Welcome to the APM Podcast, brought to you by The Chartered
Body for the Project profession. This episode is part of our
series of Senior Leader interviews hosted by APM Chief
Executive Professor Adam Bodison.
This time Adam is speaking to Chris Baldy, Army Portfolio
Director at the UK Ministry of Defence.
Chris shares his journey through the ranks of the civil service,
including his rise from admin assistant to portfolio director
and how he, in his own words, stumbled into project
management. Projects and programmes, Chris
says, are central to tackling the main challenges facing the
army, including the modernisation of vital
equipment. None of that is possible without
a pipeline of talented project professionals entering the
Ministry of Defence. And Chris tells Adam about the
department's approach to growing and developing its project
talent base, while reminding us that you don't have to be in
uniform to deliver projects in the Army.
Good afternoon, Chris, and welcome to the APM Podcast.
It's a real pleasure to have you here today, hot off the heels of
my recent visit to Army HQ. So welcome.
Thank you, Adam. To start with, I wondered if you
might tell us a little bit about your career journey, Chris, and
how you came to be Head of Portfolio Management for the
Army within the Ministry of Defence.
Yeah, of course. So portfolio management is a is
a function is is part of my role.
I've got a part of my role that's also in the head of
professional space for the wider P3M.
So it's a it's a dual role that tracks along P3M.
So I'm a career civil servant. I joined the civil service as a
as an admin assistant and I guess as you hear quite a lot of
people talk around kind of stumbled into project management
and and never looked back. So took the opportunity that was
handed to me, probably more than more years than I'd like to
admit, a go to do some of the kind of entry level training
courses into into the function and then using that training.
Into a bit more specialist roles within project delivery.
So I've been a risk manager and I've been a a scheduler working
across a whole load of different diverse projects which which we
often see in in Defence. And then when portfolio
management became a bit more into focus in the last kind of
5-6 years, I took the opportunity to set up the
infrastructure organisations portfolio, which then took me
into having done that into the army space.
So just to be clear, sometimes on these podcasts I've heard
about people who are accidental project professionals.
You know, they just woke up one day and realised the jobs they
were doing was a project role. It was that the case with you
then or or was it quite a deliberate move from that kind
of admin starting point through into projects?
I'm not sure. I quite woke up realised I was a
project professional. I think as I kind of went
through my my first role that was aligned to kind of the
infrastructure world, I then quite quickly got into a role
that was more associated to projects and programmes and was
lucky enough to be working for someone.
That then introduced it as you realise what this is, this is
about. Project management.
Why don't you go and do some of this training?
Yeah, no, it's it's on. Sounds brilliant.
And of course we hear a lot about projects and programmes,
but I I suppose there's, there's probably a lot of misconceptions
out there about what kinds of projects and programmes are
taking place in the army and within your portfolio.
I wonder if you could tell us a bit more about that.
In terms of what the Army are doing in the portfolio I cover,
hopefully it won't be a surprise to hear that we cover a whole
load of things from those heavy vehicles.
So in layman's terms, tanks, some of the lighter, more mobile
vehicles, some are Range Rover or a quad bike all the way up to
helicopters, which again is something that some people kind
of find odd. Why the Army buying helicopters?
There's certain variants that are that are bought through the
Army system, which is the Chinooks and you're Apaches.
There's also firing systems, so things like ground to air
defence, as well as all of the communication bits that link all
those things together. And then also there's the the
true integrators. So if a Army unit were to
deploy, they need to make sure they've got power and water.
All of those sorts of things. So effectively if if you can
think of anything that the army might need to deploy to afford
forward based operation, it's bought by the portfolio, is
bought in the portfolio. And what would you say the main
challenges are then facing the army?
And what's the role, I suppose, of projects and programmes in
solving some of those issues? The short answer to to that is
that projects and programmes sit at the centre of solving
problems at the army currently face and that kind of challenge
sits around the army's equipment which I described previously has
been under invested in in in for many years with a lot of it
going out of service either in the next kind of 2-3 years or
slightly longer term. So project and programmes at the
centre of the army's modernisation agenda and this is
around replacement of of some of that equipment in terms of
modernising, so buying a lot of the same stuff but just newer,
but also buying new vehicles so. The recognised infantry
programme which is buying the box of vehicle which is one of
the large vehicles, which is which is wheeled rather than
tracks, so kind of at the very centre.
