Russell Archibald, PhD (Hon), PMP, PMI Fellow, is a globally-recognized author, consultant and lecturer on project management. With a career spanning more than 50 years, Russ has broad international experience in engineering, operations, program and project management. He has experienced three project management related careers: Management Consultant, Corporate Executive, and Military/Aerospace. In recent years, He has consulted to a wide variety of large and small organizations in many industries and in 12 countries on 4 continents. Russ Archibald is a Fellow and Certified Project Management Professional (PMP) of the Project Management Institute (PMI®) (member No. 6, one of the five original trustees), an Honorary Fellow of the Association of Project Management (APM/IPMA) in the UK, and is listed in Who's Who in the World. Russ is the author of 3 editions of the best-selling book, “Managing High- Technology Programs and Projects” (1976, 1992, and 2003, also published in Japanese, Italian, Italian, Russian and Chinese) and the co-author of “Network Based Management Information Systems (PERT/CPM)” (1967). Russ has presented many papers over the years at PMI and International Project Management Association (IPMA) conferences in North America, South America, and Europe, and is widely published in periodicals on professional project management. He holds Bachelor of Science (University of Missouri) and Master of Science (University of Texas, Austin) degrees in Mechanical Engineering. As a pioneer in the field, Russ received an honorary Ph.D. in strategy, program, and project management from the Ecole Superieure de Commerce de Lille (ESC-Lille) in Lille, France in August 2005. Currently residing in Mexico, Russ Archibald’s personal website can be found at www.russarchibald.com, and he can be contacted at Russell_archibald@yahoo.com.
Editor’s Note: Russ Archibald is a founder of PMI and one of the pioneers in the field of professional project management. He has been an active supporter of PMForum and PM World Today for many years. A recognized supporter and mentor for many professional leaders around the world of project management, Russ is well known throughout North and South America, Europe, Russia and elsewhere for his global knowledge, research, professionalism and personal warmth. Part one of our interview with Russ, published in the September edition of PM World Today, dealt with the first part of Russ’ career as he witnessed and participated in the beginnings of professional project management. (see Part 1 at http://www.pmforum.org/library/interviews/2008/PDFs/Archibald-9-08.pdf.) Part 2 of the interview with Russ focused on his participation in and knowledge about the formation and early years of the Project Management Institute and the PM profession in North America. (see Part 2 at http://www.pmworldtoday.net/interviews/2008/oct.htm.) Part 3 includes Russ’ memories and knowledge of the early years of the PM profession outside of North America. (see Part 3 at http://www.pmworldtoday.net/interviews/2008/nov.htm) Part 4, below, deals with Russ’ recent research, observations about the current state of the project management world, and predictions for the future of this field.
PM World Today (PMWT): You sometimes describe your career as having been in three parts, with the third stage being consulting for the last 26 years. What kind of consulting have you been engaged in over that period? Are you still doing any consulting work?
Russ Archibald:I took early retirement (as Vice President of Planning for Bendix International) from the Bendix Corp. in 1982 at age 58, and have kept pretty busy since then as an independent management consultant specializing in strategic and project management. I believe that I could have built up a consulting group or company, but I consciously decided to stay independent. I had my fill of both large and small consulting companies in prior years (including Booz, Allen & Hamilton, CPM Systems, Inc.) and did not want to spend my time managing a bunch of consultants rather than working directly with clients.
Bendix retained me as a part-time consultant for six months after my 1982 retirement to assure that their joint venture in India (that I described in Part 3 of this interview) would stay on track. Within a month or so after that ‘retirement’ I began working as an expert witness on the first of a series of nuclear power plant “prudency reviews.” A law firm in Washington DC put together a rather strong team of PM experts working together on these post-completion project reviews, including PMI Fellows Prof. Dave Cleland and Jim O’Brien, plus other PM consultants whose names don’t come to mind at the moment. (This law firm saw my name and reference to my 1967 book in a footnote in a 1974 book written by J. Ronald Fox titled “Arming America: How the U.S. Buys Weapons” when they were looking for experts to respond to Fox’s testimony regarding the San Onofre (CA) Nuclear Power Plant as an expert witness for Pacific Gas and Electric, the owner of that plant. The law firm tracked me down and asked – coincidentally during my last month with Bendix! -- if I would be interested in helping the rate-payers of California.) Our clients for these reviews were the Public Utilities Commissions of the states of California, Illinois, Texas, and Arizona. We looked at the PM aspects of these projects and other experts looked at the engineering design and construction practices to determine how much, if any, of the costs of managing, designing and constructing a number of specific nuclear power plants should be disallowed from the rate bases because of imprudent project management, engineering, or construction practices. In all but two cases we recommended disallowances of very significant amounts of money. The Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant in California was a particularly interesting project, as it had a rather troubled history. Our team submitted voluminous testimony on this project, but just before we were to appear in court and be cross examined the case was settled out of court – without public disclosure of the settlement terms. All of these plants continue in apparently good operation today, by the way.
