PMFORUM Breaking News

Reported by Jaycee Kruger in South Africa

Day two of Project Management South Africa's (PMSA) conference, themed "From Strategy to Reality", which started on Monday 26 may 2008 at Gallagher Estate in Midrand, continued on the high standard it kicked off on, with a key note adress by Terry Cooke-Davies, the well-known international authority on the human side of projects. He posed the hypothesis "The reason why we get projects wrong is because we look in the wrong direction" eluding to the fact that the human side of projects still does not receive sufficient emphasis in projects, resulting in the frequent exceeding of the human design specification, as he put it. His talk revolved around four topics: The twin foundations he called people and planning, What's wrong with our thinking, Elements of people-centred control and Looking forward. Terry finished off with a quotation from Stephen Pinker: "The most important relic of early humanity is the modern human mind"

The second of the four plenary session speakers was Michael Reynders who advised the audience about how his company transformed their operations from Project Support Office (PSO) driven to Project Management Office (PMO) driven. Of great interest was the many obstacles, cultural and otherwise which had to be overcome to make it work and to get the organisation to accept projects as an essential part of their survival. He learned that it is very little about the tools and much about the process and to start simple and mature with time.

Adrian Lovell-Hall and Dan Mattson took the audience back to the basics with a talk on Management versus Leadership on a project, and its value.

Elmar Roberg, the outgoing PMSA President closed the plenary part of the day with an update on PMSA, new developments and updates on projects in progress.

As now customary, the afternoon saw four streams of break-out sessions and workshops. The audience closed the day with a film about the Losotho Highlands Project courtesy of Peter Tobin, concluded by the PMSA annual dinner combined with the conference gala dinner, during which awards were handed out to branch of the year, registered education provider of the year and some 20 odd 10 year membership awards.


About Project Management South Africa (PMSA)

Project Management South Africa (PMSA) is a not-for-profit professional association serving more than 1 000 project management practitioners in South Africa. PMSA hosts a conference every second year that features invited international and local speakers, and a broad range of reviewed presentations. The conference enjoys the support of numerous industry training and service providers who sign up as sponsors. In 2008, for the third time running, The X-Pert Group is the Conference’s Platinum Sponsor. The PMSA President for 2008 is Elmar Roberg; and the Chairman of the PMSA Board is Robert Best. For more information about PMSA, visit http://www.pmisa.org.za.

Jaycee Kruger International Correspondent South Africa Jaycee Krüger, PMP, PrTechEng, is an International Correspondent for PMForum and PM World Today in South Africa. He is also the Managing Director of the CMSS, trading as Construction Management Support Services. He has over 29 years of experience in project environments with increasing responsibility, on power, industrial and mining projects, including shutdowns and projects in remote locations. A Civil Engineer by training, Jaycee is active in the Association for the Advancement of Cost Engineering International (AACE), Project Management Institute (PMI), Project Management South Africa (PMSA), and the South African Institute of Civil Engineering (SAICE). Jaycee is based in Heidelberg, Gauteng, Johannesburg region, and can be reached at jckruger@greybeards.co.za. For additional information about Jaycee Krüger, visit http://www.pmforum.org/pm%20forum%20team/index.htm#Kruger.