SWWE PM Challenge Finals and Awards Night

On the evening of the 28th April at BAWA in Bristol around 55 excited sponsors, customers, mentors and team members attended a very impressive Project Management Challenge Finals Night with four finalist teams competing for the winner’s trophy, and delivering a final presentation, in a very tight contest. At the end of the night after four impressive presentations, the winning team was a collaborative team from AIRBUS in Filton and the University of the West of England, Team Flynamic. The team delivered a project to their chosen aviation charity, fly2help, around their Aim High programme to encourage youngsters into a career in aviation by delivering event management support, procedures, organisation and planning outputs. The other winner’s award of the evening went to the Aspire Europe Ltd Plymouth City Council Apprentice team who delivered the best storyboard award for delivering a project to their customer, Plymouth City Council, around the annual provision of free fruit within an inner-city green space by way of a community based orchard. All teams received either a winner’s or runners up certificate and the standard of presentations on the night was excellent. All of the seven teams competing in this year’s competition have obviously worked very hard and have gained much experience and knowledge. 

All of the teams participating in what was the second PM Challenge competition held by the South Wales and West of England Branch all delivered outputs and benefits to community projects and, importantly, were able to demonstrate and develop their professional project management competences, understand critical success factors, develop personal qualities and learn from their mistakes as well as get a taste of what it might be like to have a career in project management.

The other teams competing were a joint team from AIRBUS and UWE with their customer from the aviation charity, fly2help, delivering an updated process for managing Air Smiles Day with outputs around an analysis of organisation and design of an online planning tool, a General Dynamics Mission Systems UK team with a customer from Alabare Homes for Veterans in Wales with the objective of supporting the charity to end homelessness for Armed Forces veterans by delivering a range of IT suites, a team from Aspire Europe Ltd providing support to their customer Tag Rugby Trust (TRT) with the objective of supporting communities across Africa by delivering eLearning training products around project management and provision of funds, resources and equipments, a team from BMT Hi-Q-Sigma, Team Solar, who’s customer was Jamie’s Farm with the objective of increasing awareness of the annual Cock and Bull Festival and Jamie’s Farm charity by delivering a communications plan, increase ticket sales and profitability and a team from BMT Group who’s customer was the Royal Life Saving Society UK (RLSS) providing support to develop strategic processes to support RLSS drowning prevention activities by delivering education through local schools, funding from third parties and a range of product information. 

The PM Challenge consisted of three key assessment stages: the provision of a project plan in December 2015 that identified smart outputs and benefits to be delivered, associated resources, costs and key risks; the provision of a final report in March 2016 which demonstrated how the teams delivered the project outputs and benefits defined in the original project plan using a range of competences defined in the APM BoK; and the delivery of a 15 minute presentation at the Awards and Finals Night for the Finalists.

Bruce Phillips, the SWWE Branch committee member who lead and managed the competition, said “The project board was unanimous in its praise for the significant effort shown by all entries in the SWWE Branch’s second and very successful PM Challenge competition. The overall standard was very high and the range of projects selected by the teams, based upon the theme of delivering benefits to deserving community services, was diverse. Every member of the teams should be justifiably proud of their achievements in delivering real benefit to the wider community and the development of their personal and professional competence.” 

Further details of the winning team and their success story can be found on the Babcock news page