Below, read Dave's message to you all. You can also read more about Dave in an earlier blog
I am delighted and proud to have been elected the new chairman of the Project Controls network. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the outgoing chairman, Alec Ray, for his hard work, dedication and vision in developing the network over many years, a benchmark I aspire to. I would also like to thank the committee, including Alec, for their ongoing support for me in this new role.
The Project Controls network is one of the 21 Technical and Professional Networks (TPN) of the Institution of Engineering & Technology (IET) and is a collaboration with the Association of Costs Engineers (ACostE). The TPNs exist to promote the sharing and advancement of knowledge in specific areas of engineering specialism, thus fulfilling the “inform” criteria in the IET mission statement: “To inspire, inform and influence the global engineering community, supporting technology innovation to meet the needs of society”.
The Project Controls Network is unique, as it is the only group that provides project management and control expertise specifically to engineers. In the past there has been a lot of work done and courses run to help engineers move into management positions, but in today’s ever-changing world engineers at all levels will find themselves involved in projects, it is projects that deliver change. Therefore it is essential that engineers have an appreciation of project management theory.
Project controls deals with the technical and analytical aspects of project management, covering planning and control of benefits, costs, scope, quality, risks, timing, etc. using a variety of quantitative techniques. This is an area that is changing surprisingly fast, affected by the Internet of Things (IoT), Big Data, and Artificial Intelligence (AI), amongst other developments. Indeed our next evening lecture, at IET London: Savoy Place, on 1st February 2018, is entitled “AI and Cognitive Methods to Predict Capital Delivery Project Health”; where it will be shown that the unstructured documents amassed during a large project can be scanned by an AI application and give a summary of the health of a project. I hope you can join us, you can register online
We are always looking for volunteers with expertise in project controls to join our committee, to help be a source of knowledge for questions asked via the discussion forums and organise events and lectures to disseminate best practice and the latest developments to the wider project controls community.
Dave Perton
November 2017
