APM is a registered charity with over 35,000 individual members and 500 Corporate Partners and Affiliates, making it the largest professional body in Europe. APM's mission is to develop and promote the professional disciplines of project and programme management for the public benefit.
Hot on the heels of yet another successful and rewarding competition last year, this year's SWWE PM Challenge is designed to support this aim by promoting our excellent profession and inspiring our project managers of tomorrow.
APM has attained chartered status, a game-changing achievement in the life of APM. It is therefore even more important that our project professionals of tomorrow are given the right opportunities as early as possible, in order to ensure a sustained level of professionalism in a dynamic and constantly changing global working environment.
The launch night will describe the scope, schedule and objectives of the competition, and importantly, answer any questions from participating teams to ensure common and absolute clarity and understanding for everyone.
Outputs and benefits for deserving charitable organisations across our community
- The theme, again, of this year's competition will be to deliver tangible outcomes and benefits to
worthy causes across the South West community. - This is the tenth consecutive year that we have run the competition, and we again expect a high
number of corporate teams and higher educational institutes (HEIs) to participate in the competition. - Project plans will be delivered to the project board by each team in December 2023.
- The project plan will describe how the project will be delivered and what will be achieved.
- Final reports will be submitted by each team to the project board by April 2024. The final report will describe how the project was actually delivered against the objectives defined in the project plan.
- Both the project plan and the final report will be assessed against published assessment criteria, APM Body of Knowledge, and feedback will be provided at every step of the competition
- The signature event in the competition is the finals night, where four down-selected teams will deliver a presentation to the project board and other attendees. The competition winner and runners-up will be selected and given their awards.
- Presentations and an award will also be given for best project storyboard.
Why you should take part
- Align your project management experience to the APM competences, identifying strengths and areas of growth to help you progress in your career.
- The competition makes the art of project management real in a real project environment.
- Develop knowledge of the success criteria required to successfully deliver a real project.
- Compete against and gauge the performance of other aspiring project professionals
- Gain from real-life experience and practice in a wide range of key project management competences and skills.
- Develop a better understanding of the personal qualities and professional competences required to become an effective project manager, leader and project team member.
- Newcomers in the profession have the opportunity to develop and practice project management theory in a realistic environment and get the opportunity to be mentored and work alongside experienced project practitioners.
- Enhancing corporate organisational capacity to deliver successful change through competence development and practice.
- You will learn that time, cost and performance are very important, but only part of the project equation.
- This could be the beginning of a new career in project management.
- The winning team will receive and retain the much coveted, engraved and highly prestigious SWWE PM challenge trophy along with all the kudos and publicity that goes along with it.
- Finally, it is also likely that the winners of the competition will take part in a UK wide event to establish the best project delivery across all of the APM Branches in the UK.
Who should take part?
- Teams will be provided by corporate partners from both industry and HEIs.
- Collaboration between industry and HEIs is very much encouraged (joint teams have won our competition twice).
- Each team must have a minimum of three and maximum of six members.
- Each team is to prepare and develop a project of their choice that delivers measurable outputs and benefits to a customer
- Corporate partners will be expected to provide sufficient support for their teams to deliver their chosen projects.
- All teams must have a mentor, usually an internal corporate representative.
So, why not do your bit for the profession and get a team together! In addition, we would be very grateful indeed for any of our corporate partners to provide a level of sponsorship to the competition in order to help us to continue to deliver a professional and rewarding outcome for everyone. We can also promise you an entertaining, inspirational, informative and emotional journey from beginning to end! But at the end of the day, it's about getting involved and giving our future project managers the opportunity to learn, and to help them to help us continue to develop our wonderful profession.
Feel free to contact Bruce Phillips or 07377635763 at any time. Good luck to all our participants!