Industry, Government, and Academic Experts to Ask: “What’s Next for Project Management?”

In just six months, project management professionals from the Washington-Baltimore area and from regions around the world will gather at the University of Maryland campus in College Park, Md., to explore what’s next for the field by playing an active role in the Project Management Center for Excellence’s third annual symposium.

Taking place May 12-13, 2016, the symposium will build on the success of years past and will feature new, in-demand sessions to keep attendees on top of the latest trends impacting the field. In addition to presentations on agile/IT, construction management, disaster management, people in projects, risk and big data, sustainability, and PM methodology, the 2016 symposium will also feature expert-led sessions on Building Information Modeling (BIM), and Acquisition – including Public-Private Partnerships and Integrated Project Delivery.

“Since our inaugural symposium in 2014, we’ve already seen countless examples of how the field of project management has evolved,” said John Cable, Director of UMD’s Project Management Center for Excellence. “The emergence of new technologies and methodologies, along with increased trust in the role of the project manager, has reshaped the field at large, presenting project managers with new challenges and opportunities. As such, our mission each year is to offer project managers of all disciplines and career stages a way to stay ahead of trends on the horizon. Given our faculty expertise, the range of industry and government professionals who come to share their insights, and the feedback we gather each year from prior symposium attendees, we’re able to craft an information-packed agenda that covers topics pertinent to project managers of every background and experience level imaginable.”

Turning Knowledge into Practice

In 2016, the University of Maryland Project Management Center for Excellence’s annual symposium will focus on the theme, “turning knowledge into practice,” to further encourage open dialogue between academics and professional project managers. In this way, the center offers a truly unique experience for conference-goers: the chance to approach challenges with both research expertise and the benefit of lessons learned from some of the biggest names in the field.

“The 2015 Project Management Symposium provided a great opportunity to learn from academics and industry professionals the latest best practices and case studies, and enabled me to walk away with a toolkit to support me in my career,” said Evan Piekara of BDO USA LLP.

“The Project Management Symposium is a wonderful opportunity to learn, network, and build great relationships,” said Dr. S. Atyia Martin of Northeastern University. “As a person not certified in project management, I will bring all that I learned back to my organizations and industry.”

Over the past two years, UMD’s Project Management Symposium has featured speakers ranging from NASA Chief Knowledge Officer Dr. Ed Hoffman and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Karen Durham-Aguilera, to International Institute for Learning’s Dr. Harold Kerzner and the U.S. Government Accountability Office’s Karen Richey.

“For more than four decades, we relied solely upon time and cost as the only two metrics needed to manage a project,” said Kerzner. “We knew that time and cost alone could not determine the project’s health, nor were they a good indicator of project success or failure. Today, however, we are entering a new era in project management, where project information can be provided to everyone rather than just a selected few.”

Those interested in helping to shape the agenda for the 2016 Project Management Symposium are strongly encouraged to submit an abstract by Dec. 4, 2015. Requested in-demand topics include: agile/IT, Building Information Modeling (BIM), construction management, disaster management, acquisition, sustainability, and education.

Early-bird registration rates for the 2016 symposium are now available online via the Project Management Symposium website: http://pmsymposium.umd.edu/.

Published November 16, 2015