Advocacy

Advocating for the Profession

PMI serves as an advisor and resource, helping governments and organizations realize the value of project management in the successful delivery of their strategies.

In 2018, advocacy highlights around the world included:

In 2018, our U.S. Corporate Relations team continued the work of advancing relationships and advocacy.

These included:

• Providing speakers for our many live events, who presented on the future of project management and other important topics;
• Contributing content and SMEs at internal events for our most important accounts; and
• Coordinating nine executive roundtables that focused on the future of project management.

These contributions provide thought leadership to help direct the future of project management research.

In the US public sector, we both championed and advised on the Program Management Improvement and Accountability Act (PMIAA). This legislation will ultimately provide a job series/career path for project managers, as well as a standards-based delivery framework, improved knowledge transfer across government and improved executive sponsorship across the largest public-sector enterprise in the world.

The PMI Washington, D.C. office also provided valuable information to a panel that was tasked by the U.S. Congress with finding ways to streamline and improve defense acquisition.

In Canada, 2018 was an important year in terms of enhancing relationships with key government agencies and strengthening our position as an influencer and partner. Treasury Board Secretariat of Canada, the federal government central agency responsible for all policies on the management of projects, became a member of the Global Executive Council.

Throughout 2018, we firmly embedded ourselves as the strategic learning partner of choice to the UK Ministry of Justice, one of the United Kingdom government’s largest project delivery institutions. This resulted in the department’s professional development academy becoming accredited as a PMI Registered Education Provider.

2018 saw the PMI and Infrastructure and Projects Authority’s (the professional development agency that sets standards across all of the United Kingdom public sector) groundbreaking memorandum of understanding (MoU) come into effect. This MoU places us at the heart of project delivery in the United Kingdom government.

In the European Union (EU), we are contributing to the ongoing debate on the EU’s approach on artificial intelligence (AI) and its impact on the future workforce. In 2018, Murat Bicak, then-senior vice president of strategy at PMI, spoke at the European Business Summit together with senior representatives from the European Commission, members of the European Parliament and representatives from large technology companies.

We successfully retained telecommunications leader du Telecom as a Global Executive Council member. du Telecom is a major player in the Middle East, with a crucial role in the future transformation of Dubai — specifically in the initiation of Dubai Smart Cities.

We built a strategic engagement partnership with Saudi Aramco. One of the outcomes led to a joint PMI executive roundtable which took place in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia in November 2018.

We strengthened our strategic advocacy and engagement relationship with the Dubai Health Authority PMO, which is leading major healthcare transformation initiatives in UAE and megaprojects.

We continue to support the Dubai International Project Management Forum. This event has provided us with high co-branding visibility and influence. This year, Mr. Bicak gave a talk on “AI Building Nations” and participated on a panel about how to kick-start your business.

We produced and disseminated two case studies in 2018 with the Road and Transport Authority and Dubai Electricity and Water Authority, reaching almost 2,000 people in various industries.

This year, PMI worked with NITI Aayog, the premier policy think tank of the Government of India. It provides both directional and policy inputs to both federal and state government. The initiative demonstrated the need for structured project management practices in public projects, and led NITI Aayog to consult with other ministries in creating a strategy paper on project management frameworks. We worked on the draft Task Force Report and submitted recommendations.

This marks the first time the government of India has created a task force on project management.

PMI has also been working closely with the state government of Andhra Pradesh under the guidance of the CEO of the State Development Planning Society on institutionalizing a project management culture in the state government.

The government issued an order in 2018 to formally work with PMI to develop a project monitoring framework for key infrastructure projects. We set up a team and are working toward creating a dashboard for monitoring and training the relevant officials on project management practices.

The PMO Networking Group (PMONG) has become the portal for knowledge sharing and subject matter experts for 65 member organizations across China. It supports organizational project management excellence in major industries such as energy, ICT, healthcare and financial services. In 2018 alone, PMONG provided over 30 networking and knowledge-sharing sessions for more than 600 corporate senior leaders and project management practitioners.

To better serve the growing community and demonstrate PMI’s value for our organizational partners, we launched China’s first PMO Symposium in Shanghai in 2018. It brought together nearly 300 global and local PMO leaders and executives to explore the essential role of PMOs on strategic implementation and value delivery. Attendees were mainly from the IT, automotive, healthcare and manufacturing industries.

PMI has been working with key senators to create a bill modeled on the U.S. PMIAA. On a state level, we’ve worked with key figures in the Victorian and New South Wales governments about a project leadership academy initiative. The academy aims to promote project management skills development and accreditation processes inside government.

We welcomed these new members of the PMI Global Executive Council in 2018: