A lifetime contribution to project controls

For the last few days, I have been reflecting on winning the Wayne Wilson Award for Lifetime Contribution in Project Controls at the Project Controls Expo Australia held at the MCG, Melbourne (14-15th Nov): https://projectcontrolexpo.com/aus/ and wondering how much of life is crafted and how much is serendipity? See a brief video of the 2023 Awards event.  

From a very early age I had decided to follow my Great Grandad, Grandad, Father, and Uncles and become a builder – building things is fun. Then at college in 1970 I became interested in project controls and CPM scheduling (mainframe computers were really cool things to make work).  So, after graduating, my career choices were always bent towards project controls on building projects and working for either project controls consultancies, or building companies.

But, ending up in Australia was pure serendipity! In 1972, I had a really good job with a major UK builder and only knew of Australia as the ‘old adversary’ in the Ashes cricket tests. I also used to crew for a friend in his Flying Fifteen (2 person) sailing boat at the Medway Yacht Club and we were doing quite well in the Sunday points series. He had to go away for a weekend and asked me to race the boat to help keep our aggregate points score up.  No problem, I just needed to find a crew. One of the people I would normally ask (a 16 stone London Fireman) was at the club, but the wind was very light – I asked John if he knew someone who weighed a bit less and he introduced me to an Australian girl accompanying him and his wife for a day at the club. A slow race on a sunny day (in England….), talking, exchange of contact details, falling in love, and in 1974 I was following Clo to Australia to get married. Some 20+ years later I realized I was supporting Australia in the cricket (and still do).  

The other factor that is continuing to shape my development is the help, encouragement, support, and challenges I have received; from family, friends, colleagues, mentors, and honorable adversaries. No one achieves anything alone. The people who have helped me over the decades are far too many to name but a lot of memories have been flooding into my thoughts over the last few days – sadly, in many cases it is too late to express my gratitude. For the rest I need to be more open to expressing the gratitude I feel – thank you!

So, to answer the question posed at the start of this post, luck (or random chance) seems to have a significant impact on everyone’s life (it is better to be born lucky than rich), but everyone also has the opportunity to play the hand fate deals them, their way, to achieve their objectives. No one is perfect, we all make mistakes, cause unnecessary upset, and fail to properly acknowledge people. Correcting the wrongs, and recovering from failures, is as much a key to growth as having clear objectives and working to be successful; but achieving both of these needs help. The good news is everyone can both help, and be helped, by the people around them, you just need to open up enough to let it happen.  

My lifetime is not over yet! And, the one thing I seem to be reasonably good at is communicating and writing about project management and project controls in a clear and easily understood way.  The world needs good project managers and controls people and with luck I will still be publishing blogs and papers for many years to come. When I started writing and publishing papers and articles there were a range of complex drives, in large part writing is the way I think and learn – but at no time until the last couple of months did I expect this interest to lead to me receiving a ‘lifetime achievement award’. For more on the citation for the award, see more on the PGCS New Page.

The resources at https://mosaicprojects.com.au/PMKI.php is a library of most of my writings to date (and continues to grow), almost all of the papers are free to use under the Creative Commons License which means you can copy, adapt and use the materials in any way that helps you and your career.