Project Podcast

In the Project Innovators season of podcasts, Project journal editor Emma De Vita is talking to project professionals who are leading projects in an innovative way at a time when many of us are hoping the world of work and projects can be reset for a post-COVID world.  

In this episode we meet Jo Stanford, head of corporate portfolio office at Health Education England, to discuss how she’s leading the collaborative development of the project profession in the NHS. It’s no mean feat. Not only is she trying to knit together a network of project managers across 40 NHS organisations, but she also needs to identify who is doing project work in the first place. It’s a tall mountain to climb, but the ultimate prize is not only to further professionalise project management in the NHS and have it better recognised, but also to create a collaborative network of support and best practice.

Jo is a true innovator and there are many lessons others can learn from her about how to raise the status of project management within organisations, formalising and professionalising it and creating a strong network of supportive peers.

Resetting projects in a better way for a post-COVID world means capitalising on the best minds. Cognitive diversity, as explained by Matthew Syed in his book Rebel Ideas: The Power of Diverse Thinking, pays.  

In this episode, Project editor Emma De Vita discusses diversity and inclusion with Jenny McLaughlin, a project manager at Heathrow Airport, who is also its disability network lead. Jenny is innovative in the way she threads inclusivity through every part of the projects she manages. She says project managers are the best people to deliver change, and with true support from Heathrow’s executive team, she’s showing what diversity means for projects when you take it beyond a cursory tick-box exercise.

By asking difficult questions every step of the way, she and her team are creating a sense of belonging for everyone on a project. How is she doing it? And what lessons can she share with other project managers who are serious about making inclusion real? Listen to find out more.

In this episode, we look back on 2020 and reflect on some key project management lessons from a turbulent 9 months.

Soon after the first UK lockdown in March, we founded this podcast to share the stories of project professionals who were managing, adapting and pivoting their projects to meet the demands of the COVID-19 pandemic.

We dubbed series one ‘Crisis Talks’, and each episode was presented by Project journal editor Emma De Vita. Our hope was that we would end up with a valuable resource during a time of crisis for project professionals, who were doing their best to navigate a situation that almost none of us had imagined happening. What we ended up with was a chronicle of work and life through the COVID-19 pandemic.

The pandemic endures – but the advice given in the 'Crisis Talks' series will be relevant way past 2020. In this episode, we’ve picked out the best nuggets of wisdom from the first series of this podcast – with topics ranging from mental health to delivering to seemingly impossible targets.

In this episode, our topic is how to be a great project leader. We pin down exactly what it means to lead a project and how this role is evolving to reflect the changing nature of projects and obviously in 2020, the pressures of the Covid pandemic. In this podcast, host Emma De Vita, editor of Project journal, asks how a project leader needs to behave to be highly effective, and what mindset you need to thrive in this role.

APM’s 7th edition of its Body of Knowledge defines project leadership as: providing vision, direction, feedback and support so people can do their best work. And to do this in an environment of change and uncertainty. Project leadership is usually performed with limits on a project leader’s power requiring them to adopt a style that builds team and wider stakeholder commitment.

Our panel discusses in-depth what this definition means in practice, giving lots of advice on how you can become a better project leader, particularly during these challenging times.

On the panel are:

Gordon MacKay, project management capability lead at Sellafield and author of a forthcoming book on project leadership for APM.

Mike Bourne, professor of business performance, action, execution and implementation at Cranfield School of Management.

Claire Fryer, director of behavioural management and executive coach at Costain.

In the ‘Project Innovators’ season of podcasts, Project journal editor Emma De Vita is speaking to project professionals who are leading projects in an innovative way at a time when many of us are hoping the world of work and projects can be reset for a post-COVID-19 world.

In this episode she speaks to Matthew Moran, Head of Transformation at The Open University, and occasional lecturer in the OU Business School. Matthew is one of the educators on the ‘Project Management: Beyond the Basics’ course on FutureLearn, a collaboration between the OU and APM. He is also an advisor and consultant to a number of education institutions and edtech startups and companies. 

Matthew is writing a book on hybrid project management for APM, aiming to help project managers to do hybrid better. Instead of being irreconcilable opposites, he argues that project managers need both linear and agile for projects of any degree of complexity – and that the best results are achieved when we acknowledge the need for both, and when we aim to get the best of both (by understanding and making trade-offs between the upsides and downsides of each).

