Last week I wrote about what the PMI Educational Foundation does. One of the missions of PMIEF is to build project management skills in young people and teachers, better equipping students for the future. How exactly does it do that? At PMI’s EMEA Leadership Institute Meeting in Dublin last month two volunteers spoke about their involvement in their local schools.

The Polish Experience

Photos from the Project Management Workshops

Małgorzata Kusyk, PMIEF Liaison for PMI’s Poland Chapter based at the Gdansk branch spoke about their ‘Project Management At Schools’ project. The Chapter has run three pilots, using the project management Toolkit for Youth.

First, they had to translate the Toolkit into Polish. Then they used it as the basis for a 12-hour project management course: six lessons, each of two hours. The course included mentoring, materials, templates and group exercises. A ‘real life’ project manager was invited along to at least one of the sessions, so the students could see how the skills they were learning translated to the world of work.

One of the pilots was run as part of a summer camp for girls from an orphanage. Eight girls took the course, aged from 14 to 19. Their project was to organise four hours of activities for the 40 younger girls participating in the summer camp.

The girls produced a work breakdown structure, a project charter, a schedule and a budget. Their stakeholder register included the teachers, other children and the camp organisers. They produced a communication plan which included a daily briefing to everyone at the camp about how the plans were going. The outcome was a quiz and some sports activities. You can see photos from the camp on the initiative’s Facebook page.

The point of doing all this was:

• To build awareness of project management in Poland, as this is currently low
• To encourage students to use project management techniques on a daily basis
• To encourage students to work effectively at school and outside school
• To gain publicity for the Chapter
• To help the volunteers learn how to teach project management.

The pilot schemes were successful so the Gdansk branch is moving ahead with doing it again this year. The plan now is to train more teachers and run more workshops in schools, using a ‘train the trainer’ model, so that the materials can be used by a much wider group. There are also plans to develop a shorter course for 10-13 year olds.

Schools in Jordan

Dr Hazem Zeitoun, President of PMI Jordan Chapter, spoke about what his Chapter was doing to promote project management in schools.

Jordan’s population is 6 million, with 1000 PMPs and 200 paid-up PMI members. A third of Jordan’s income comes from people working outside the country and sending it back home, so there is not a lot of money spare for advanced educational facilities.

He told us about the Madrasati initiative, led by Queen Rania. This initiative aims to close the gap between the community and school, helping the government transform schools into community hubs. It aims to improve the overall learning experience in 500 public schools. In order to do this they need quality learning tools, and the project management skills to implement the initiative locally.

Madrasati Project Summary

Jordan Chapter has decided to partner with an existing initiative because Madrasati has links with the education sector already, plus experience in dealing with the bureaucracy. PMI, and project management, is not widely known in Jordan, so partnering with Madrasati will help build credibility and also open some doors to individual schools to pilot the project management learning sessions.

The Chapter is still a way off from fully participating – there are lots of administrative hurdles to jump through. They have made a presentation to the Ministry of Education and are currently awaiting the outcome. Ministry support is essential in order to be able to access teachers and use the same ‘train the trainer’ model that Poland is using.

Both the Jordan and Poland initiatives are run by volunteers who truly believe that project management skills can help their communities be more effective. Good luck to them both!

See all the slides from this presentation online here.

Image credit: YGLvoices on Flickr

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If you’ve been around projects for any length of time you have probably come across the Project Management Institute. You might even have heard of PMIEF: the PMI Educational Foundation. But what does it actually do?

I thought it mainly sponsored research, but it turns out I was wrong. PMIEF’s Chair, John Rickards, gave a presentation at PMI’s Leadership Institute Meeting in Dublin last month and explained exactly what the Foundation gets up to.

Incorporated in 1990, PMIEF has a wider brief than PMI. It’s about leveraging project management for social good. “The Education Foundation actively works to build bridges into the project management profession,” John said. “We’re working with private sector school teachers, disaster relief and other non-profit organisations as well.”

PMIEF has three areas where it focuses its efforts:

• Building a better prepared society for future success
• Building a better prepared workforce
• Building a better response in times of need.

Project-centered education

PMIEF works through PMI Chapters to build the skills of people in education. They believe that project management is a key competency for teachers and administrators, and also students. Volunteers get involved in community projects.  The belief is that project-centered education results in higher achievement in schools, more pupil engagement and better attendance, and while I have no reason to doubt that, we weren’t pointed in the direction of any independent research to back that claim up. However, we did hear two case studies from PMI Chapters working in education.

PMIEF has developed the PM Toolkit for Youth, which is free to download for non-commercial use, so schools can use it. It is a modular course aimed at teaching basic project management skills to help students organise their school projects and make sound decisions.

During the development of the Toolkit they realised that the students didn’t have the presentation skills required to present back the outcomes of their projects, so they added a  presentation skills module.

Project management as a professional competency

PMIEF also supports the development of project management as a professional competency and career choice. It provides academic scholarships, awards, doctoral research grants and curriculum development grants. In addition, it runs training courses for the unemployed and underemployed.

“Project management is one of the few fields delivering people who can lead work and lead others,” John said.

Project management is results focused and employers want results. Skilling up professionals through training and research improves job prospects and the ability of companies to deliver on their strategic plans.

