APM News

Who would have thought at the start of 2020 that Christian Dior would be pumping out hand sanitiser and Chanel medical masks and gowns? That the Royal Mint would be making medical visors or that car manufacturers would be making ventilators? The skill and speed with which organisations and their project managers have adapted and pivoted under extreme pressure has been impressive, from government departments like HMRC and NHSX, with its work on a contact tracing app, to online retailers such as Ocado.

Over the past six months we’ve lived a lifetime of change.

When life is challenging, resilience becomes even more important to our wellbeing as it can help us stay safe, productive and effective.

My relationship with stakeholders, internal and external, is often troublesome.

✶ ✶ ✶  In 2016, when a 100ft-wide hole appeared in a five-lane motorway in the Japanese city of Fukuoka, it was resolved through a rapid, concerted effort and the road reopened within a week.

Meet Emily Outten, a project manager at DHL Supply Chain, whose spectacular efforts to bring a drinks distribution centre into the new decade is cause for celebration No one likes being told how to do their job.

LEGO was born in 1932 in Billund, a small windswept town in Jutland, Denmark, where its head office remains, and where around 2,000 employees from around the world get to live their dream of playing with small, brightly coloured plastic bricks.

The world faces unprecedented challenges – climate change, rapid urbanisation and, most recently, the COVID-19 pandemic – that will have long-lasting socioeconomic ramifications on society.

Our programme management office’s (PMO’s) transformation journey has not been a smooth one.

Has making the right infrastructure choices ever been more challenging? Even before COVID-19 swept the best-laid plans aside, the pace of change and unpredictability of both politics and public opinion already seemed at odds with the stable, long-term mindset required when deciding on huge investments in new roads, railway lines, airports and power grids.