Institute Celebrates its 10th Annual Award Ceremony

It is now ten years since the Institute of Project Management initiated its Graduate of the Year Awards. The objectives of these awards are to:

• Recognise and honour the high achievers in the qualifying programmes.
• Increase awareness of the high quality and standards of IPMA qualification and certification among the business community and the general public.
• Increase the awareness of and status of project management as an important business discipline.

The 2012 winners, who will be presented with their awards in early January 2013, will be profiled on our website subsequently.

However, to mark the 10^th anniversary of the event, we are turning back the clock to spotlight our first overall national winner in 2003, Dr Martina Ryan, to see “where is she now”?  

2003 Award Winner Dr. Martina Ryan

Since being awarded Graduate of the Year in 2003, Martina has left employment in a multi-national company to set up her own successful consulting firm. The company, MRA Consulting Ltd, specialises in project management, quality management and lean/6-Sigma systems.

She has also become an established member of the Institute’s faculty, lecturing on an extensive range of project management courses. Having acquired a PhD in Chemistry, Martina found that her project management qualifications from the Institute enabled her to move from technical R&D to a broader project management role with her then employer before starting her own consultancy business in 2005.

“Project Management is an essential skill, and I used it as a route out of the technical side of things. Now the work I do is more broad-based and focused on leading change in organisations. As a result, I work with a wide range of organisations and firmly believe that project management is a universal, transferrable skill,” says Martina.

Working as a consultant, Martina is a strong advocate of integrating project Management with lean thinking and principles. She says that “Lean project Management is about trying to do projects efficiently, and is very important for businesses, particularly in this economic climate".

More and more project teams are geographically dispersed, and Martina has been using cloud computing and social media as a service that can greatly facilitate communication and access to project information and reduce arduous tasks such as backwards and forwards emailing.

“It’s a value-added service, which clients don’t initially ask for. However, they are very keen on it when they see it in operation,” she said. "Combining project Management, lean and cloud computing has allowed me to provide simple, integrated and cost-effective solutions for the businesses I work with."

The winners since the inauguration of the programme can be viewed at https://projectmanagement.ie/awards.asp.