Pete Russell, Leonardo UK 

I’m Pete Russell and the recent VP Project Controls & Project Management for a line of business whilst also the Head of PMO & Project Management within Leonardo UK – a large international electronics defence company. I joined the company in 2019 after completing an Executive MBA and the Leading Complex Projects and Programmes course at Cranfield University (2016-2018). I have held various roles in defence related companies since leaving the UK Armed Forces in 2006 (20+ years’ full-time service plus another 20 years Reserve Army service); I also ran my own building renovation company for 3-years and I built a consultancy providing project & programme management services back to the UK Ministry of Defence.   

I started out as an engineer working on aircraft then became an engineering Officer in the Royal Air Force and then the British Arm where I slowly moved into mainstream project management. Engineering has really helped me to delivery projects - engineers are typically inquisitive which is a natural fit to direct and lead the complex portfolios of projects within the aviation and defence environments. 

My current role as Head of PMO is UK wide and has 2 distinct areas; one is to provide the Governance, Framework, Policy and Processes that cover the effective management of our portfolio of projects across the business, the second area is as the Head of Project Management function where I support the 330+ project & programme managers on all professional training, skills, competencies and jobs; we link closely with the APM where we use their qualifications as our standard professional training offering for our early career project managers.  

Having recently achieved ChPP status myself I’m now on a drive to increase the number of PM’s who wish to gain Chartership themselves; we have also collaborated with a visiting professor from Cranfield University to deliver a 4-month Programme Manager Masterclass aimed at our more experienced project professionals within the company.