In the ‘Project Innovators’ season of podcasts, Project journal editor Emma De Vita will be speaking to project professionals who are leading projects in an innovative way at a time when many of us are hoping the world of work and projects can be reset in a better way for a post-COVID-19 world. 

In episode one, we meet Caroline Raynor, project manager and principal archaeologist for the Costain Skanska JV, who designed and led the Saint James’s Gardens excavation in London's Euston as part of work for HS2’s London terminus. It is the largest archaeological excavation of a burial ground in Europe, and HS2 as a whole is probably the largest programme of archaeological works driven by a single project in recent times. 

Caroline has pulled off an amazing feat in that she not only borrowed lean principles from the world of manufacturing, but also actively encouraged a far more gender-balanced project than the norm, with a 43 per cent female demographic on-site. Emma spoke to Caroline at the end of September just as the BBC's Britain’s Biggest Dig series began airing – the first episode of which was all about the Saint James’s dig. Catch it on iPlayer.

In this episode, our topic is the APM Body of Knowledge. The seventh edition of this core text for the profession was published in 2019. One year on, the book’s co-editors – Dr Ruth Murray-Webster and Professor Darren Dalcher – co-host an episode that reflects on the changes and updates made to the seventh edition.

They discuss the considerable challenges and responsibilities of updating what they describe as a “foundational knowledge document” for the profession. They consider the background and context to BoK7, the significant changes it introduced and the future of project-based management in an uncertain world.

Ruth and Darren have written about their belief that a chartered profession does not require black and white ‘rules’. Instead it needs reflective professionals who can think about and devise ways to navigate a messy context in a nuanced way.

Listen now to take a deep dive into the fundamentals of the project profession in 2020 and beyond.

This episode explores the findings from The Golden Thread, a research series by APM and PwC. The first Golden Thread paper was commissioned to throw light on a profession that has been hidden and undervalued for too long, and to prove that the size of the project profession in the UK is significant and growing. Two follow-up reports focused on fast-growth sectors for project management (including health, pharma and life sciences, SMEs, and charities) and regional hubs, including the Northern Powerhouse, the Heathrow Corridor and Cambridge’s Silicon Fen.

In this podcast, host Emma De Vita (editor, Project journal) asks: what’s the big-picture take on project management in the UK? Is the profession given the serious recognition it deserves? And what does the future hold for project management amid the ongoing global pandemic?

On the panel are:

David Thomson, head of external affairs at APM.

Andrew Edkins, professor of the management of complex projects and former director of the Bartlett Real Estate Institute at UCL (Andrew was also on the Golden Thread academic advisory panel).

Tony Mulvahil, a consultant, coach, trainer and educator for project managers in the world of SMEs, and case study participant for The Golden Thread. His consultancy is called Planning for the Best.

In the Crisis Talks season of podcasts, Project journal editor Emma De Vita asks project professionals to share their stories of managing, adapting and pivoting their projects through lockdown and now as restrictions are eased.

In this episode we meet Joanna Rowland, director of HMRC’s COVID-19 Response Unit, responsible for the department’s strategic approach to the pandemic. Joanna is the senior responsible officer in charge of delivering the chancellor’s flagship economic interventions, the Job Retention and Self Employment Income Support schemes, as well as the new Eat Out to Help Out and Job Retention Bonus schemes. Joanna is also the head of the project delivery profession for HMRC and a Fellow of APM.

She has been at the heart of the government’s response to the pandemic, so it was a privilege to get some time with her and ask her what it’s been like to be in the thick of it. Read more from Joanna in the upcoming autumn 2020 edition of the Project journal.

In the Crisis Talks season of podcasts, Project journal editor Emma De Vita asks project professionals to share their stories of managing, adapting and pivoting their projects through lockdown and now during this next phase as restrictions are eased.

In this episode we meet Andrew Higson, a project manager at Balvac, part of the Balfour Beatty Group, which is a specialist in the repair, strengthening, refurbishment and protection of buildings and civil structures.

Andrew manages the successful delivery of infrastructure projects. His current project – Palatine Road – is being undertaken on behalf of Highways England. It involves significant temporary propping to facilitate critical repairs to 15 piers, which carry both carriageways of the M60 across the River Mersey in Greater Manchester.

Andrew is also a keen mountaineer and founder of the Black Dog Outdoors mental health charity, which promotes the benefits of outdoor recreation for mental wellbeing. He explains why now, more than ever, it’s important to spend time in nature.