From Banking to Building Site: Are Project Management Skills Transferable?
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Topics: Career Development, Construction, Financial Services, Lessons Learned, Knowledge Shelf
Abstract
I have been working as a project manager within the financial services industry for a number of years. In 2014, I obtained my Project Management Professional (PMP)® certification. While my day job is focused on projects within the banking sector, I have recently project managed a large extension of our private house. When I started this, I thought I had seen most of what project management means after running several large-scale projects in banking, but project managing a building site turned out to be an entirely new challenge. With this article, I intend to share my personal experience of transferring the skill set I obtained within the banking industry to a completely different context by outlining the key lessons I learned.
The article is addressed to any project manager considering working in a new area or even changing industries. After a brief introduction, the article structure follows the PMI Process Groups (Initiating, Planning, Executing, Closing, and Monitoring and Controlling) (PMI, 2017) as it suits the chronological order of the project. In each Process Group, I have highlighted my key messages of how easy (or hard) I found it to transfer my experiences and knowledge from one sector to another one.
Project Background
The house extension project I managed involved approximately 150 different workers, ranging from architects, structural …
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