Written By Paulette Hamilton

Overview

On February 26, 2020 the PMI Atlanta Governance Forum was pleased to host Karen Crumpton White as she spoke on the topic of “Developing Project Managers.” Ms. White shared the details of how she and her peers transform new college graduate interns into project management leaders via the COX LEAD program.

Ms. White spoke about how project managers are expected to be leaders, but few get the opportunity to build and develop their leadership potential in the early stages of their career. As one of the mentors in the COX LEAD program, Ms. White guides college interns as they participate in two months of intense training before they are placed into a rotation where they assume responsibility for projects with budgets from $8,000 to $5M. In the early stages the interns are evaluated and chosen based on certain key characteristics including critical thinking, communications and life-learner attitude. In developing the interns into strong project management leaders, Ms. White stressed that the role of the mentor is crucial.

She spoke about necessary and required mentorship skills stressing that the mentor must invest time into really getting to know the mentee and providing support and clear communications in a trusting environment. Deep listening and finding the driver that is the key to motivating each person are also vital.

Ms. White presented ideas in a very personable way inviting the audience to participate in a discussion rather than listening to a speech. There were some interesting interactive discussions and  questions during and after the talk which underlined the relevance of this topic to governance. Developing project management leaders in the early stages of their career can bring innovative ideas to project governance.

Takeaways

• Building project management leadership qualities early in a PMs career can be of great benefit to both the PM and the organization.
• Excellent mentors give clear communications about what is expected from the mentee.
• When you invest the time to develop the leadership potential of new PMs you strengthen the entire project management team.

Next Event

Join us at the next PMI Atlanta Governance forum on May 27, 2020

Register at www.pmiatlanta.org/events/event-calendar

About PMI

Written By Deborah Johnson, MBA, MPH, PMP

Overview

On February 11^th, 2020, Michael Pink, CEO of SmartPM Technologies, Inc. was the featured presenter at the Architecture Engineering & Construction (AEC) Forum.

Michael Pink drew from his 17 years of experience in the construction industry, with roles in Program Management, Risk Advisory and Dispute Resolution. He showed how schedule delays, cost overruns, and how disputes can be avoided. He noted that on average 75% of construction projects are delayed and 59% are over budget; costing the construction industry trillions of dollars each year.

The problem? Schedule analysis is not planned for or conducted until things have become problematic. This can be due to over-optimism at the onset and fear to face the implications of delays (time, scope and money). 

The solution? Construction schedule analytics. The construction schedule is the most powerful yet most misunderstood data set in construction.  The schedule goes far beyond a planning tool.  It is the sole analytical tool that shows how everything is inter-related.  These shared relationships are clearly defined across all processes in all projects.

As CEO of SmartPM Technologies, Inc, Michael Pink has developed a technology that regularly analyzes schedule quality, delays, compression, feasibility and risk on construction projects. This technology can perform an accurate critical path analysis with minimum human involvement and happens to be the only technology of its kind.

Takeaways

For project success, intensive schedule analysis should occur from the very onset of the project throughout the life of the project. Analysis check points include:

• SCHEDULE QUALITY – Built based on best practices, sound logic and realistic expectations
• SCHEDULE DELAY – adjusted to cover potential risk
• SCHEDULE RECOVERY – to make sure all parties understand the in-progress decisions being made on a regular basis
• FEASIBILITY – based on historical data
• PREDICTIVE ANALYSIS

Next Event

Join us at the next PMI Atlanta AEC on Tuesday, March 10th, 2020.

Keynote Presentation: "Curiosity Lab at Peachtree Corners" presented by Greg Ramsey, PE, Director of Public Works & Engineering

Register at www.pmiatlanta.org/events/event-calendar

About PMI

Atlanta Chapter serves Project Management Community in Metro Atlanta, and we're an active resource to corporations, community and government agencies throughout north Georgia. With over 5,000 members, PMI Atlanta is among the top 5 chapters in the world. Our professional expertise span across industries; we’re the professionals building healthcare information technology systems, the engineers developing smarter public transportation, and the planners growing our communities more efficiently.

Written by: Deborah Johnson, MBA MPH PMP

The December PMI-AEC meeting held at ConstructConnect was an introduction to the impact of Virtual Reality on Construction Bidding and other aspects of the Construction Engineering Industry.
 