Read complete interview in English
A conversation with
Keith Pickavance
‘Time is
NOT money!’
Interviewed by
Patrick Weaver
Keith Pickavance FCIOB, is the President of the Chartered Institute of Builders (CIOB), and Senior Vice President of Hill International based in Hong Kong. He was an invited Keynote speaker at the PM Asia conference in Singapore in October 2008. His keynote presentation at PM Asia focused on recently published research undertaken by the CIOB that investigated the actual use of effective ‘critical path’ scheduling to manage the time risk on construction projects. The research covered over 2000 projects and found that ‘very few projects were managed by reference to modern methods of time control’ (defined as a regularly statused and updated CPM schedule) and despite CPM being developed more than 50 years ago, ‘less than 20% of the respondents thought that current standards of training and education of project schedulers was satisfactory’. The full CIOB report and an executive summary may be downloaded from http://www.ciob.org.uk/resources/research.
Keith is Senior Vice President with Hill International. Mr. Pickavance is a Registered Architect in the United Kingdom with over 35 years of experience in construction management, project planning, risk management, critical path method of retrospective delay analysis, and delay and disruption claims for buildings, civil engineering, and oil and gas engineering contracts. United Kingdom and International experience includes hotels, public and private swimming pools, commercial offices, multi-storey tower blocks, libraries, industrial buildings and process plants, health and hospital buildings, railway and bus stations, power stations, airports, roadways and tunnels, oil and gas pipelines, oil terminals, steel storage tanks, liquefied natural gas docks, fertilizer plants, and shipping facilities. Mr. Pickavance has advised on projects situated in Argentina, British West Indies, Cyprus, Eire, England, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Kenya, Lebanon, Northern Ireland, Oman, Mexico Peru, St Lucia, Scotland, Sudan, Thailand, The Channel Islands, The Isle of Man, Trinidad and Tobago, UAE and Wales.
Keith Pickavance’s career has covered many paths, beginning as an Architect in the days of Indian Ink and linen drawing media, he migrated to construction management by way of a Law Degree and establishing his own multi-disciplinary practice, and then to a specialist role focused on managing delay and disruption in construction projects. He is the author of ‘Delay and Disruption in Construction Contracts’ (3rd Edition 2005) and now practices as an Expert Witness, Arbitrator and Adjudicator as well as managing Hill’s Hong Kong and China businesses. Keith is also the current President of the Chartered Institute of Building. Based in the UK, with over 43,000 members spread around the world; the CIOB will be celebrating its 175th year in 2009. Keith followed his father into Architecture despite an earlier passion for chemistry. His most memorable experience remains the wonderful smell of freshly cut hardwood flooring being laid in the University of Keele Chapel, Staffordshire and the kindly interest of the tradesmen in the curiosity of a youngster. Keith’s father was the Architect and his son was accompanying him on a Saturday morning site visit.
A Conversation with Keith Pickavance
During the networking session following Keith’s keynote address in Singapore, as the Chair of the PM Asia Program Committee, I had an opportunity to meet with Keith over a Tiger Beer to discuss his views on the current state of the allied professions of project management and construction management. This opened a discussion around the roles and value of professions and professional associations.
Keith pointed to the various level of protection offered by governments ranging from the prohibition of practicing some professions such as medicine, or prohibitions on calling yourself an ‘Engineer’ or ‘Architect’ without appropriate qualifications (largely determined by the professional bodies but enforced through legislation).
These statutory protections do not extend to professions such as construction manager and project manager where anyone can call themselves a ‘project manager’ or a ‘builder’ and offer their services for hire. The sole benefit of belonging to the professional association revolves around the association and its members offering an assurance to the market that the ‘qualified professional’ has a certain level of skill and knowledge.
Keith’s view is that the primary force behind these different levels of legislative protection was a Government’s assessment of the need to protect its citizens from harm. Where malpractice can result in death or injury, Government is more likely to legislate protection (focussed on protecting the public, not the profession). Where the sole consequence of malpractice is likely to be financial loss, the approach is more likely to be ‘hands off’ and if a person or a business chooses to employ unqualified practitioners ‘let the buyer beware’!
The conversation then moved to the formal recognition of professional associations. In the UK, ‘professional associations’ are recognised by Royal Charter. CIOB has enjoyed the privileges and responsibilities of a Charter since 1980, and the Association for Project Management (APM) has embarked on a quest to achieve Chartered status by 2010. I asked Keith for his thoughts on the value of this process; his reply was unequivocal. Aspiring to the professional recognition associated with achieving a Royal Charter requires an association to establish ethical and educational standards for its members, the uniform assessment of members prior to accreditation, and the maintenance of the members experience through mandated ‘continuing professional development’ activities monitored by the association. This discipline can only enhance the credibility of professional members and help distinguish the ‘professional’ from other practitioners.
Read complete interview in English
