Project Podcast

We look back at our favourite moments from the podcast in 2023.  It’s been another action-packed year in which we’ve welcomed guests from across the international project management community. We kicked off 2023 with an episode on bringing empathy into the workplace, and since then we’ve covered topics ranging from the rise of artificial intelligence to the can-do mindset of Icelandic project mana...

In this episode, Emma meets three project professionals with a deep interest in artificial intelligence (AI) to consider what impact this technology is having right now on projects, what it might hold for the future and what project managers should be doing to adapt to this brave new world. Joining Emma are: Professor Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez, Founder of the Strategy Implementation Institute and au...

In this episode, Emma is joined once again by Professor Darren Dalcher of the University of Lancaster. Few people have studied project management as closely or for as long as Darren. In a career spanning more than 25 years, he has become very interested in the reasons for project failure. When it comes to agile, Darren was there from the start when it was being experimented with in software develo...

Emma meets three women to talk about menopause in the workplace. Two of them are project professionals – Rachel Jackson of Anglo American and Jo Roberts of the DfT – while the third, Aly Dilks of Simply Menopausal, is a nurse specialising in menopause. The guests share experience and advice for those wanting to find out how to best deal with being menopausal, and how to support colleagues going th...

Professor Adam Boddison meets Martina Blake of the UK Space Agency. Martina heads up the agency’s Office for Project and Programme Management, which she set up in November 2021. She explains that you don’t have to be an astronaut or scientist to work in the space sector – there is a huge variety of roles in project delivery and beyond. And as with other government departments, the UK Space Agency...

Professor Adam Boddison (APM Chief Executive) in conversation with Kris Baldy, Army Portfolio Director at the UK Ministry of Defence. Kris shares his journey through the ranks of the civil service, including his rise from admin assistant to portfolio director, and how he, in his own words, "stumbled into project management". Projects and programmes, Kris says, are central to tackling the...

Emma meets Peter Simon, a Director at Lucidus Consulting and a member of the APM Risk SIG Committee. He is co-author of a new APM report looking into opportunity management as part of the overall project risk management process. The findings reveal notable areas where what is defined in textbooks and standards do not match what’s happening in practice.  Contact: apmpodcast@thinkpublishing.co.uk  

In June, APM held its annual conference in Birmingham under the heading of ‘Change Changes’. The event explored how the project profession must adapt to the changing nature of change itself in a world of increasing uncertainty and complexity. It emphasised the enormous contribution that projects can, and do, make to forging a cleaner, safer, more prosperous and more inclusive society.  In this pod...

Emma meets Beth West, CEO of East West Rail, a transport project that will open up a corridor from Oxford, through Milton Keynes and Bedford, to Cambridge and connect the UK’s two leading life sciences and tech hot spots. Contact us: apmpodcast@thinkpublishing.co.uk  

In this episode, Emma meets Jo Jolly, Deputy Director and Head of Project Futures at the Infrastructure and Projects Authority, who recently spoke at APM's Change Changes conference. Everything is touched by projects, Jo told the audience. The UN Sustainable Development Goals should be actions for all our projects: we can do these things if we want to. Listen to hear Jo share how project deliv...

Emma meets Dan Jennings, who recently established a project management office at the UK wing of global media agency Wavemaker. His team has worked on everything from Evian campaigns tied to the Wimbledon tennis tournament to delivering product placement within Married at First Sight on Channel 4. As those creative projects have become more complex, whether through multi-platform content partnershi...

Emma meets Carmel McConnell MBE – a change activist and keynote speaker at the upcoming APM Conference on 8 June in Birmingham. Carmel founded the charity Magic Breakfast; she is a tech entrepreneur, mentor to CEOs and best-selling author of Change Activist: Make Big Things Happen Fast . Find out more about the APM Conference at www.apm.org.uk/apm-conference/ Contact us: apmpodcast@thinkpublishing...

Emma meets three project professionals (Alex Constantine, Clare Hornsby and Natalie Talbot) to discuss what it’s like to be an introvert in a project profession that seems to favour extroverts, at least on the surface. This situation leaves many introverts having to fake it and suffer the consequences. So, isn’t it time things changed? Read more about introverts in the project profession in the sp...

