Emma meets Marie Coombes and Sophie Paton to explore how to have difficult conversations as a project manager. With their advice, learn how to approach these conversations without feeling daunted – and why we shouldn't even describe such conversations as ‘difficult’, but rather reframe them as ‘essential’. Marie is the director of We Restore Calm and a seasoned expert in conflict resolution, mediation and employee engagement, for which she has won several awards. Sophie is an experienced facilit...
Oct 31, 2024•39 min
Recorded live at APM’s Women in Project Management Conference 2024, this episode brings together four project professionals to discuss what inclusivity means to them. Being an inclusive leader, they said, can strengthen relationships with colleagues by creating a more supportive and collaborative workplace culture. But is it easier said than done? And how do you bring people with you? Join Elizabeth Nolan, Roselyn Unegbu, Sarah Outterson and Ali Parish as they share their top three things that m...
Oct 17, 2024•54 min
Emma meets Susanne Madsen, an executive coach for business leaders, particularly those working in the project profession. She is the award-winning author of The Power of Project Leadership and a regular contributor to Project journal. Susanne is known for her transformational leadership programmes and has coached hundreds of individuals from high-profile organisations across the globe. Her new book, How to Do the Inner Work , is available as a book, e-book, and audiobook. We often think the answ...
Oct 03, 2024•35 min
To celebrate our 100th episode, Emma meets Ros Atkins, the BBC’s News Analysis Editor, who has presented and reported on some of the biggest stories around the world for 20 years. He’s also the creator of the critically acclaimed Ros Atkins On… video series, where he explains complex stories in a truly masterful way. His new book, The Art of Explanation , is out now in paperback. In it, and in this interview, Ros shares how to get the often difficult art of explaining right. We don’t just mean e...
Sep 19, 2024•37 min
Emma travels to Westcott, Buckinghamshire, to meet the team at Nammo Space, who work on propulsion systems for space rocket engines and thrusters. Their cutting-edge products are used on international space programmes, whether they’re satellites or missions to the moon or Mars. The business is growing rapidly, with around 100 people, and 12 project professionals. Read more in the autumn 2024 edition of Project journal. Contact us: apmpodcast@thinkpublishing.co.uk...
Sep 05, 2024•48 min
Emma meets Emma Caroll-Walsh, Director of Customer Programmes at Aqua Consultants and Deputy Chair of APM’s Built Environment Interest Network, who is also an outgoing APM Board Trustee. She shares her top tips on how to be an effective project influencer and why it really matters to hone your influencing skills – plus what it's like to step up to being a Board Trustee and the valuable professional and career experience it brings. 2024 APM Trustee elections: find out more at https://www.apm.org....
Aug 22, 2024•28 min
Emma meets Jimmy Nguyen, APM’s Project Professional of the Year 2023 and Associate Director at Turner & Townsend. Jimmy worked on the Bromford and Castle Vale flood risk management scheme for the Environment Agency. He was praised by APM’s awards judges for successfully dealing with stakeholder pressure, garnering support from the local MP and forming a high-performing team to deliver the project for the overall benefit of the local community. Listen on for his top project and career tips. C...
Aug 08, 2024•40 min
We take a deep dive into the future of the project profession, with a compilation of some of our favourite insights from the 2024 APM Conference. Held in Coventry in June, the theme for this year’s APM Conference was ‘Navigating Tomorrow: Future Skills for Project Professionals’. The event invited project leaders and experts on future trends to unpack the rapidly changing landscape that projects are being delivered in. AI and data literacy were among the hot topics – including both the opportuni...
Jul 25, 2024•24 min
Emma meets Algy Ayson, Head of Project Delivery Centre of Excellence and Profession at UK Parliament, who works on projects and programmes across both the House of Commons and the House of Lords. Emma spoke to him in June, just a few weeks ahead of the UK general election. Algy gives some great advice on how to create culturally competent project teams where diverse perspectives are welcomed and used to the advantage of projects. He is a project professional who puts people and relationships bet...
Jul 18, 2024•30 min
Professor Adam Boddison in conversation Sir Nigel Thrift, Chair of the Committee on Radioactive Waste Management, or CoRWM. CoRWM’s role, as Sir Nigel describes it, is to give independent scientific and technical advice to UK Government on all aspects of the management of radioactive waste. Sir Nigel is one of the world’s leading human geographers and previously served as Vice-Chancellor and President of the University of Warwick and as Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research at the University of Oxfor...
Jul 11, 2024•35 min
APM CEO Professor Adam Boddison invites outgoing APM President Sue Kershaw and her successor Yvonne Thompson CBE to hand over the baton. Sue shares her reflections on the biggest project management trends over her time in the hotseat, from managing greater project complexity and going from megaprojects to gigaprojects, to being able to deliver on promises and the need for greater connectivity. Yvonne takes the opportunity to set out her ambitious priorities, including focusing on diversity and i...
Jun 28, 2024•39 min
Emma meets Thimon de Jong, founder of WHETSTON / strategic foresight, a think tank specialising in future human behaviour and societal change and the implications for leadership and business strategy. The pair discuss where society and all of us are headed in the near future, and what project managers and leaders need to think about when it comes to the people they're managing, the projects they're running and your own mental wellbeing amid the ‘polycrisis’. Thimon is a keynote speaker at the AP...
May 30, 2024•34 min
What is the true value of the project profession to the UK economy and society? That is the question that APM seeks to answer in its new research report, The Golden Thread . Expanding on research first published in 2019, the new report provides updated data on the contribution of the project profession in the context of the global disruptions of the past five years. In this podcast we share an edited recording of the launch event for the Golden Thread report. Download the report at https://www.a...
May 13, 2024•38 min
Emma meets Steve Gilligan, a programme manager who’s playing a critical role in the world's first decommissioning of a nuclear fusion machine. He works at Culham Campus, just outside Oxford, home to the Joint European Taurus, or JET, a tokamak machine where some of the world’s most important nuclear fusion experiments have taken place. But now JET’s days are over and Gilligan is tasked with taking apart and reusing and retrieving valuable resources from the tokamak. Using robots through remote h...
May 01, 2024•38 min
Professor Adam Boddison in conversation with the Head of the Government Property Profession, Lynda Rawsthorne. Sitting within the Cabinet Office, Lynda is responsible for the strategy for the whole government estate, which covers everything from hospitals to courts and offices. She describes her role as engaging, encouraging and motivating the 7,000-plus professionals who make up the property profession in government. Contact us: apmpodcast@thinkpublishing.co.uk...
Apr 17, 2024•35 min
In the third and final part of our series on the National Trust, Emma is back at Dyrham Park near Bath to meet three project management apprentices who all started at the Trust in October 2022 and are nearing the end of their 18-month apprenticeship programme after sitting APM’s Project Management Qualification. So, what’s it like to be an apprentice in an organisation that puts project management at the heart of what it does? What have they learnt so far, what projects have they worked on and w...
Mar 29, 2024•48 min
In episode 2 of our three-part series on the National Trust, an APM Corporate Partner, Emma finds out about the Trust’s urban programmes and its work in renewables. As well as visiting Stoneford Community Garden in Dagenham, East London, she meets Jo Dmitri, a Senior Programme Manager leading a team of nine project professionals as part of the strategy work the Trust is doing in London to connect green spaces. Finally, Emma speaks to Dee Nunn, who works on the charity’s renewable energy investme...
Mar 15, 2024•52 min
In our three-part series on the National Trust, an APM Corporate Partner, we find out how the charity has brought project management close to its organisational heart. In episode 1, Emma goes behind the scenes at Dyrham Park, a 17th-century mansion near Bath, which recently underwent a multimillion-pound transformation project. She meets Mike Hudson, Head of Strategic Planning, Project and Programme Management at the National Trust, and Senior Project Manager Tim Cambourne, who takes her on a to...
Feb 23, 2024•45 min
Rachel Baldwin is Head of Programme and Project Delivery at the BBC, where she leads a team of 115 people tasked with a huge variety of IT and technology programmes – including a brand‑new home for the Beeb in Birmingham and creating the largest orchestral recording space in Europe in East London. But while Rachel is now a seasoned project professional, she started her career as a documentary film maker. Among her credits are One Life: Pregnant in Two Wombs and Mr Trebus’ Life of Grime , which w...
