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With regards day to day, and year on
year, site operations, the Conservation Management System
(CMS) is a relational database which integrates all
information relevant to the work of the site manager.
With regards the management plan, at
an operational level, the CMS links the site- description
element of the plan to management operations designed
for the protection, enhancement, extension, and promotion
of features of value. The descriptive component of a
management plan defines the site as an ecological
system.
Its CMS component defines the site as a socio- scientific
human intervention
system, with
targeted conservation objectives. The two systems within
the plan are coupled dynamically. The linkage is through
the features (highlighted in the description) requiring
protection in relation to practical constraints, or
modifiers, and to their potential for 'added value'
3 CMS: its relationship to the site
'strategic plan'
3.1 Operational plans are all subordinate
to strategic plans, which present visions for the future
state of a site in relation to its central resource
allocation system. In this sense, all operational plans
have to be coupled with a strategic level of planning
within a corporate system requiring audit-feedback about
the effectiveness of resources in targeting a strategic
vision.
At the moment there is no direct software
link in the CMS between operations and strategies, although
there is an indirect one via the production of reports
on technical progress and needs for operational resources,
which may be 'translated' by a line manager for corporate
presentation. This aspect is expanded in section 6.
'CMS 2000' is a project-based planning
and recording system aimed at attaining measurable objectives,
and managing conservation features within acceptable
limits of variation. A 'project' is simply a unit of
work e.g. 'construct a footpath', 'patrol an area' or
'record a species'. Each project includes a description
of the work to be done. When a project is completed,
a report on the outcome is provided, against which success
in reaching targets may be gauged. Copies of all projects
and their objectives are retained in the CMS to provide
a progress-register, and an archive to support managerial
continuity.
The prime function of the CMS is to
enable site managers operate the operational functions
of a management plan as a feedback work-cycle by:-
- identifying and describing,
in a standard way, all the tasks of work required
to manage the site's conservation features.
- producing various work programmes,
for example five year plans, rolling- plans, annual
schedules, financial schedules, and work schedules
for specified categories of staff.
- providing a site/species monitoring
system to check the effectiveness of the plan against
the achievement of the objectives.
- facilitating the exchange of site
management information, within, and between, sites
and organisations.
The CMS database is structured as a
sequence of on-screen forms. The forms are connected
in a branching structure that follows the management
process from a small number of planning goals to many
local actions. As aids for recording information, the
sequences of nested forms direct the user to specify
each goal of a management plan, and then define general
tasks as routes (prescriptions) leading to the details
of specific work plans. The work plans, described as
projects, are timed, resourced, and checked in the database,
to meet the planning goals. The format is commonly used
to record relationships between the working objectives
of a management plan and actions on the ground. This
is the standpoint of the CMS, which was designed as
a flexible relational database for recording information
about the day to day, and year to year, operations of
nature site management plans, and checking compliance
with the guiding objectives.
The CMS is structured around three basic
forms which list:-
- working 'objectives' for
the management of features that have a conservation
value;
- recommended tasks requiring work-plans
to meet the objectives are called 'prescriptions';
a prescription provides a convenient heading for
a group of projects aimed at tackling a particular
constraint, or modifier, to conserving a valued
feature;
- projects describe the work to
be carried out, when it will be carried out, who
will do it, and what resources have been allocated
The database can be entered at any level
by buttons, text search, or through an integral GIS
system.
There is great flexibility regarding
the way a management plan may be recorded in the CMS.
The usual format is for each valued feature within the
site to be the starting point for recording information
on its management objectives, prescriptions and projects.
A CMS may also be structured to give
an overview of many compartments within a designated
site, or many sites within an organisation. For example,
the latter structure is used by the Countryside Council
for Wales, where every national nature reserve has its
own CMS on a standalone PC, but is also part of a multi-
site CMS for corporate reporting.
Another option is that a site CMS may
be used to express objectives, prescriptions, and projects
in terms of operations, rather than features. This is
a way of simplifying the management of a widespread
feature, which occurs in many places on the site. Instead
of listing each occurrence of the feature as a 'site',
with its own hierarchy of objective, prescriptions and
projects, the CMS database would be assembled as a compendium
of operations. A particular operation would be cross-
referenced, as a 'project', to each geographical occurrence
of a feature listed in a separate, linked, database.
This arrangement would be applicable for work on hedgerows,
or management of individual trees on a large farm, where
the hedges and trees were of different ages, stages
of development, and occurred in isolated spots. The
hedgerow database might start with the general objective
of 'managing hedgerows', with prescriptions such as
'coppicing', 'trimming', 'pollarding' and planting.
The projects within CMS would be the recommended procedures
and work plans for these operations. A simple separate,
but linked, database would list all the hedges, with
the operations which apply to each one, and be used
for making quick checks on all hedges and their individual
work plans.
Finally, CMS, although designed to begin
with the working objectives of site management, may
be used for strategic management planning at a corporate
level. In this context it would begin with definitions
of the strategic objectives derived from a 'visionary
statement' as to what the environment should be like
in the future, and follow routes to working objectives.
Each working objective may then be taken, as the basis
of a site management plan, to start a second layer of
the CMS. This multi- layered format would place the
strategic plan, and its connections with working objectives
of particular site management plan, in the same database.
Whilst there is still a demand for stand
alone PC versions of the CMS, the future of conservation
management software and the Consortium lies in web-based
data handling from sites to strategic centres. In this
context the CMSC has begun a scoping study as a preliminary
stage to producing a web-based version of the CMS. |
