This paper explores sustainability in water project management with a contextual approach. We rely on an exploratory case study with interviews and field visits to three water project sites within the Bugesera district in Rwanda. The results show that water project management includes aspects of social, cultural, environmental and economic sustainability driven by a compliant organization logic. This implies that water project management was steered by existing policies, regulations and procedures. In particular, cultural sustainability was important to capture contextual practices in the project delivery process, such as Umuganda meetings and committees. Such practices allowed the inclusion of the local community by identifying their water needs, defining their benefits and conveying project ownership to the local community. This study proposes a model offering a contextual approach to sustainability in water project management. The model is useful to identify new contextual/empirical phenomena as well as to advance theory.