International built asset consultancy, EC Harris, is the first professional services firm to achieve Corporate Accreditation by the Association for Project Management (APM) for its alignment with best practice in project management and development of the skills of its project managers.

Opportunity

As part of its alignment to the APM, EC Harris has embarked on a development programme for its wider project community based on APM’s Project Management Competency Framework (PMCF). The highly pragmatic approach has seen CITI working alongside EC Harris to produce mappings between the PMCF and EC Harris project community roles. For each role, some of the competence areas in the PMCF have been identified as core, while others have been identified as supporting competences.

Approach

Individual role holders self-assessed against their core and supporting competences. This was followed up with each person being interviewed by a CITI consultant to evaluate their self-assessment of core competences and identify potential development needs. The analysis of those that have participated so far has been used to identify individual development needs. Many of these needs are shared with others and a development programme has been planned to address both individual and group activities. A blend of learning events is being used, with a focus on support within the workplace, to ensure that the desired impacts are made.

Outcome

This approach is also being used to the benefit of EC Harris’ clients. Most recently it has been deployed for the teams working with BAA at Heathrow, ensuring that EC Harris meets critical client requirements of alignment to, and excellence in, industry best practice such as APM and OGC.

As a company that provides managed services, EC Harris has identified other competences that are relevant to their project community and these have been included in the development plans. Brian Snowdon, EC Harris Professional Services L&D Consultant observed that, “To be famous for PPM, EC Harris has to be able to demonstrate it is at the forefront in project and programme management. In particular, it is important to us that any development has a focus on building best practice, so that we deliver successful outcomes for our clients.”