Development projects often tout the value of innovation and new partnerships. But evidence from five UNDP-supported initiatives across Asia, Africa, and Eastern Europe reveals a quieter, consistent reality: first-time institutional collaborations bring predictable friction — and delay. Project documents show that efforts involving a new implementing partner, agency, or modality are often delayed by 12 to 18 months, with implications for both budgets and long-term outcomes.

Patterns Across Countries — Same Challenge

In North Macedonia, a green finance programme backed by the UN and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) faced over a year-long delay — not because of technical hurdles, but because the agreement was “the first of its kind.” Legal harmonisation and institutional clearance processes dragged out the timeline. The initial Project Document (signed in October 2021) targeted $18m sub-loans extended by end of 2023 (about 57% of total value to be extended during the whole project). With the UNDP-EBRD agreement only signed in March 2023, the project under-delivered from the start, with only $55k worth of sub-loans extended by end of 2023. The delay had other knock-off impacts, for example to the development of training and selection of project consultants.

A similar story played out in Indonesia. The CONSERVE project, the country’s first UNDP initiative under full national implementation modality (NIM), encountered several delays at the start. Unexpected changes within the government management of foreign grants, delayed appointments, bank account setups and consultant recruitment created early challenges, delaying the inception workshop by 12 months as well as the implementation of critical safeguards years into the project. As mentioned in the mid-term evaluation, “there is a steep learning curve on both sides, in terms of timing of deliverables and ensuring that the rules and regulations of Government, UNDP and the GEF are followed.”

In China, the first Global Environment Facility (GEF) project implemented by a provincial agency ran into reporting delays, audit issues, and financial control weaknesses. “This was the first GEF project implemented by Hubei Department of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, therefore corporate understanding of the processes and expectations was low at commencement; the delays experienced in receiving timely reporting on progress against results framework indicators also reflects this” reads the project’s evaluation report — a statement echoed across other country files.

Across all five reviewed cases — including projects in Eswatini and Georgia to a certain extent — the root challenge wasn’t ambition, but execution. And specifically, the cost of unfamiliar institutional partnerships.

Quantifying the “Partnership Penalty”

A comparison of evaluation summaries reveals striking facts:

• Delays in delivering: 12–18 months
• Capacity-building gaps: Often lasting the first project year
• Delays in risk management mitigation: Over 24 months

And while each project eventually moved forward, progress often came only after systems were aligned, staff were trained, and expectations recalibrated. But these metrics can mislead. Delays that are framed as “costs” may actually reflect strategic investments in long-term institutional readiness.

Three Friction Points

The documents point to three recurring reasons for delay in first-time collaborations:

1. Legal Framework Complexity

New partners often require new agreements. These must navigate differences in procurement rules, audit standards, and risk thresholds. In the case of the GEF project in North Macedonia, the legal back-and-forth delayed significantly the delivery of expected outputs.

2. Procedural Misalignment & Rigid Frameworks

Different institutions often use different reporting formats, financial systems, or recruitment policies. Many multilateral institutions often reuse rigid templates and compliance structures that do not accommodate local realities. The issue is to a certain extent the lack of pre-negotiated operational flexibility in institutional design. In the nature conservation project in Indonesia, local regulation prevented the hiring of international safeguards consultants — a seemingly minor hurdle that stalled environmental compliance by over two years. This can also be seen in more tested partnerships like in the PAR2 project in Georgia.

3. Institutional Learning Curves

In China, the project experienced delays in progress reporting and indicator tracking, in part because it was the first GEF project implemented by the provincial agency. As the evaluation highlights, “it would have been beneficial for UNDP and/or the Chief Technical Advisor to provide enhanced training in practices and expectations in core project management, M&E and reporting”.

What Can Be Done

Some of these issues may be unavoidable. But designing projects with early-stage institutional onboarding, mutual understanding, and systems harmonisation in mind can help absorb the learning curve without derailing outcomes.

A phased approach to partnership development may help:

• Phase 1: Relationship Building

Clarify institutional roles and reporting responsibilities. Align on expectations, tools, and oversight models.

• Phase 2: Systems Alignment

Jointly develop SOPs, harmonise financial and monitoring frameworks, and test administrative procedures.

• Phase 3: Operational Integration

Pilot delivery, dry-runs, adapt as needed, and embed sustainability elements — including training continuity, local ownership, and exit planning.

Such phases should begin as early as possible, potentially overlapping each other and progress in parallel with other project activities where possible and appropriate.

Additionally, projects working with new institutional partners could benefit from pre-built onboarding kits — standard assessment checklists for “institutional novelty”, risk briefings, risk-calibrated timeline abacus, sample SOPs, reporting templates… Consistently tracking the process of harmonisation via a well-defined “Time-To-Alignment” metric will help iteratively refine such standard checklists/abacus. This could help assess how much of the project budget should be earmarked for such activities.

Structured collaboration like this transforms the “first-time partner penalty” into a planned investment phase — one that builds long-term capability, resilience, and institutional trust. And one that should not be underestimated. Essentially deliberate value-generating transitions embedded in project design.

Lessons Worth Noting

These lessons are not about failure — each project eventually delivered good outcomes. But they suggest that when partnerships are new, institutions need time to build trust, align expectations, and understand one another’s systems. That’s not a setback; it’s a requirement. A requirement that ought to be built deliberately into the project plan as a value-generating process.

For practitioners and donors alike, the message is clear: when partnerships are ambitious and unprecedented, time and funding must be allocated for adaptation. One should budget for it, plan around it, and measure it. The cost of ignoring this reality is measured not only in months or budget lines — but in missed opportunities for impact.