Emma meets Adrian Dooley, who has 45 years’ experience in project management. Adrian started out his career as a construction project manager, later becoming involved in developing software applications for construction. In 1984, he set up the Projects Group as a training and consultancy company. He was one of the founders of Project Manager Today magazine and served as an executive council member...

Professor Adam Boddison (APM Chief Executive) meets Nick Smallwood, CEO of the Infrastructure and Projects Authority (IPA). The IPA oversees the UK’s National Infrastructure and Construction Pipeline, which contains hundreds of billions of pounds of public and private infrastructure investment. It also supports the Government Major Projects Portfolio, made up of projects with high levels of comple...

Emma meets Haukur Ingi Jónasson, Professor of Project Management at the University of Reykjavik, where he runs its Master’s in Project Management (MPM) course. The MPM is helping create the project professionals needed to take Iceland through its latest transformation. You can read all about it in the spring 2023 issue of Project journal. Haukur talks to Emma about his unusual entry into project m...

Emma meets Vip Vyas, co-author of Gorilla in the Cockpit: Breaking the hidden patterns of project failure and the system for success. Vip is founder of a company that specialises in breakthrough performance on large projects. He's been a visiting consultant at London Business School and an executive consultant at Said Business School at the University of Oxford. His book is the product of 25 years...

Emma welcomes back Bent Flyvbjerg to talk about his new book, How Big Things Get Done: The surprising factors behind every successful project, from home renovations to science exploration . Bent formulated the ‘iron law of megaprojects’, which contends that $1bn-plus megaprojects will almost always blow their budget and schedule and yield fewer benefits than promised. His new book outlines how the...

This special episode is guest hosted by Emma-Ruth Arnaz-Pemberton, chair of APM’s PMO Specific Interest Group, and Director of Consulting Services at Wellingtone. She’s in conversation with Catherine Lumb of Openreach. The Fibre and Network Delivery PMO at Openreach was the recipient of APM’s 2022 PMO of the Year award. The judges praised the PMO for “working on relationships and on accessible way...

‘A sense maker in a daft world’ is how today’s guest, Eddie Obeng, describes himself. Eddie is a Visiting Professor at Henley Business School, an esteemed columnist for Project journal and an APM Honorary Fellow. He's also learning director at the virtual business school Pentacle, a TED speaker and co-founder of Qube. A new edition of his book All Change! The project leader's secret handbook is ou...

Emma meets Belinda Parmar, founder and CEO of The Empathy Business, who was also the keynote speaker at APM’s Women in Project Management Conference in September. Belinda uses the science of empathy to change the way we lead at work, changing cultures to bring more empowerment to people's lives, with a focus on belonging and diversity. Belinda is also the creator of the Global Empathy Index, publi...

In 2022, our podcast guests have shared their advice and experiences on everything from putting telescopes into space to discovering sunken ships at the bottom of the Antarctic Sea. As the year draws to a close, we thought it would be worthwhile taking a look back at some of the lessons we learnt in 2022. So in this festive bonus episode, we collate some of our favourite highlights from episodes y...

In this episode, APM Chief Executive Professor Adam Boddison meets Craig Hatch, President at Tetra Tech UK. Tetra Tech is a global technology, environmental and management consultancy, with over 20,000 employees worldwide. The pair discuss the need for greater inclusivity in the profession, the state of project expertise at C-Suite level, and the importance of delivering long-term value to communi...

In this episode, Emma meets Annie Hairsine, the project management brains behind the fabulously successful Commonwealth Games in Birmingham this summer. The Games were filled with colour and energy and were billed as the most sustainable and diverse Games ever, but what was it like to pull off this huge undertaking and will the city of Birmingham be able to capitalise on its legacy? Read more abou...

In the second of our follow-up podcasts from the APM Women in Project Management Conference, Emma invites three senior leaders from the world of projects who contributed to WIPM. They share their experience to help those starting out in their career and also give their tips for women on how to rise to the top of the profession. Joining Emma are: Sam Olsen, DWP Estelle Detrembleur, Mace and APM’s R...