Dealing with disaster

After a natural or humanitarian disaster, NGO’s arrive on the scene to help get things back on track. Using project management techniques can help them stay efficient and use donor dollars more effectively. This supports the concepts behind PMD Pro, a certification programme aimed at non- profits that was launched last year.

PMIEF also have their training scheme, called Skills For Life which is available in English and Spanish. It’s a short project management course that can be taught in a few hours. John explained that it has been run 150 times in 33 countries, with half the delegates so far being PMI members and half not.

PMIEF’s work with disaster relief organisations also includes training materials, tools, methodologies, training volunteers and staff and providing grants.

“Through the Educational Foundation we’re hoping that the next generation will do a much better job than we’ve been able to do,” John said. I don’t think the first generation of professional project managers did that bad a job, but if those who come after can do better, that has to be a good thing.

You can find out more about PMIEF on their website. In a week or so I’ll tell you about the two case studies where PMIEF is working with PMI Chapters to bring project management education into schools.

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In case you’ve been living under a rock, today’s the day that Prince William of Wales marries Catherine Middleton, and it feels like London has been turned into one big Union Jack.

I planned my wedding in Microsoft Project, and I’m not the only project manager who considered their big day worthy of proper planning. Peter Taylor was interviewed recently on The Project Management Podcast and said that planning his wedding turned into a project:

It’s not easy to disconnect yourself in what you do workwise when you’re a project manager and actually planning a wedding, I approached it in a project management style because there was lots to do.

I imagine that Peter’s wedding wasn’t on the scale of the ceremony today, and neither was mine. So what have William and Kate had to do to get ready for today?

• Sort out a guest list and invites for 1,900 people.
• Organise the seating plan for the cavernous building of Westminster Abbey.
• Organise transport for the day, including a Rolls Royce Phantom VI, which was presented to the Queen in 1978 for her Silver Jubilee by the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, which will take the bride to the service.
• Make contingency plans for wet weather (they’ll use The Glass Coach instead of the 1902 State Landau if it’s pouring with rain when they leave the Abbey).
• Agree on music and organise people to sing and play it, including military bands for the processional route.
• Organise a wedding ring. Fortunately the Queen had some gold available and gave that to William shortly after the couple got engaged. Even so, there was still designing of the ring to do.
• Taste lots of cakes and order one. Or in this case, two. There’s a traditional fruit cake and a chocolate biscuit cake due at the receptions.
• Book a photographer.
• Set up a gift list – the couple have opted for donations to charities instead, so they haven’t had to traipse around John Lewis scanning pans, but they have had to decide on which charities made their list.
• Organise the service and prepare an order of service – although Royal tradition dictates that this is actually a ‘programme’.

And of course,

• Find a dress.

They also had some things on the project plan that most brides and grooms don’t have to do:

• Organise the broadcast of the wedding live on YouTube.
• Liaising with HQ Household Division, the Military Headquarters charged with planning and executing the military element of State Ceremonial events in London.
• Liaising with the ceremonial team in the Public Order Planning Unit of the Metropolitan Police which plans for the policing of the Royal Wedding. Comprising two officers and one member of police staff, the team is responsible for making sure the entire policing operation of around 5,000 officers is appropriately resourced and provided with logistical support.
• Arrange for 35 specially trained search dogs and their handlers to monitor security.
• Organise a military flypast.

All that takes some serious project management! Most brides I have spoken to have something go wrong on the day, so fingers crossed for the weather and I hope that all the arrangements go as planned. And if you are benefiting from the extra bank holiday, have a great day!

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Stained glass window at Lloyd's Register, designed by Gerald Moira

“I left school with minimal qualifications,” said Roger Clutton, Programme Director at Lloyd’s Register Group Services Ltd.  “I was probably programmed to feel not good at things.”  Clutton is the self-confessed project manager for “horrible projects” at the risk management organisation which provides risk assessment and risk mitigation solutions across the UK.

Lloyd’s started out 250 years ago, giving underwriters and merchants an idea of the condition of the vessels they insured and chartered.  Today they still work in the marine sector, assessing and certifying ships and equipment to improve quality and safety.  They also work in other industries, and one of Clutton’s current projects is a £100m oil and gas initiative in the Caspian.  The gas involved is under pressure, and Lloyd’s have to put a certificate on it to say it’s safe.  It’s an unlimited liability environment, “which we’re adverse to, as a charity,” he said.

Close up of window, showing English rose and Scottish thistle

Clutton was speaking at the Austerity Debate, an event in London hosted by Lloyd’s, which aimed to answer the question: is project management an enabler for cost reduction or a cost to be reduced?  As our host, he kicked off the proceedings by explaining about his background.

Clutton started out as a mechanical engineer before realising his skill with numbers, which he puts to good use in his current role.  He’s been with Lloyd’s Register since 1994 and is now in a position to shape the projects that the company embarks upon.

Just back from a leadership seminar in the Netherlands, Clutton explained that the core industries for Lloyd’s are those that will now shape global projects in the widest sense.  The global population is growing at 6 million a month, he explained.  Someone at the seminar had set out the facts about managing this population explosion:  if we use the farming methods and technology from even just a few years ago, we’ll need 72 planets to keep everyone fed.  So the future, he said, has a focus on energy and consumption.

“Project management has a role to play here in ensuring we manage our projects to the best effect,” he said.  “There will be winners and losers – part of this process is to make sure we’re on the winning side.”

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