PROJECT Management explored

So the Project magazine arrived this morning including a big spread on the winners of this years awards and there are many interesting and worthwhile projects featured, but it is the article on the Sir Monty Finniston Lifetime achievement award which draws my particular attention.

I have to admit to a personal interest here as I won the Sir Monty Finniston award in 1999, oh dear ten years ago! Back then it was given for a significant contribution to the art and science of project management and wasn't a lifetime achievement award but a competition like the other awards.  That format encouraged organisations to promote where they were pushing the boundaries of the 'science' and hopefully helped new ideas to spread.  I can't speak for others but in my case it certainly resulted in explaining what we had done and the reasons underlying this to other organisations.  Whilst I don't think it started a revolution, the pattern we created which was fairly novel at the time, I now see in many organisations.

Tom has without doubt done lots to promote and professionalise project management as well as being a very capable PM in his own right and easily deserves a lifetime achievement award. However, I think the change in emphasis to giving something for what people have done over a lifetime, rather than how project management is being taken forwards now, is a backwards step by the APM.  Perhaps there should be a new academic/practical award for developments to the 'science' of project management?  A worthwhile winner of such an award might be Sue Vowler or the OGC for the P3O publication; having a standard and a guide to setting up support offices is a great development in Project and Programme Management and long overdue.

Finally as someone who has been an APM member for nearly 12 years I reflect on the awards event itself on two levels.  Firstly the professionalism with which the awards are now managed.  In 1999 we were at the Brewery as well and although it felt glitzy at the time it wasn't a black tie event and the promotion was nowhere near as good as it is today. Notice the backdrops and quality of the photography in this years publicity.

Secondly having dug out my copy of the 2009 APM awards material how narrowly focussed the awards and membership was on 'traditional' engineering project management with lots of civil and mechanical engineering type of projects and a few categories of awards.  The awards today reflect the much broader application of project management to business life in both the categories of awards and the subjects of the successful submissions

Perhaps this is a good indication of how far we have come, how pervasive and essential PM is now seen as being and how Project Management deserves Chartered Status in the shape of the APM.