Featured presenter was Macrae Cain, MBT, and CEO of the Digital Media House, a digital marketing company that specializes in VRchitecture and marketing. VRchitecture is a fully immersive virtual reality process for creating VR build models of architectural projects to be constructed. Mr. Cain took the attendees through an introduction process of how VR has evolved and the step by step impact it will have on all phases of the design and construction process as well as the legal impacts of archiving VR build models.
 
The DMH team then took the attendees through a visual 2D-VR build model to introduce to them the value that Build models bring to the industry. Most importantly the demonstration illustrated how to look through the walls and floor to see the framing and utilities of the design. Upon completion of the visual demonstration, each attendee was provided a VR headset to experience a real-time interactive immersion into the same VR model as demonstrated.

About PMI

Atlanta Chapter serves Project Management Community in Metro Atlanta, and we're an active resource to corporations, community and government agencies throughout north Georgia. With over 5,000 members, PMI Atlanta is among the top 5 chapters in the world. Our professional expertise span across industries; we’re the professionals building healthcare information technology systems, the engineers developing smarter public transportation, and the planners growing our communities more efficiently.

Written by Ty Lamar

Heather Casey presented the John Maxwell’s DISC method. This is a personality assessment tool that’s useful in improving team communication and collaboration.

The personality types identified by this method is as follows:

D – Dominant – 3% of the population – Seeks Control / Decisive / Direct

I – Influencing – 11% of the population – Persuasive / Spontaneous / Friendly

S – Safety – 69% of the population – Team-Oriented / Follow-Through / Loyalty

C – Compliant – 17% of the population – Analytical / Planner / Accuracy

Heather discussed the strengths and weaknesses of each personality type in detail and the communication strategies for each. She indicated that people are usually dominant in two of the personality traits. She created an engaging session with scenario based examples the promoted audience participation.

Heather’s presentation was followed with a video highlighting current medical advances provided by Professor Toks. This video introduced an affordable portable scanning device that connects to your smart phone and act as a portable scanner for different parts of the body. This device emits a fraction of the radiation compared to CT scans.  Doctors will be able to use this device to aid in quicker diagnosis at a much lower cost.

About PMI

Atlanta Chapter serves Project Management Community in Metro Atlanta, and we're an active resource to corporations, community and government agencies throughout north Georgia. With over 5,000 members, PMI Atlanta is among the top 5 chapters in the world. Our professional expertise span across industries; we’re the professionals building healthcare information technology systems, the engineers developing smarter public transportation, and the planners growing our communities more efficiently.

Written by Theresa McCoy

On August 13, 2019, Sarah Griswold, VP of Financial Planning & Analysis at Kindred at Home, was the featured speaker at the Architecture Engineering & Construction (AEC) Forum.

Sarah began her presentation by outlining the key elements of a Profit and Loss to ground the audience on terminology to understand financial basic concepts. She discussed the key drivers that impact a P&L and broke down each section to illustrate how they relate to a company’s financial health.

Do your eyes glaze over at the thought of reviewing a Profit & Loss (P&L) statement? Are you confused by all the jargon and terminology?  Not to fear, Sarah Griswold is here! 

Gross sales, pricing, revenue, discounts and allowances, net sales, cost and distribution, all of these and more were clearly explained as Sarah walked through the definitions, drivers and key takeaways for each element of a Profit and Loss Statement. She drew on her past experience to provide examples of each area of a P&L.  The example described how to interpret the information on a P&L statement and the identification opportunities to improve the bottom line of a project or business for long term success.  Using real life project and business examples, Sarah made the financial “in’s and out’s” of a P&L less intimidating and more understandable for those who are less versed in the day to day business financials!

Sarah helped the audience to demystify the P&L to leverage it as a valuable financial tool in a project manager’s “toolbox”.

About PMI

Atlanta Chapter serves Project Management Community in Metro Atlanta, and we're an active resource to corporations, community and government agencies throughout north Georgia. With over 5,000 members, PMI Atlanta is among the top 5 chapters in the world. Our professional expertise span across industries; we’re the professionals building healthcare information technology systems, the engineers developing smarter public transportation, and the planners growing our communities more efficiently.