Project Podcast

Following APM’s Women in Project Management Conference, Emma is joined by Natalie Edwards of Hitachi Rail and Anita Kelly-Metelewa of the Bank of England to explore building confidence, making your achievements visible and finding sponsors. Discover practical advice on staying curious, navigating change and AI, and succeeding without losing your authenticity.

Emma is joined by Salima Bhimani, former chief strategist at Google's parent company Alphabet and author of  Invent Now: The next leap in moonshots . Salima explores the moonshot mindset and what it means for project professionals. Drawing on her experience across projects including Waymo and DeepMind, and ideas from her book, Bhimani explains how leaders can embrace uncertainty, invite constr...

Emma goes on-site at South Yorkshire’s CoSTAR Live Lab to meet Glen Kelly, who shares how project management is powering innovation across the creative industries. From a rehearsal hub for Beyoncé, Lady Gaga and Coldplay to a virtual music venue in  Fortnite , Glen explains the technology shaping live performance – and the leadership, collaboration and commercial thinking needed to turn ambitious...

Emma meets NASA’s Chief Programme Management Officer, Kevin Gilligan. Kevin explains how NASA delivers some of the world’s most ambitious programmes – from the historic Artemis voyage and a sustained presence on the moon to new propulsion technologies and commercial space partnerships. He shares how project management helps balance speed, rigour and risk, and why openness, resilience and learning...

To explore why influencing is such a vital skill for project professionals, Emma is joined by Emily Jackson, Jessy Morais and Precious Nwagboso to discuss how to build trust, secure buy-in and communicate effectively with stakeholders at every level. From reading the room and adapting your approach, to listening actively and building influence before you need it, the conversation offers practical...

How do you start a project well when the real world is messy, teams form gradually and not everything is ready on day one? In this episode, Emma speaks to Lindsey Brown from the V&A, Kerry Daly from Balfour Beatty and Anita Suji from AECOM about project launches, kick-off meetings and building momentum. They discuss readiness checks, stakeholder alignment, psychological safety, team culture, o...

Change fatigue is the weariness teams feel when faced with yet another change initiative. It creates scepticism and leaves everyone with a ‘here we go again’ feeling. To discuss how to overcome change fatigue, Emma is joined by Sharon Davies, Director of Infrastructure at Turner & Townsend, who led the implementation of the MOD project that won APM’s 2025 Transformation Project of the Year Awa...

Emma chats all things tennis with Stephen Frame, Head of Project Delivery at the All England Lawn Tennis Club, better known as Wimbledon, about project management there, as well as about its ambitious future expansion plans. This episode was recorded in the second week of the 2026 championships, where it wasn’t only the heatwave hotting things up, but also the fact that Briton Arthur Fery was thro...

How can humans and artificial intelligence (AI) applications work together as a hybrid intelligence in a positive way for organisations, projects and individuals? There’s a lot of chatter on the subject and there are many so-called experts, so it pays to be discerning about who you choose to listen to. Joining Emma to help cut through the noise are James Garner, Head of AI at Gleeds, and Stephanie...

Multiple generations are currently working side by side: Gen Z in their mid-20s and 30s, Millennials in their 30s and 40s, Gen X in their late 40s and 50s, and Baby Boomers in their 60s and 70s. Generational stereotypes abound: Baby Boomers supposedly have it all, while digital-native Gen Z are dismissed as ‘snowflakes’. How helpful are these labels? Probably not very. There’s a backlash against t...

Emma talks all things leadership with Dave Corbin ChPP, Chief Project Delivery Officer at Gleeds. Dave started his working life as a gas engineer before switching into project and programme management and working his way up to the top. He shares his career advice on getting ahead, and explains why clarity matters in project leadership. Dave was a finalist for APM's Chartered Project Professional o...

Emma is joined by John McNeill ChPP, Head of Programme Delivery at United Utilities, who's helping to lead the £3bn Haweswater Aqueduct Resilience Programme (HARP) in North-West England. What's it like to get a once-in-a-generation critical infrastructure programme off the ground? What's it like to work on a major project in an area, water supply, that is garnering so much public and m...

