The Practice Programme at IIHS offers the following services:
STRATEGIC ADVICE/ ADVISORY
IIHS Practice Programme has been engaged with providing evidence-based, strategic advisory services to the government at various levels – national, regional and local. IIHS continuously strives to find avenues to influence the entire landscape of urban policy.
CAPACITY BUILDING
There is an enormous demand for appropriate urban-centric capacity at different levels, and across sectors. IIHS was set up with the explicit intention of reducing this capacity gap through various academic programmes and customised Urban Practitioners Program (UPP). The practice programmes play an important role in reframing capacity building interventions. It undertakes assignments related to training needs assessment for specific institutions.
KNOWLEDGE PARTNERSHIP
One of the critical ways by which the IIHS Practice Programme has contributed to capacity building is through knowledge partnerships, both with government and other institutions. While the exact nature of partnership differs, the various components include capacity building, supporting organisations in setting priorities/ developing strategies, and providing project management assistance for critical ventures. It is also envisaged that these knowledge partnerships would provide a positive feedback loop for enhancing the ongoing research and academic initiatives. The role of UPP and IIHS Labs is indispensable to such engagements.
IMPLEMENTATION SUPPORT IN PARTNERSHIP
While the Practice Programme does not visualise itself to be often providing implementation or project management services, it selectively participates in project and implementation support across the entire cycle of conceptualisation-design-implement-monitor. TNUSSP and campus development support has a significant Implementation Support component and helps test work in this domain.
KNOWLEDGE SHARING AND DISSEMINATION
One of the critical challenges that Practice Programme engages with is the issue of creating impact on ground and identifying avenues and policy touchpoints to enable change at scale. Creating and managing platforms for knowledge sharing is one of the most useful way of catalyzing change and IIHS ensures that it continuously strives to contribute to the knowledge sharing space through Knowledge Platform, and the Cases developed at IIHS.
MONITORING, LEARNING & EVALUATION
IIHS Practice Programme provides monitoring, learning and evaluation services. IIHS actively engages with clients to set up their processes and systems that enable installation of sound baseline, support efficient implementation process and help evaluate program effectiveness. These post installation processes and systems help to identify inconsistencies, data course-corrections and further customisation of training and capacity building programmes.
ORIGINAL AND CUTTING EDGE PRACTICE
While the IIHS Practice Programme actively strives to create new markets for interdisciplinary practice, there is an immediate demand for certain services/ projects that have transformatory potential in the long run. Hence the team also formulates independent projects, unconstrained by specific client demands, to generate proof of concepts and with wide transformatory potential. This is done by writing an integrated research and practice grant or by raising seed money or through internal funding support.