Know the Fun of Being a Project Manager
A forty-year old veteran of engineering and project management stresses that more people must consider the career because it is a fun job that yields tangible results.
Freelancer project manager Tom Klein who was able to complete his engineering diploma in 1967 and has worked in project management for the past 15 years on large infrastructure roll-outs.
“The number one thing about project management is it is fun and something that, at the end, you see a result,” Klein said.
“It really is fun. When I started it was based on my engineering background, but today it has progressed somewhat and some sort of accreditation is a must.”
“When you receive a project the main thing is to remain calm for a few days. People get a high heart rate and want to do everything now,” Klein says.
Klein has worked on a GSM roll out for Vodafone, data centre build outs, switching equipment installations for PowerTel (AAPT) and a 700 kilometre fibre optic cable deployment for energy Australia connecting 200 substations.
He says there are two types of project managers – generalists and specialists.
Klein believes people should think of all tasks as projects and manage them that way.
“Did you ever prepare a dinner? You project manage everything. You should see everything as a project,” he says. “Lately people interchange the words of project and event. You do the same in project management as with event management.”
Klein sees people as more conscious of delivering things on time and on budget and require services of professional project managers.
On project management software and tools, Klein says “keep it simple and it’s 'horses for courses'”.
“Collaboration and knowledge sharing is an absolute must for project management,” Klein said.
When asked why so many projects fail, Klein said: “Projects don’t fail, the expectations do.”
Klein recently finished working on projects for NSW RailCorp and is now looking for another challenge “because project management is fun”.
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