PMP and its value to the community

The SAARC Project Management conference 2010, will be held from September 22 to 26 at Hotel Galadari in collaboration with PMI chapters in the region.

Project Management Institute (PMI) is the leading global Institute for certification and education on Project Management, Certified Project Management Professional (PMP) and Certified Associated Project Managers (CAPM), also PgMP, Program Management Professionals in the world.

A brief description of what PMI and PMI Colombo chapter is given below.

At present, there are over 500,000 PMPs and over 750,000 PMI chapter members in 170 countries.

Globally this is one of the highest recognized and accepted professions.

This is the highest professional qualification/certification that can be achieved by a Project Manager. In order to maintain a project manager’s certification one has to practise and report the minimum number of PDUs- Professional Development Units - by means of education, updating of knowledge by participation in conferences, taking part in social projects or writing/ publishing articles in related areas.

In Sri Lanka, we have over 200 PMPs and over 150 members with Colombo Chapter. We also conduct many workshops, professional update seminars, member forums, and conferences for the benefit of members, on behalf of the related public and private professional institutions which are involved in Projects.

PM Best practices will bring productivity, profitability, and professional obligations to stakeholders and project members.

The main objective of PMI Colombo Chapter is to bring awareness, education, and knowledge sharing with global experts to its project management professionals.

Some of the

achievements of PMI Colombo Chapter are:

We are the only chartered institute in Sri Lanka on behalf of project management institute in USA.

We have created awareness at the highest level by getting the President’s Office special project unit to implement some workshops with Planning and Implementation Ministry last year, to conduct workshops for all secretaries and all project directors.

These were voluntary, non-fee based workshops in collaboration with a New Zealand based consulting company.

This was a great success as some of the ministries/institutions are looking at re-training their officers who are engaged in projects to understand the value and practices of pm process in day to day projects.

We have also conducted many private sector and public sector awareness programs and these are ongoing at places such as Sri Lanka Telecom, CEB, Finance Ministry and the Association of Government Accountants.

Our very first workshop for religious dignitaries and NGOs was to train how to handle tsunami reconstruction workshops for volunteers with the support of a Singaporean based consultancy firm which was a huge success.

PMI today

PMI has many hundreds of education partners locally and globally as (reps) who are authorized to conduct PMP and CAPM related courses. Apart from these, PMI Colombo also conducts specialized workshops, in many industry sectors and knowledge areas. We have started a major educative and awareness campaign with “Education Times” section of the Sunday times to publish many articles to show the values to private and public sector to consider the project management as a primary career at government and private sectors.

This is the first ever SAARC conference in this profession. PMI global generally has three global congresses, now they have allowed the regions to have their own conferences annually and Sri Lanka - PMI Colombo chapter - took the leadership to promote the very first SAARC PM conference.

We are inviting foreign professionals and investors at a time that we can show our capabilities and the investment friendly environment created after 30 years.

Now the Government has created a new Ministry for Economic Development to speed up the developing projects and focus on the key areas for country development.

Capitalizing on the recently achieved peaceful atmosphere, we are taking this opportunity to promote Sri Lanka as a tourist destination as well among overseas participants.

We are working closely together with the Tourism Authority in this respect.

Infrastructure development covers means many mega projects which are executed concurrently, as HR re-training is a major project by itself, we need professional project managers/consultants locally. If not we would be forced to depend on foreign experts to implement these projects. Industry experts that we have invited would discuss and share their experience in various sessions in this conference.

Further, the government policy experts are given an opportunity to share their views and knowledge as policy decision makers, to take the right initiatives to enable these practices and adapt best tools and technology to be used in all mega projects.

As a developing country with many mega projects, we need expert knowledge in many areas such as power, construction, ports/airports to handle many engineering and, communication infrastructures, BPO operations and health and educational facilities; and also to manage HR capacity building projects.

PM experts can bring this expert knowledge and case studies from regional and global experiences to this conference.

Offline discussions will be facilitated in parallel to the event at the same location for the purpose of knowledge transfer and networking on behalf of interested industry groups such as government, educational foundations, It and telecom technology, research or any other sector. These experts will share their views and encourage the investors in the region.

A key feature at the conference would be felicitating and recognizing several key personalities and organizations which have managed certain projects in the recent past.

For this purpose, we will be considering professional project managers as well as non-project managers.

The following sectors/fields would be considered:

1. Social

2. ECO and Environment

3. National Interest

Finally, we are confident that the attention and the recognition that the PMI Colombo chapter is getting through this conference would help PMI to expand further, increasing its membership and creating more and more PMPs.

This would finally lead to the development of the country, since it is all about. “Managing Projects” professionally and, at the end of the day, that will decide whether a country is moving forward or not.

(PMI Colombo Chapter)