APM South Wales and West of England Branch

The key note speaker for this event was Richard Pound from Grahame Robb Associates Ltd and his presentation discussed why many of us, even with the best intentions, tend to handle these issues badly, or not at all, and provides some advice of how to break this culture of silence, and achieve real results for your organisation the crucial conversations that people avoid.

The SWWE Branch was pleased to have worked closely with the APM Value Management SIG to organise this one day hands on seminar explaining what Value Management is and how it works through a number of interactive case studies.

We were very grateful to Babcock (APM Corporate members), for organising and generously hosting this event at their offices in Bristol on Tuesday 31st January 2012. Following networking and some excellent refreshments, Pete Rickets, Head of Project Management, discussed Babcock’s Marine, Technology, Systems and Equipment & approach to project status reviews. Pete explained that the projects delivered for their customers are technically complex and involved the integrity of submarine pressure hulls. Many projects are in the £2-3M bracket, and range up to £50M. They often prove challenging to manage and to deliver within budget, but are still critical to Babcock’s reputation with its customers. The challenge for their project managers is to deliver to time, cost and performance, and to deliver a profit!

The Branch was very grateful to staff at MoD Corsham for arranging and hosting this unique opportunity to visit the brand new facilities at Corsham on Wednesday 18th January, to gain an understanding of the challenges faced in delivering the New Environment Programme and the work of the Global Operations and Security Control Centre (GOSCC). Lynden Marsh (Programme Manager for the Corsham New Environment Programme) described the background, challenges for the construction, the management and lessons.