PMI Community POST

India may make global certification compulsory for project managers

The government of India announced earlier this month that it plans to require global certification for all of its project managers working on mega projects. According to the India Times, the government cited projects whose timelines often run far beyond budget and schedule as the source for the ruling. “We are worried about time and cost overrun of many of our projects. So, we feel that projects should be handled by engineers and technical officers who have completed certified management courses from reputed international institutes. We have good engineers, but need expertise to handle a project,” said Statistics and Programme Implementation Minister Oscar Fernandes. As reported in the India Times, of 646 projects the department had studied, 258 were delayed, with the time overage anywhere from one month to 21 years. The cost overrun of delayed projects was approximately 40 percent of total costs. More than 200 government projects across the country are over budget, schedule, or both. Fernandes cited PMI as one institute the government will be looking to in order to improve performance and set national benchmarks for knowledge and skills. For more information, see the PMI Asia Pacific e-link newsletter available on 1 June 2005. (asiapacificsc@pmi.org)