Of of solving that problem. And another problem we have,
which isn't unusual across a lot of industries, is around finding
project delivery professionals and recruiting them.
I've been in the project profession 2 years now.
Myself and everywhere I go, everybody's talking about we've
got to learn lessons from previous projects and then apply
them to projects going forward. What I'm things I've been trying
to do is to drill down into that a bit more, in a bit more detail
and get a sense of, well, what are those key lessons.
So I suppose what I'm interested to ask you about is what are the
key lessons in relation to project leadership that you've
learned through your role leading a portfolio at the MOD?
So learning of lessons and cycling those back through is is
a is a problem. We often have a mentality if you
finish something you move on to the next thing without learning
and feeding that back in. I think one of the things that
I've learned through doing that project leadership and then
going into portfolio management is around making sure we take
time at the start of a project to really get the foundation
set. Because not only does that
improve your chances of delivering the the project or
the programme successfully, you've got a much better dock
into the portfolio. Could I just ask just in
practical terms, how, how, how you do it?
Because I guess I'm thinking you've got lessons learned, uh,
kind of leadership level. You've got lessons learned on
individual projects and programmes that are going on
right across the army and and probably more broadly across the
defence. That's a lot of lessons.
I mean, how do you, just, in practical terms, gather all of
that intelligence together and make sure the right things are
pulled out for the right kind of future projects?
Use of technology is is really important and whether that be on
a kind of really simple repository type system where you
kind of record what's the lesson and what type of of programme
because what we have through our.
Assurance processes is when we get a new programme dropped in
from the strategic centre, there's a a really quick kind of
Chequers, you know what we're doing here.
Is this one of the? Helicopters.
Is it? Is it a heavy, Is it a light
vehicle? And being able to then get after
those lessons that have been learned through previous
projects of the same and putting that through a gated review to
make sure there's a check. Have you learned the lessons
from XY&Z? And just while talking about
kind of great project leaders, obviously I've I've met you a
few times, I've met some of your team, obviously some really
talented project leaders there. So you you must know, therefore,
what the characteristics and traits are of a great project
leader. What what?
What? What would you say those are?
So if I kind of stick to the rule of three, I think the
incredible. So I think there's definitely
something around there's a leader being credible to be able
to talk around your experiences and then also being able to lean
in and support when when needed. Transparency is super important.
Have been really open and honest around successes, but also the
challenges and not being afraid to kind of flag when there's a
problem. And I think there's also third
one being around being adaptable.
So being able to get the best out of people when there's
pressure or things go wrong. So I think the other thing that
I find certainly in the defence context and even more so in a in
a context which is split between military and civilian, there
needs to be an adaptable approach to how you lead people,
because there's lots of different people, lots of
different kind of drivers, certainly in the defence
context. And you've raised a really
important point there, Chris, which I wonder whether some of
our listeners might not be aware of around the military and
civilian mix, if you like, within the project profession,
within the Army, because it's people might think, well it's
only military project professionals, but you've got
both. Haven't you did want to say a
bit more about that and how that works?
So we've got a a split of military and civilian in a
workforce of around 650 and there's about 60% civilian, 40%
military. And when I say military is Army
Navy and the Royal Air Force, although predominantly in the
Army space. We do have some Royal Navy and
Royal Air Force colleagues in some of our aviation programmes
that I described earlier. So that comes with a really
interesting challenge around, as you described earlier, the
accidental project delivery professional.
And we find that our military colleagues often get posted into
project delivery roles and they don't realise that they're in a
project delivery professional. Context or environment until
they turn up on day one. What what's your assessment of
the maturity and professionalisation of the
project delivery community across the Army, and and how
would you say that's aligned to the MOD more broadly?
It's one of those things that it's good, it's getting better,
it's in progress but there's still plenty to do.
We often hear the kind of the bad news stories and defence
procurement but I think our our maturity in in the army and and
in fact through defence is is pretty good through our kind of
central work, the project delivery functions got a pretty
strong strategy. It's currently being refreshed
just because they do it in four yearly chunks rather than every
year and that links quite strongly into the the central
government's vision for accreditation.
