Management

How all the work is organized within the project, regardless of project ownership, is of course vital to project success. Here's a chart from the Michaelston-y-Fedw project showing all the different areas that needed to be worked on:

Image source: Michaelston-y-Fedw Internet CIC

This was for a Do It Yourself project where community members banded together to form a non-profit company. If you are opting to do an outsourcing project, you won't need as many tasks accomplished, but there still will be significant functions to be done.

I would make a plea to organize your project such that individuals are given sole responsibility for different areas as opposed to having a committee try to make the myriad decisions necessary for the project to progress. Obviously, in an HOA, the HOA board makes the final financing decisions, but all the work leading up to the final package should be parcelled out. In addition, be careful about assigning too many tasks to existing full time HOA or municipal employees. Their existing job functions keep them busy; loading on new responsibilities for a fast moving, highly technical project is a recipie for frustration.

One way to organize your project is to recruit or appoint or hire a project general manager and let them in turn recruit or appoint or hire specialists as needed. If the general manager has the ability to work full time on the project, they can do the lions share of the work themselves.