of approximately 76,000 teachers in total were upgraded.
Schools across the countryThe “hard” part of the project included Grontmij | Carl Bro’s services in connection with preliminary studies, preparation of design, specifications and tender material, as well as monitoring the implementation of the construction of the 81 schools and 775 classrooms, 20 dormitories, 204 teacher accommodation units and a number of sports halls and canteens. In addition, 11 buildings for adult education were constructed in some of the larger towns in the south and west of Turkey because these areas have attracted many people from rural areas in recent years. The total construction project includes construction of 153 buildings on 97 sites mainly in the provinces designated as underprivileged by the EU. After three tender rounds, seven Turkish contractors were entrusted with the construction of the buildings.
 “A particular challenge in this project has been managing the large quantities of data. Our database had to cope with 1,100 events, more than 375 different consultants and more than 850 contracts including all the related timesheets, salary payments, reports and payment vouchers, etc.” explains Carsten Ring Petersen.
During the past five years, a large number of employees from Grontmij | Carl Bro have been deployed at our office in Ankara, mainly from the Contract Management and the Business and Capacity Development departments, but also Danish departments have contributed to the project.
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