On board for the future

The last year has been a period of great change for APM but that change has allowed our organisation to go from strength to strength with the adoption of a new ambitious strategy helping to grow our membership and revenues. Another key highlight has been the launch of the chartered standard and Register of Chartered Project Professionals (ChPPs), culminating in October’s announcement of the first cohort of 271 chartered professionals. All of these moments mark fantastic achievements and evolutions of which we should all be rightly proud.

In keeping with this theme of continuous change we recently held the APM board elections.  It was great to see such continued levels of interest and engagement, exemplified by a large number of nominations, a record turnout and the highest ever number of votes. This places us in the top quarter for membership body elections and represents a super result and an extremely healthy benchmark for member engagement.

As you may now know, the results of this vote saw four new members join the board; Debbie Lewis, Sorrel Gilbert and Stephen Carver were each elected as trustees for three-year terms, and Dr Jon Broome was elected for a two-year term.  Each will doubtless bring fresh insight along with their diverse range of personal experience and skills.  Details of all your current board members can be seen here and more information about the full election results are available here.

We would also like to offer our heartfelt thanks to the three departing board members who have served tirelessly for their own terms in office;  John Gordon, Alan Macklin and Roy Millard.

From the APM board perspective, there is still a lot to do to implement our ambitious strategy and to continue developing APM into a leading chartered body, with scale and external impact.

As chair I am obviously mindful of the importance of governance. Like many professional bodies we are constantly seeking to ensure that we run an efficient and effective organisation that best represents the aspirations of our members.  APM is well-served by a committed board that adopts a business-like approach.  We are always looking to test ourselves against best practice and the board recently undertook a self-evaluation against the new Charities Governance Code.  We were reassured to see a strong performance against this benchmark.   Whilst we must and will look to improve further, we have good processes and now have a strong team in place.  

Following the recommendations of a previous external evaluation, the board has now adopted longer appointment terms for the chair role to help manage succession and continuity.  Where current terms of appointment as a trustee are shorter, the board may choose to use its ability to directly appoint a trustee to enable the chair’s term to be completed.  I am therefore delighted that the board asked me to do just that and to continue to be a trustee and its chair through to May 2020

I was elected to the board in November 2014 and elected its chair in November 2016 by a majority of the trustees who wanted to see change in the way the board was run. Trustees wanted a sharper focus on strategy and with a more open and collaborative way of operating. As a project professional with 30 years of operating in the private sector with considerable public-sector engagement, I am personally committed to making the APM a relevant and inspirational body that is fleet of foot and able to support career project professionals along with those who are new to the profession and those who just want to learn more about delivering projects successfully.  

It is an exciting time for the APM and the profession. However, this is just the beginning, and there is much more we can do to raise the status of the profession and ensure greater impact in the next couple of years.  I know that the new board shares this ambition and I hope you do to.

To close allow me to offer you season’s greetings and leave with you the thought that despite the uncertain political times we find ourselves living through right now, the project profession continues to sustain, prosper and grow.