Elizabeth Record’s Journey: How Project Management Skills Elevated Her Career

Elizabeth Record is an Engagement and Projects Officer working with the Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner for Devon, Cornwall, and the Isles of Scilly. With a diverse range of projects under her belt, she sought to refine her skills and take her career to the next level by exploring new project management strategies. 

In the interview below, Elizabeth discusses the challenges she faced in her career, why she chose to pursue formal project management education, and how the course helped her elevate her skills to deliver successful projects. 

Can you tell us a little about yourself – what you do, and what drew you to this career?

My name is Elizabeth Record. I'm an Engagement and Projects Officer. I work for the Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner for Devon, Cornwall, and the Isles of Scilly. I took part in the Certified Project Management Diploma with the Institute of Project Management (IPM), which I took out last year.

Was there a moment or challenge in your career that made you realise you needed to learn more about project management?

As an engagement and projects officer delivering on projects such as public relations campaigns and interior redesigns, I needed to learn the tools from the bottom up to be able to implement those into delivering good projects. And, the Institute of Project Management offered this course, which covered all aspects of project management, which is what I really needed. 

What made you choose IPM, and how did the course fit into your journey?

I work full-time in my role. It's a busy role, and with many people, life outside of work is also busy. I'm a single mum, so I was a little bit concerned about how I was going to be able to fit this course in as well. I chose for the Thursday evening. It was three hours on a Thursday evening for the online lecture, learning from lecturers that were obviously the best in the field of project management. You really did feel like they knew what they were talking about, and it worked really well, actually. I would sit, take part in the lecture, and then I would watch the video back over the weekend, just to capture any bits that I perhaps missed out on. So, in terms of impact on my normal week, it was completely doable. 

What stood out most during the experience of upskilling with us?

The lectures were interesting and varied. The lecturers were really engaging. Moodle worked brilliant as an app, to be able to use the book that I had with all of the slides from all of the lectures was super easy. It really helped with the revision. So, everything technology there was fantastic. IT support throughout. So it felt like it was a quality course. 

How have you applied what you learned since then?

The course really taught me about the importance of stakeholder buy-in from the start to, you know, get that stakeholder buy-in to deliver a successful project, and how to communicate, you know, those lines continue throughout the project. So I found that really beneficial, also looking at the risk. So for anything I do now, even if it's just arranging events, it's looking at that, that risk and just, yeah, I think that's what project management does. It sort of captures everything from the start to the finish, things that you just would not have considered before. So it has taught me a great deal. 

What advice would you give to someone earlier in their journey, or someone considering this course?

Overall, I would wholeheartedly recommend the Institute of Project Management to do your project management qualification. I don't think you'll be disappointed at all.