PMFORUM Breaking News

The project management team for the 22nd IPMA World Congress on Project Management - ROMA 2008 Project Management to Run -has announced that Prof. Roland Gareis will be a keynote speaker for the November congress. Roland Gareis is Professor of Project Management and Head of Department Projekt Management Group at the Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration, Vienna, Austria. He is globally recognized for his research on the topic of project based society.

Roland Gareis, PhD, Dkfm, is also director of the Professional MBA Program “Project & Process Management” at the university and manager of the research program: Project orientation (international). He was formerly a visiting professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Georgia State University in Atlanta, USA; at ETH in Zurich, Switzerland; and at the University of Quebec in Montreal, Canada. He studied at Vienna Technical University and the University of Economics and Business Administration, receiving his doctorate in 1972. He was a post-doctoral visiting scholar at the University of California Los Angeles, USA, in 1976. From 1986 – 2002, Roland was chairman of the board of Project Management Austria, the Austrian professional project management association. In 1990, he organized the IPMA World Congress in Vienna on the topic of “Management by Projects”. He is the former research director for IPMA and has been involved in various project management research and teaching projects for over 20 years. Since 1982, Professor Gareis has also owned and managed ROLAND GAREIS CONSULTING, providing project management services to national and international companies throughout Europe.

At the 22nd IPMA World Congress in Rome, as a key-note speaker, Dr. Gareis will speak on the topic of “Change Management and Projects”.

According to his abstract, “Transformations of organizations due to mergers, acquisitions, new business developments, etc. have to be fast, efficient and have to achieve the defined business case results. In discontinuous changes new identities of the considered organizations result. For the management of change processes a professional change management is required. For different change types, such as transformations, resolutions of crises, and organizational developments, different forms of management are to be applied. Projects and programmes are organizations to manage phases of change processes. The relationship between change management and project & programme management is to be optimized. The specific challenges for project management in change processes are to be identified. The project manager of a change project, e.g. has to have good organizational and process management competences, required by its business plans.”

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 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.