Project Management Masterclass

The Centre for Smart Modern Construction in association with Masters in Project Management (MPM) at Western Sydney University hosted the Project Management Masterclass on the 19th of September 2019, with participation of over 50 MPM students and c4SMC researchers.

The Masterclass commenced with an insightful talk from James Bawtree, NSW Chapter President of the Australian Institute of Project Management (AIPM). James highlighted in his talk that the opportunities for project management jobs will continue to be enormous with over 14,000 project management vacancies currently available on Seek.com.au. He also elaborated the significance of professional certifications such as those offered by AIPM in a project manager’s career progression. James concluded by talking in detail about the increasing influence of technology and the need for agility in organisations and society. James also presented the 14 top performers of MPM with AIPM student memberships.

This was followed by a talk from Helena Lidelow, the Meriton International Fellow to the Centre for Smart Modern Construction on Offsite Construction and Project Management. Helena introduced the forum to Lean Management. Operating as the head of engineering at Lindbäcks, one of Europe’s largest apartment providers, Helena educated the forum about flow management in a factory and illustrated how the interfaces or the handovers are always critical in terms of managing projects or processes.

Up next, Manmeet Kaur, Manager (Capability) of the Project Management Office at WSU spoke about Future Proofing Project Management by making it Smarter, Faster and Better. Her talk resonated James’ as she also stressed on the fact that the future was all about being ‘Agile’ and ‘Tech-centric’.

The last talk of the evening was from Priyadarshini Das, doctoral researcher at Centre for Smart Modern Construction and she summarised how all that was discussed in the Masterclass perfectly aligned to the research that was being done at the Centre. She elaborated on the ‘company of the future’, ‘Industry 4.0’, ‘business transformation’ and ‘disruption’.

The Masterclass concluded with a panel discussion with all the speakers along with Professor Srinath Perera, the director of the Centre for Smart Modern Construction. The Panel, chaired by Dr. Ali Alashwal discussed about managing ‘human-machine’ interfaces and essential skills of the future project manager.
The resounding conclusion was that the future will usher in a gamut of opportunities for project management professionals but their skillsets will need to be tweaked to suit the requirements of a ‘tech-centric’ organisation and society.