So it's a really exciting time to be in the in the profession,
in in defence and and broader government.
We talked earlier on about recruitment is a real challenge.
We know that. I can't remember the exact
statistic now, but it's it's something like we're gonna need
88,000,000 project professionals globally by 20-30.
I mean, I mean, we're clearly nowhere near that.
So it's a challenge for everybody.
But I'm interested to know what the MOD, and maybe more
specifically the Army, are doing to make sure there's that real
healthy pipeline of talented project professionals coming
into the Army. So from a defence perspective,
we've got the project delivery fast stream, we've got
apprenticeship groups in terms of how you come into the
department and also options for when you're in the department
and you can kind of join it. So defences, I'm doing a lot of
work in terms of what we're doing in in the army space,
we're trying to up our brand. So one of the things that I've
pushed really, really hard since being imposed is how do we get
out and you know publicise the the army of delivering some
really purposeful programmes that can make a real impact.
And some of that is around engagement with the APM, go into
the conference in in Birmingham planning to go to to future
conferences. Outreach to universities, but
also getting the fundamentals right around how do we advertise
our roles, How do we make sure that it's understandable.
So a point you made earlier around and there'll be a lot of
people out there that think that people in uniform deliver our
programmes, it's absolutely not the case.
So how do we make sure that we advertise in a way that kind of
draws people in and they understand kind of what the
offer is and being really clear around what that training offer
is? Because I think one of the
things that defence do, and this isn't just about the army, is we
invest in people and so we'll invest in people's training.
So being really clear around what that.
That routine is and then linking it to the the IPA's functional
strategy around accreditation. So it's it's really about making
sure that we've got the professional identity within the
project delivery profession and there's a really clear offer.
And I think the other thing that's really important is, as
you say, there's a big demand for project delivery
professionals and there will be people out there that have got
some training, got some experience in project delivery.
And there'll also be some people out there that don't have that
project, every training or experience, but we'll have an
awful lot of transferable skills and have an aptitude for
learning. I think it's really important
that we're tapping into those people.
To bring them into the profession and help them
understand how they can develop and kind of move forward into
the profession into more senior roles.
Yeah. So I think this is a really
clear message from you there, isn't it?
So it's almost like actually at any career stage, whether you
are starting out and you need that investor someone to invest
in you in the training side or whether you are more advanced in
your career, maybe you're looking to switch sectors or
switch professions. There's multiple entry points
here, isn't it? So this is going to be a kind of
a pretty broad spectrum of people that can enter the
profession here. Absolutely.
Yeah absolutely we've we've got again I I can probably talk
around kind of wider defence but certainly in the army roles that
are kind of entry come and learn from the kind of day one week 1
all the way up to come and be a senior responsible owner.
At Association for Project Management, we know your most
important project is your career.
But as a project manager, it's not always easy to make Project
Me happen. That's where our membership can
help. We offer exclusive training,
qualifications and learning resources to keep your
development on track. Join our 35,000 members and
become part of the only chartered membership body for
the project profession. Open up yourfuture@apm.org.uk.
So Chris, I know that you've recently been going through the
process to achieve Chartered Project professional status your
yourself and I I think the results are have have come out
very recently and and I understand you were successful
and you've joined our Stella list of Chartered Project
Professional. So many many congratulations.
Thank you. One of the things I wanted to
ask because you there will be other people in your
organisation who are either going through that process to
become chartered already or thinking about, you know, is
this something that they should do?
Have you got any advice or somebody who's fresh out of that
process about any learnings that you've got from going through
that or things that you wish you'd done differently maybe as
you were preparing for that process?
Yeah, so I followed route one, which I think is probably the
middle of the road in terms of going through the process.
So I had to do a professional practise interview and I didn't
have to do the technical stuff because I had a pre-existing
qualification. But I think it stands in terms
of the preparation for that. There's a network of people that
are going through at defence level.
So using those people has been really important and having gone
through it slightly ahead of others, I think my advice has
been don't over prepare for the interview part of of the
process. It's one of those things that
the knowledge is in there you've just got to get it out and
coherent way and to over preparing is is is not.
