Business Secretary targets project management as key to economic recovery

Business Secretary Vince Cable MP has highlighted how professional project management can become the key to revitalising the British economy. Speaking at the The Times CEO Summit, The Secretary of State for the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, used the successful delivery of Olympic Park as an illustration of the powerful force effective project management can have.

“What we have already learnt is that Britain is actually rather better at organising big projects than we often gave ourselves credit for – on budget, on time and without the unwelcome discipline of dictatorship. I am similarly optimistic that the British economy can be turned round and put on a long term, sustainable footing.” Said Mr Cable.

Using the examples of sustained sporting success with the likes of British Cycling and others around the world, Mr Cable said “One lesson learnt from past British Olympic experience is that it is no good hoping that random individual brilliance will suffice. The Chinese, the Russians, the Germans and others have taught us that without organisation, planning and training our achievements are likely to be modest.”

His comments come off the back of the APM hosted ODA Learning Legacy events, which concluded its series last month attracting over 800 people. The five events showed how the rigorous and sustained delivery of good project management practice by competent professionals was at the heart of success in terms of planning, sponsorship, governance, delivery and assurance. This was the key to meeting the immovable objective to build the Olympic Park, but also wider objectives in terms of health and safety, sustainability and the social regeneration in the area.

APM was invited by the Olympic Delivery Authority to be the dedicated Learning Legacy partner for its project and programme management stream. They were one of 10 Learning Legacy Partners disseminating the lesson learned from the Olympic Park programme. Over 40,000 documents have been downloaded from the London 2012 site since its launch with the APM website being the second highest referrer of traffic to the resource.

APM have supported the events programme with a series of videos, news stories and podcasts available from the APM website. It also has a dedicated stream at the APM Conference on the 27th June and a special Olympic Learning Legacy Supplement will be available with Project magazine in July.