ABSTRACT
Globally Monitoring has become an important tool through which environmental, economic and social sustainability can be attained. Monitoring helps those interested with initiatives with determining that progress is being made in accordance with goals. The study generally determined how monitoring practices influence projects performance at the water sector trust fund. Specifically, the study focused on how monitoring planning, monitoring tools, monitoring techniques and adoption of monitoring practices influences project performance. Adoption of descriptive research design was adhered to determine the influence of monitoring practices on performance of projects at the water sector trust fund. The target population consisted of 275 persons drawn from various departments in the organization. This study utilized primary data using semi-structured questionnaire. Analysis of data followed a descriptive analysis as well as the inferential analysis such as the application of regression. The data analyzed was tabulated and presented in standard deviation and percentage form. The study established that monitoring planning, monitoring tools, monitoring techniques and adoption of monitoring practices had a positive and significant relationship with project performance. The study concluded that a well planned M&E helps the project team to get a better understanding of the target population’s needs which helps to define the scope of the project and design objectives that are relevant, measurable and achievable. Monitoring tools helps in knowing if the intended results are being achieved as planned, what actions are needed to achieve the intended results during the project implementation, and whether these initiatives are creating a positive impact towards the project. Monitoring techniques enable project managers to link project goals and objectives to stakeholder needs, focus on customer needs, Build high-performance project teams, work across functional boundaries, develop work breakdown structures, estimate project costs and schedules, meet time constraints, calculate risks and establish a dependable project control and monitoring system. Adoption of monitoring practices is used to assess quality and the effectiveness of the performance and the outcome of project implementation, track and identify the gaps and to improve the implementation to achieve the project goal and set objectives. The study recommended that the project managers should identify the program goals and objectives, define indicators for tracking progress towards achieving those goals, decide on methods for gathering data and how often various data will be recorded to track indicators. Project managers should monitor the parameter of project planning which requires the monitoring of project parameters like effort, costing, schedule, timeline. Project managers should trace the project’s requirements to the deliverables. This makes the project’s tasks more visible and also prevents new tasks or requirements being added to the project without approval. Project implementers should have in place a number of project-related documents such as the project plan including the logical framework or result-chain, project objectives and indicators, the monitoring plan/framework, the data collection tools and methods, the data management (analysis) template and reporting. The study recommends that further studies should be carried out that focus on other monitoring practices that have not been studied.