A good way of going because it's it's just questions around the
experience that you've you've got already.
So it's a challenging process, should be challenging, but also,
you know, I think as I can say now, really rewarding when you
get through the other side. I wonder if you might just talk
a little bit about the overall approach to training and
development for project professionals and and how that
links in with with APMS Chartered Project Professional
status. Yeah.
So I think this is an area where defence are really strong and I
think in terms of how we link into the IPA's accreditation
system, which the higher level of credit accreditation needs
the chartership standard to be to be part of that.
So we are certainly starting to push from a defence perspective.
There's been two cohorts of of about 30 senior leaders just
gone through a pilot process across the fence that were
supported through the charter journey.
I'm now starting to think about how we do that for the Army
again a senior cohort within the Army to push through that the
the Chartered standard. Because as it links to the
defence and then onward into wider government process and
thinking we're starting to push more people through the
chartered route. And I think in terms of kind of
wider training, I think it's not just about going on training
courses. There's also the the Seventy
2010. So experience mentoring and kind
of formal training and making sure that breakdown is really
clear. Because we find a lot of people
that kind of go on a course and come back and say I'm now an
expert in risk management because I've done the risk
management course. What they mean is they've done
the risk management course. They need to learn and and get
the experience of being a risk manager.
So in terms of chartership then that's all to do with how it
links him with the IPA, the infrastructure and project
authorities expectations and and actually that's something that's
happening cross government. So.
So getting that chartership is is also a passport to other
public sector roles and private sector roles of course, and vice
versa those who've already got chartership elsewhere.
That could be really attractive in terms of helping somebody to
come and join your team and add value at at the right level.
Absolutely. So I think I think it's the
first time that we've now got a really clear understanding of
how we can read across as you say not just other government
departments but also into kind of the wider sectors that
support us and people coming in. So.
So I think the the chartered standard is the thing that we're
going to start to ask people to kind of demonstrate or be
willing to work towards because that's the that's the common
thread through all of the things that would be as part of a job.
So if you're outside of of government and someone said be
accredited to level acts, they won't understand that if we ask
someone to be at the chartered standard level and we're willing
to work towards. That's really understandable,
understandable across the across the profession.
One of my own insights into into the kind of maturity of the
project profession more broadly, I suppose, is how people
identify with the professional, with the role they do.
So if I talk to people in very well established professions, I
I don't know. Um.
A chartered engineer, for example.
And I. And I say to them, you know
what? What do you know?
What do you do? What's your role?
They will say I'm an engineer and I work for the British Army,
for example. But sometimes when they're
project professionals, they identify more with the
organisation before they do with their profession.
So you know, they'll say I'm a project manager and I work for,
you know, the National Health Service or you see what I mean?
I think it's quite interesting. It's it's an interesting
indicator I suppose, of the maturity of the sector and for
me I'll be really excited the day when you ask somebody what
they do and they say I'm a chartered project professional
and I work for the British Army, for example, that would be
really exciting. Yeah.
No, it's interesting. It's one of the conversations
that we've had in the head of profession space around, you
know, similar to what you just said, how do you introduce
yourself at a cocktail party? So someone says, he said what do
you do? We're trying to push to say
we're project delivery professionals.
It just it happens we work in the Army Navy, so it's trying to
push that kind of identity and that's part of our functional
strategy. So part of that is how do we
make sure that people kind of understand us against as you
said? Some other the other professions
within defence. If people were to be asked, it
would be around the finance profession, the commercial
profession really established long term professions, projects,
really professional, still in its infancy.
Sometimes I I I think of think of that as a real challenge for
us. But I think as with all of these
challenges there are also opportunities because because we
don't have a very well worn path it means we can take the path
where it where it needs to go where it's actually trying to
change some of these other professions who are very well
established. That's like trying to say and a
super tanker you know it'll take a long long time.
So I'm I'm always interested to watch you know over the next 10
or 20 years um how the different professions will have matured
and evolved over over that time. What about your role and and
portfolio management within the MO D more broadly, Do you think
that's going to go through a a big evolution over the next 10
years? Is there going to be a lot of
change? What do you think?
So I think there will be, I think portfolio management being
defence has been through a journey already.
