IBSS academic awarded prestigious project management prize

An academic from International Business School Suzhou at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University won a prestigious award from Asia Pacific Federation of Project Management, a grouping of independent national project management associations.

Dr Jiwat Ram, director of the MSc Project Management programme at IBSS, received the award at the 2016 Asia Pacific Federation of Project Management (APFPM) awards.

His research project, entitled ‘Project Management: Future direction for improvements’, won in the category of research in project management.

“While project management has become increasingly sophisticated in recent years, little research exists into its future evolution and direction for growth,” explained Dr Ram.

“The research aims to provide thought leadership and a vision to take the project management discipline into the future and help build capabilities to deal with the complexities of projects of the future.”

Dr Ram’s research showed that project management needs to change dramatically in the future as further developments in project management roles, technologies and team structures are imminent.

“Through the research, we found that further developments in project management are needed including creating new positions for the project manager role such as ‘chief project manager officer’ or ‘senior project evaluation specialist’, the use of new software tools in both internal management and external collaboration, and the integration of project teams with strong matrix management,” said Dr Ram.

APFPM is a regional grouping of independent national project management associations, formed to connect project management-related professional associations across the Asia Pacific region. Every year, projects are recognised by APFPM to showcase the ‘excellence’ they demonstrated in achieving their respective objectives.

Mark Patch, APFPM awards chair, said: “The research provided by Dr Jiwat Ram was insightful and encourages project managers across the globe to consider trends and potential future innovations if they are to embrace project success.”

As the winner of the category, Dr Ram's project submission was automatically accepted as a nominee to the International Project Management Association (IPMA) for judging in the 2017 IPMA Project Management Achievement Awards.