The project fostered collaboration amongst organisations to work together on a topic of current global interest, Chain of Custody and Traceability.
The main organisations working on this project were MDPI, an Indonesian implementation NGO, AP2HI, an industry association bringing together progressive handline and pole and line tuna companies and the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO) Smart-Fish Indonesia.
All organisations have a strong interest in ensuring industry progress towards and understanding of traceability, and require strong industry relationships to ensure successful project outcomes. This collaborative project allowed organisations with different backgrounds, interests, expertise and objectives to coordinate and work towards achieving their interests within this field.
This approach allowed us to ensure close collaboration with industry, to get their permission to audit their supply chains and to work directly with them on improvement. The collaboration ensured additional funds were available to be leveraged to broaden the focus of the project from not only Chain of Custody but also on the more general concept of traceability, relevant to increasing market and regulatory demands.
New import regulations are coming online in the US market in 2018 and suggestions have been made that the EU will update their regulations within 2018-2019. This made the industry aware that changes and improvements within supply chains are necessary to meet market demands. International projects such as the Smart-Fish Indonesia program and the USAID Oceans project are focusing on the topic of data, traceability and transparency making collaboration easier at this time.
Coordination between various organizations, as was the case in this project, takes time and energy which should be factored into work-planning and budgeting from the onset. This should be taken into account for the implementation phase and for the contracting and reporting phases of a project.
Managing other organisations, in the form of sub-contracts in a wider project, requires very detailed work-planning and deliverable expectation discussions. The outcome of the project relies on good communications about the deliverables and expectations.
All organisations in a larger collaborative effort can work on their own objectives, but a combined vision and some combined objectives are useful to accelerate progress and add strength to the validity and need of the promoted topic. An agreed shared vision can reduce the potential for conflicting approaches being communicated to stakeholders and external partners of the project.