Project Podcast

Emma meets Beth West, CEO of East West Rail, a transport project that will open up a corridor from Oxford, through Milton Keynes and Bedford, to Cambridge and connect the UK’s two leading life sciences and tech hot spots.

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In this episode, Emma meets Jo Jolly, Deputy Director and Head of Project Futures at the Infrastructure and Projects Authority, who recently spoke at APM's Change Changes conference. Everything is touched by projects, Jo told the audience. The UN Sustainable Development Goals should be actions for all our projects: we can do these things if we want to. Listen to hear Jo share how project delivery can be transformed for the better by embracing data and human collaboration and so improve society and all our lives.  

Resources: 

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Emma meets Dan Jennings, who recently established a project management office at the UK wing of global media agency Wavemaker. His team has worked on everything from Evian campaigns tied to the Wimbledon tennis tournament to delivering product placement within Married at First Sight on Channel 4. As those creative projects have become more complex, whether through multi-platform content partnerships or the arrival of new channels such as smart speakers and WhatsApp, project management skills have become even more in demand. Hear Dan speak about what it's like to establish a PMO from scratch and introduce professional project management processes and expertise into a sector unfamiliar with it.  

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Emma meets Carmel McConnell MBE – a change activist and keynote speaker at the upcoming APM Conference on 8 June in Birmingham. Carmel founded the charity Magic Breakfast; she is a tech entrepreneur, mentor to CEOs and best-selling author of Change Activist: Make Big Things Happen Fast.

Find out more about the APM Conference at www.apm.org.uk/apm-conference/

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Emma meets three project professionals (Alex Constantine, Clare Hornsby and Natalie Talbot) to discuss what it’s like to be an introvert in a project profession that seems to favour extroverts, at least on the surface. This situation leaves many introverts having to fake it and suffer the consequences. So, isn’t it time things changed?

Read more about introverts in the project profession in the spring 2023 edition of APM’s Project journal.

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Emma meets Adrian Dooley, who has 45 years’ experience in project management. Adrian started out his career as a construction project manager, later becoming involved in developing software applications for construction. In 1984, he set up the Projects Group as a training and consultancy company. He was one of the founders of Project Manager Today magazine and served as an executive council member of APM. He is the founder and lead author of the Praxis Framework. In this podcast, he shares how, in his experience, many fads rise to prominence and then become integrated into good practice. He believes agile will follow that same path.

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Professor Adam Boddison (APM Chief Executive) meets Nick Smallwood, CEO of the Infrastructure and Projects Authority (IPA). The IPA oversees the UK’s National Infrastructure and Construction Pipeline, which contains hundreds of billions of pounds of public and private infrastructure investment. It also supports the Government Major Projects Portfolio, made up of projects with high levels of complexity, impact or risk. Also part of Nick’s remit is advancing the professionalisation of project delivery within the UK government. 

Adam speaks to Nick about his route into the project profession, including four decades at Shell. We also hear about Nick’s decision to move into the public sector, the implementation of a Project Academy within government, and why he believes he is in the best project job in the UK.

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Emma meets Haukur Ingi Jónasson, Professor of Project Management at the University of Reykjavik, where he runs its Master’s in Project Management (MPM) course. The MPM is helping create the project professionals needed to take Iceland through its latest transformation. You can read all about it in the spring 2023 issue of Project journal. Haukur talks to Emma about his unusual entry into project management and how the Icelandic mindset is something we could all benefit learning from.

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Emma meets Vip Vyas, co-author of Gorilla in the Cockpit: Breaking the hidden patterns of project failure and the system for success. Vip is founder of a company that specialises in breakthrough performance on large projects. He's been a visiting consultant at London Business School and an executive consultant at Said Business School at the University of Oxford. His book is the product of 25 years’ experience of tackling and turning around highly complex projects across many sectors, including banking, FMCG, government, digital technology and renewables. In this podcast, he shares what he has learned about why most projects fail, what makes some projects so successful and how you can become a better project leader.

Vip can be contacted at [email protected]

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Emma welcomes back Bent Flyvbjerg to talk about his new book, How Big Things Get Done: The surprising factors behind every successful project, from home renovations to science exploration. Bent formulated the ‘iron law of megaprojects’, which contends that $1bn-plus megaprojects will almost always blow their budget and schedule and yield fewer benefits than promised. His new book outlines how the data shows this is no mystery; it's usually the result of terrible forecasting and planning. The good news is that he explains how every project from a house renovation to the building of a new nuclear power station could be done far more successfully.

Listen to Bent’s first appearance on the APM Podcast here.

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