PMFORUM Breaking News
Breaking News in the Project Management World
Saturday, May 31, 2008
International Bridge "Savior" to keynote IPMA Congress in Rome
The project management team for the 22nd IPMA World Congress on Project Management - ROMA 2008 Project Management to Run - has announced that Mr. Toni Ruttiman will be a keynote speaker for the November congress. Toni Ruttiman, "el Suizo" ("the Swiss"), is an extraordinary Project Manager. Forty years old, of Swiss Citizenship, a polyglot, he is a man who has built 360 bridges around the world, in countries where wars or natural disasters were making everyday life difficult.
Toni can be considered to a modern-day Saint, a second Saint Francis. He has no home; he owns just two small briefcases - one for his personal effects, the other for his suspension bridge designs. Yes, because Toni helps the most destitute of people to build or re-build their own bridges to link up two sides of a river after a hurricane, an earthquake or an armed conflict.
The story began in Ecuador after a destructive earthquake. At the time Tony was twenty and, as he had finished his secondary studies, he decided to leave Engadina in Switzerland to go and help the survivors. Within a month a suspension bridge had been built utilizing used and scrap materials and the help of the people of the village destroyed by the earthquake.
After the first bridge others followed in Ecuador, Colombia, El Salvador and Honduras and then in Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam and yet other countries. To date Toni has built more than 360 suspension bridges, strictly for pedestrian use only. A support system has been created around him. He receives materials free of charge, the ropes are those discarded by the Swiss cableways, the tubes are from Tenaris, transportation and other materials are all offered to him free of charge. People on the spot build to his instructions.
Toni is the perfect project manager. In his brief case he carries his personal computer with his calculation programs. Although he gave up his engineering studies to help poor people to build their bridges, he has excellent work organization skills. He is also able to respond to everyone's needs and to build bridges from long distance too, developing projects and shipping all the necessary materials in short timescales, thanks also to Governments that by now have gotten to know him well and that help him to cut through the mass of bureaucracy.
He speaks with simplicity, smiles and shows films telling the stories of his bridges through the eyes of smiling, happy people. Bridges of love and we could also say of happiness. A real project manager who knows how to organize his work and how to build up his teams that consist of different people for each bridge, people who have never built bridges before.
At the XXII IPMA WC in Rome, as the key-note speaker, Toni will explain how his personal action and perseverance have succeeded in overcoming all difficulties and why the connection between heart and mind is essential for everyone involved in a project and even more of a basic requirement for a team to ensure success and accomplishment. Is this the first “bridge” to be built?
The IPMA 22nd World Congress on Project Management will be held in Rome, Italy during 9-11 November 2008. According to the “ROMA 2008 – Project Management to Run” project team, with keynote speeches and 12 streams of presentations over three days, as many as 200 presentations on important project management topics can be anticipated.
The congress is expected to attract leading project management authorities and over 1,000 participants from the 45+ countries represented by IPMA membership. The Roma 2008 World Congress will be one of the largest project management events in the world this year. The 22nd IPMA World Congress and Exhibition will be held at the Palazzo dei Congressi near the heart of downtown Rome. For registration, schedule and other information, visit the conference website at www.ipmaroma2008.it.
The local hosts for the ROMA 2008 World Congress are the Italian Project Management Academy and the Italian National Association of Industrial Plant Engineering (ANIMP). The President of ANIMP is Fabrizio Di Amato; the President of the Italian PM Academy is Roberto Mori; the Congress Chairman is Luigi Iperti; and the Project Manager for IPMA 2008 is PierMarco Romagnoli.
Founded in 1967 and registered in Switzerland, the International Project Management Association (IPMA) is an international federation of more than 40 national PM societies in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas. Local societies serve each country in its national language. IPMA provides an umbrella organization at the international level. IPMA’s internationally acclaimed 4 Level PM Certification Programme continues to grow worldwide. The IPMA annually presents awards to teams that achieve great feats in project management. IPMA maintains its continuous presence in the global PM arena through regular International Symposia, Expert Seminars and its Annual World Congress. The president of IPMA for 2008 is Veikko Valila. Additional information is available at www.ipma.ch.
The story began in Ecuador after a destructive earthquake. At the time Tony was twenty and, as he had finished his secondary studies, he decided to leave Engadina in Switzerland to go and help the survivors. Within a month a suspension bridge had been built utilizing used and scrap materials and the help of the people of the village destroyed by the earthquake.
He speaks with simplicity, smiles and shows films telling the stories of his bridges through the eyes of smiling, happy people. Bridges of love and we could also say of happiness. A real project manager who knows how to organize his work and how to build up his teams that consist of different people for each bridge, people who have never built bridges before.
At the XXII IPMA WC in Rome, as the key-note speaker, Toni will explain how his personal action and perseverance have succeeded in overcoming all difficulties and why the connection between heart and mind is essential for everyone involved in a project and even more of a basic requirement for a team to ensure success and accomplishment. Is this the first “bridge” to be built?
The congress is expected to attract leading project management authorities and over 1,000 participants from the 45+ countries represented by IPMA membership. The Roma 2008 World Congress will be one of the largest project management events in the world this year. The 22nd IPMA World Congress and Exhibition will be held at the Palazzo dei Congressi near the heart of downtown Rome. For registration, schedule and other information, visit the conference website at www.ipmaroma2008.it.
The local hosts for the ROMA 2008 World Congress are the Italian Project Management Academy and the Italian National Association of Industrial Plant Engineering (ANIMP). The President of ANIMP is Fabrizio Di Amato; the President of the Italian PM Academy is Roberto Mori; the Congress Chairman is Luigi Iperti; and the Project Manager for IPMA 2008 is PierMarco Romagnoli.