I see portfolio management continue to be an integral part
of the kind of defence procurement because it provides
that kind of P3M conscience to senior leaders.
So if you make one decision, how does that impact another?
So I think that's the really kind of important thing that
portfolio manager management does, especially in a in an
environment where the army will be making some decisions as will
the Navy, the RAF and all the others.
So they're all interlinked. So portfolio management becomes
a really key role in that kind of bringing it to a defence
level and being consistent And I think you know really driving
decisions but also efficiencies in terms of how do we use some
of the things that kind of sit at that portfolio level, say
category management is one of the things.
So how do we make sure that we're doing the right things
properly, which I guess is a bit of a strap line from the kind of
portfolio management doctrine? We've managed to get through a
whole conversation, Chris, and we haven't talked at all about
artificial intelligence and digitalization and you know the
the conversations that are happening in every organisation
all around the country right now.
What what's your take on on on on all things digital and AI
opportunity or threat? What's your assessment?
So I think as with any any of these sorts of things there's a
huge opportunity. But what comes with that is a a
a threat as we always kind of see.
I think you you kind of you see and and hear and you know pick
up on conversations where you know people see a I as as a
threat. And I think I've I've read lots
of things recently where it talks about AI won't replace
people. People use an AI will be the
ones that replace the people that that don't.
So I think there's a huge opportunity especially in an
organisation that has a huge amount of data as defence do and
that's that's varied in its quality and I think that's
another threat in terms of you know how good is the quality of
the data that we're using. But overall I think it's a it's
a huge opportunity. I've seen some of the work
that's been going on in in the central centre of of the defence
department and it's it's huge it, it will allow us to again
make those decisions at a portfolio level with a lot more
confidence I think. On balance, I think you signed
in quite optimistic about AI about the opportunities.
Obviously you've identified some of the threats there as well.
Do you think we should all be opportunistic as well and and
positive? I think it was anything as big
as this I think you need, you definitely need those kind of
people that are more cautious I guess in in any kind of change
perhaps my brains going back to some of the things that I've
learned through my career, you need those people that say Are
you sure, will it work, are we going down the right path.
But I think it's also one of those things with the way that
the world is going in terms of technology, it feels like
something that's going to happen.
And I guess my outlook on things are embrace it because I think
it's inevitable, but make sure that whilst kind of embracing it
that I can continue to kind of challenge to make sure that it
is, is the right way to go. We've got people who've been
listening to this who are right at the beginning of their
career. Maybe they're already in the
project profession and they're just they they don't know what
things they should be doing to get on and really get on in
their career. Maybe they're thinking about
entering the project management profession and aren't quite sure
where's a good place to start. What what advice would you give
to them based on your obviously excellent career journey that's
got you into this brilliant role.
So again I think kind of rule of three.
I think the first one would be be curious and challenge.
So that's about challenging the people around you and yourself
and kind of ask those questions that you perhaps think other
people aren't or or are not The right questions I think are
really really important. One is don't be afraid of
failure. I think a lot of people see
failure as a a negative and this might be an odd thing to to say
out loud. But I think in my experience I
think the things that I've learnt and the best lessons that
I've learned have been through things haven't gone well.
And I think the third thing which I see a lot through, I
guess my my day job, but also the head of professional or is
make sure you get the right level of balance between going
on training courses and getting experience.
And I think that's a really important thing to to kind of
take away is linking back to the second point experiences, the
thing that tends to teach you the most.
Chris, it's been a real pleasure to have you on the podcast
today. Thank you so much for your time.
I hope people have got a lot from listening to that.
And I hope those people who have thought about but maybe not
acted on, but potential project career within the Army or indeed
the mod more broadly will pick up the mantle now and and and
start looking at the the job sites and thinking about coming
to join what what's on like some really exciting projects that
are going on that. So, Chris, thank you very much.
Thank you, Adam. Brilliant conversation.
Thank you for joining us for this episode of the APM Podcast.
If you enjoyed it, don't forget to subscribe, leave us a review
or why not, contact us with your feedback at
apmpodcast@thinkpublishing.co.uk. For more information on APM,
including the pathway to Chartered Project professional
status, visit APM ORG UK.