APM Podcast APM, the chartered body for the project profession

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 has signalled its commitment to enabling its project professionals to gain formal accreditation and meet their career ambitions. 

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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 main challenges facing the Army, including the modernisation of vital equipment. None of that is possible without a pipeline of talented project professionals entering the Ministry of Defence, and Kris tells Adam about the department’s approach to growing and developing its project talent base, while reminding us that you don’t have to be in uniform to deliver projects in the Army.

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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. 

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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 podcast, we’ve compiled some of the key insights that emerged from the first stream of sessions at the conference, which was focused on the transformative impact that projects can have both on individual lives as well as economic, social and physical landscapes. 

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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 delivery can be transformed for the better by embracing data and human collaboration and so improve society and all our lives.  

Resources: 


Project Data Analytics Community Solutions Portal: https://www.solutions.projectingsuccess.co.uk/ 


Transforming Infrastructure Performance: Roadmap to 2030: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/transforming-infrastructure-performance-roadmap-to-2030 


‘Boston tidal barrier, UK: adapting to climate change and delivering social outcomes’, https://www.icevirtuallibrary.com/doi/full/10.1680/jcien.20.00069 



Contact us: apmpodcast@thinkpublishing.co.uk