Feb 08, 2024•29 min
What’s it like to deliver life-changing medical research projects that address health problems facing communities, change health options and outcomes for patients, and improve the lives of people living with disease? That’s the remit of Dr Karen Skinner, Chief Project and Portfolio Officer at not-for-profit Life Arc. Join us as she sits down with Professor Adam Boddison, Chief Executive of APM, for an in-depth conversation about project management in the charity sector. Contact us: apmpodcast@th...
Jan 25, 2024•28 min
Emma meets Dame Inga Beale, portfolio director and former CEO of global insurance giant Lloyd’s of London. Dame Inga was keynote speaker at APM’s 2023 Women in Project Management Conference. Contact us: apmpodcast@thinkpublishing.co.uk
Jan 11, 2024•27 min
Ever wondered how to balance work and family, how to strategise your career and how to network effectively? In this episode, we’ve compiled some of our highlights from APM’s Women in Project Management Conference 2023. These sessions focused on how project professionals – women in particular – can take their career to the next level. Contact us: apmpodcast@thinkpublishing.co.uk
Dec 29, 2023•16 min
Professor Adam Boddison meets Baroness Valentine. Having started out working in corporate finance in the City in the 1980s, in recent years Baroness Valentine has had what she describes as a “portfolio career”. Her current roles include Chair of Heathrow Southern Railway and Co-Director of Place at Business in the Community. As of 2005, she also sits in the House of Lords as a cross-bench member, with a current focus on levelling up. She was also formerly on the boards of both Crossrail and HS2....
Dec 22, 2023•33 min
We look back at our favourite moments from the podcast in 2023. It’s been another action-packed year in which we’ve welcomed guests from across the international project management community. We kicked off 2023 with an episode on bringing empathy into the workplace, and since then we’ve covered topics ranging from the rise of artificial intelligence to the can-do mindset of Icelandic project managers. But there have been a few episodes that really stood out to us and which performed particularly...
Dec 08, 2023•25 min
In this episode, Emma meets three project professionals with a deep interest in artificial intelligence (AI) to consider what impact this technology is having right now on projects, what it might hold for the future and what project managers should be doing to adapt to this brave new world. Joining Emma are: Professor Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez, Founder of the Strategy Implementation Institute and author of the Harvard Business Review Project Management Handbook James Garner, Global Head of Data an...
Nov 09, 2023•37 min
In this episode, Emma is joined once again by Professor Darren Dalcher of the University of Lancaster. Few people have studied project management as closely or for as long as Darren. In a career spanning more than 25 years, he has become very interested in the reasons for project failure. When it comes to agile, Darren was there from the start when it was being experimented with in software development. Who better, then, to explore the origins of agile and its impact on projects? Contact: apmpod...
Oct 26, 2023•28 min
Emma meets three women to talk about menopause in the workplace. Two of them are project professionals – Rachel Jackson of Anglo American and Jo Roberts of the DfT – while the third, Aly Dilks of Simply Menopausal, is a nurse specialising in menopause. The guests share experience and advice for those wanting to find out how to best deal with being menopausal, and how to support colleagues going through menopause. Contact us: apmpodcast@thinkpublishing.co.uk...
Oct 05, 2023•38 min
Professor Adam Boddison meets Martina Blake of the UK Space Agency. Martina heads up the agency’s Office for Project and Programme Management, which she set up in November 2021. She explains that you don’t have to be an astronaut or scientist to work in the space sector – there is a huge variety of roles in project delivery and beyond. And as with other government departments, the UK Space Agency has signalled its commitment to enabling its project professionals to gain formal accreditation and ...
Sep 21, 2023•27 min
Professor Adam Boddison (APM Chief Executive) in conversation with Kris Baldy, Army Portfolio Director at the UK Ministry of Defence. Kris shares his journey through the ranks of the civil service, including his rise from admin assistant to portfolio director, and how he, in his own words, "stumbled into project management". Projects and programmes, Kris says, are central to tackling the main challenges facing the Army, including the modernisation of vital equipment. None of that is possible wit...
Sep 08, 2023•27 min
Emma meets Peter Simon, a Director at Lucidus Consulting and a member of the APM Risk SIG Committee. He is co-author of a new APM report looking into opportunity management as part of the overall project risk management process. The findings reveal notable areas where what is defined in textbooks and standards do not match what’s happening in practice. Contact: apmpodcast@thinkpublishing.co.uk
Aug 31, 2023•28 min
