Recognising Project Managers

[Roberto]

Hello,

I have been working for years as a contractor and I am a chartered engineer.

I have several years experience as project manager, but unfortunately I find that my job description is still not being recognised by any professional institutions. Structural engineers have several institutions recognising their profession but project managers like me are bound to stay engineers and the title as such is not worth a penny. Anybody can claim being a project manager and there should be a way to protect this title based on education and experience gained.

A project management certification scrutinising your experience to a certain standard would help improve the general image and quality of our profession!

Anybody having the same thoughts?

Greetings

Roberto

[webmaster]

Hello Roberto,

We totally agree with your claim and we also think that the Project Manager profession should be more protected than it is the case now.

A partly good news is that one institution in the UK can take care of certifying your experience as a Project Manager. The institution's name is PMI "Project Management Institute". They have a certification scheme for Professional Project Managers called PMP "Project Management Professional".

The PMI institution is getting more and more recognised on US and UK construction markets. The only hint is that you need a PMI member in your organisation to verify your gained experience over a certain period of time, hence making certification claims difficult.

On the international construction market, this institution is unfortunately not widely known and Professional Project Managers will unfortunately still have to struggle to get their profession recognised. Until such situation improves globally, Project Managers and Construction Managers will still feel like being in a supermarket when it comes to job hunting or the selection of suitable candidates.

It is important to define a certain standard for this profession as you have mentioned in your post. PMI Institution is an alternative but not a global solution. A closer look at PMP experience requirements compared with your own state of experience is nevertheless worth it. The link is http://www.pmi.org/info/PDC_PMP.asp

Greetings,