Emma meets Zoë Arden, author of Story-Centred Leadership: Crafting cultures of change . The pair discuss storytelling – why it's a great skill to master as a project professional and how to do it well. Zoë is a fellow at the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership and was previously Director of Communications at BT, as well as European MD of global communications firm W...

Emma meets Joanna Rowland, Chief Executive of the RSPCA. Listeners might remember her previous interview with the podcast in 2020 during the pandemic, when she was Director of HMRC’S COVID-19 response unit, responsible for helping mastermind the UK government’s furlough scheme, and where she was also head of the project management profession.  A lot has changed for Jo since then. She rose through...

Emma meets James Evans, Programme Manager at NHS Wales Joint Commissioning Committee, who has a deep interest in psychological safety and contributed to the forthcoming APM e-learning module on the topic. James explains what psychological safety actually is (and what it isn’t) and the reasons why it's such a hot topic in project management. Psychological safety is no longer a nice-to-have, he...

**The APM book Doing the Right Project: Using a Systems Thinking Approach to Select Successful Projects is available to purchase here: ⁠https://www.apm.org.uk/book-shop/doing-the-right-project-using-a-systems-thinking-approach-to-select-successful-projects/⁠ ** In this episode, Emma is joined by the book’s co-authors – Andrew Wright ChPP FAPM, leader of the APM Systems Thinking Interest Network, C...

**Find the APM Data Literacy Skills Framework at apm.org.uk/resources/what-is-project-management/what-is-project-data-analytics ** Emma meets Rob Lord, Director of Major Programmes at BT International, and Gareth Parkes, architect of the APM Data Literacy Skills Framework , who is Head of Data and Analytics at Sir Robert MacAlpine and one of the founding members of the Project Data Analytics Task...

Ahead of International Women’s Day later this week, Emma meets two successful women in project management who work in completely different sectors – Josie Harries and Anna Ustynyuk. They explain how core project management skills combined with sector-specific knowledge can give you a career that is highly transferable from one industry to another. Both Josie and Anna are members of the APM Women i...

Emma goes behind the scenes at the Royal Ballet and Opera in London to explore how a £40m technical renewal programme is being delivered without interrupting live performances. From upgrading stage elevators and lighting rigs to replacing critical communications systems, every project must be carefully designed, prototyped and installed around a relentless performance schedule. Hear from the proje...

Emma meets Heather Walker, Chief Operating Officer at Royal Ballet and Opera (RBO) in London, where she's responsible for planning and coordinating a range of services to support across technical and production estate, visitor experience, technology and administration. A major focus is the renewal of the estate, ensuring that sustainability is at the heart of fabric and plant upgrades, and tha...

In this episode, we find out the secrets of being a great project manager. It’s January, the time of year where many of us have New Year's resolutions, or maybe just a vague idea of how we want to change things up. So, listen on for some excellent advice from APM’s Chartered Project Professional of the Year, Tamsin Alli-Balogun, who’s also Associate Director of Transport at AtkinsRéalis; Paul Chap...

Emma welcomes back to the podcast Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez, author and Vice President of APM, to talk about his new book, Powered by Projects , which is published by Harvard Business Review Press in January 2026. In it, he argues that CEOs must put projects, not operations, at the centre of how their companies create value. But where does that leave the project managers in that organisation? And ho...

Emma meets Nathan Hellebrand ChPP, Global Delivery Director at Babcock International Group, and Mike Hudson ChPP, Interim Strategy Management Director at the National Trust, to discuss simplicity. It’s a topic that crops up often when we interview senior project professionals about how they make the delivery of their projects a success. Join us as we get to the bottom of this deceptively complex s...

Professor Adam Boddison OBE welcomes Gareth Taylor to the podcast. Gareth was recently appointed a nuclear sector director at Turner & Townsend, having previously spent over six years at the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority. He has over 25 years of experience in the nuclear industry and has held a range of senior leadership roles. At the NDA, he led transformative programmes to improve asset...

Emma is joined by Douglas Hubbard and Andreas Leed to discuss their book How to Measure Anything in Project Management, also co-authored with Alexander Budzier. Be prepared for mind-expanding conversation about project management and how any aspect of it can be measured, including those things you thought might be immeasurable – and why we should all be engaged in the most important project of all...