APM as a chartered body: Supporting the journey of chartered project professionals

ROAD TO CHARTERED SERIES

This paper is the tenth and final in this series of chartered thought-leadership papers – ‘Road to Chartered’ – published by APM to help build capacity and thinking as a chartered body. The series, which was a year-long process, sought to provide members with insight into how APM might develop as a chartered body, what this means and, crucially, how members could feed into this evolution. It was also a signal to the public of the intent of the project profession to play its part in the development of social and economic well-being, both in the UK and globally – a contribution that, we believe, has for too long been underappreciated.

We hope you found the series informative and, whether you are a member, prospective member or interested external stakeholder, that it provided context to this important phase in the development of the project profession. Although this is the end of this series, we will continue to publish ad hoc discussion papers related to chartered as the need arises.

As APM chair John McGlynn comments:

“This series of thought-leadership papers centred on chartered themes was conceived last year to support the need to develop APM’s thinking and the debate across the membership on the building blocks needed for the profession; and to support the year-long process consultation on the standard and the support and governance structures needed to launch the register.

“Understandably, many practitioners were eager to start their individual journey to become chartered as soon as possible. However, it was essential that the relevant governance and required guidance that comes with a Royal Charter body be developed and tested after the appropriate consultation.

“We are now well down that road, but the intervening period allowed us to use the time well through the publication of these papers, to form ideas about how our profession can develop”

What themes of professionalism did the series cover?

The first paper covered the concept of chartered itself and the next few papers looked at key components of the good professional: volunteering, ethics and continuing professional development (CPD). We then looked forward at how a profession should embrace future developments, looking at the impact of technology and the importance of the millennial generation in shaping change in the workplace and professionalism itself. Finally, we focused on the importance of thought leadership and research, concluding with a paper on diversity and inclusion, focusing on how we might develop project management as a genuinely inclusive profession.

The future

This set of chartered papers represent the first phase of thought leadership to support the journey to develop the project profession. As a chartered profession, we will continue to publish further papers as the need arises, to elucidate and develop themes to support thinking as the journey progresses and to seek the views of both our registrants as well as other stakeholders as to how this can and will meet the challenge of the aspirations of our