The IAPM is increasingly being discussed by other renowned project management organisations. This shows us that we are becoming more strongly perceived by the public and that we can no longer be ignored. Companies are showing more interest in the IAPM’s certifications and we are receiving certification enquiries daily. In this process, our IAPM (Senior) Officials and our executives are being approached with important questions, most of which relate to the following subjects and are answered below.

Bad news is good news - sad but true. You can see evidence of it everywhere - on TV, on the internet and in the print media. And it also applies to the project industry. Just think about what’s been said in the news about German projects such as the Berlin Airport, Stuttgart Central Station or the Hamburg Opera House. It all gives the impression that projects swallow up mountains of money and are regularly run aground. Who pays the price? Tax payers, operagoers, train users and air travellers.

The Rosetta spacecraft was launched into space on 2 March 2004. Just over 10 years later, it arrived at its destination, the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko (or Chury for short). The culmination of the Rosetta mission was the rough landing of its Philae probe on the comet’s surface, generating - quite rightly in our opinion - extensive media coverage.

The IAPM International Association of Project Managers resolved at its Annual General Meeting in 2014 to award honorary IAPM membership to Professor Rupert Gerzer. Professor Gerzer has been Director of the Institute of Aerospace Medicine at the German Aerospace Centre (DLR) in Cologne since 1992 and Chair of the Institute of Aerospace Medicine at the RWTH Aachen University‘s Faculty of Medicine.

There’s been an empty lot round the corner from my home for some time now. It’s got hoarding up but frankly it’s an eyesore. The delay to putting up the new houses, I found out last week, is that the proposals from the builders have been rejected. Now it seems like we’ll be waiting for the local authorities to review a new proposal and maybe that one will get the green light. The builders would have prepared a project proposal for consideration, and this is the document that also kicks off other projects.

The IAPM‘s Senior Official Udo Schmidt hosted the Metropolitan Region of Hamburg’s third IAPM Network Meeting of the year on 15 September 2014. It was attended by IAPM certificate holders and their guests. The event was also open to everyone in northern Germany with an interest in project management and publicised by the PMI, GPM and DGQ regional organisations. Hermes Logistik Gruppe Deutschland GmbH in Hamburg-Langenhorn provided the venue.

The Chairman of the GPM Deutsche Gesellschaft für Projektmanagement, Reinhard Wagner, recently wrote an article in the GPM Blog entitled “IPMA or IAPM – Original or Copy“, (read it here: http://gpm-blog.de/ipma-oder-iapm-original-oder-nachahmer/), which we would like to comment on.

Our speaker will be Swiss project manager, management trainer, author, lecturer and examination expert Bruno Jenny, who will be talking on the subject of “What is expected of a professional project manager today?“ Bruno has been playing an active and supporting role in projects on various hierarchical levels for insurance companies, banks, industrial corporations, as well as national and canton-level public sector institutions for more than 30 years.

The company’s positive development and expansion is supported by the equivalent of CHF 3.1 million venture capital. The New Zealand-based online project management software provider’s clients include NASA, the United Nations, the United States Postal Service, World Vision and Volvo. There are more than 30,000 users of the software in over 100 countries!

Ralph Wehrli, Senior Official for the Metropolitan Area of Bern (Switzerland), would like to invite anyone who is interested in the IAPM and project management to the Bern Project Manager Network Meeting at the Swiss Post’s Mail Processing Office in Härkingen on 18 September 2014. The Swiss Post’s mail processing system is one of the most modern in the world. The logistics hubs that are necessary to operate it are the mail processing offices in Härkingen, Eclépens and Zurich-Mülligen.

The IAPM would like to invite anyone who is interested in the IAPM and project management to the Nuremberg Project Manager Network Meeting in Erlangen on 2 July 2014. The subject of the meeting is “Brazil versus Germany - Projects not Goals.”

When someone left my project team suddenly I was faced with being a resource down. It’s incredibly frustrating, especially as you have spent time and effort training that person and they have built up specialist expertise in the topic of your project. It can feel like you’ll never be able to replace them.