Vanguard Magazine

www.vanguardcanada.com OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2024 11 S SIT REP the Prime Contractor). For RCN projects, an Operational Requirements Man- ager is also onboard. There is a prefer- ence for the heads of section to be as qualified as the PM, but this was rare in my projects. Unique to the Canadian government, two other functions are carried out by separate government departments, functions which in most government project management sys- tems would work for the PM. Public Ser- vices and Procurement Canada (PSPC) provides contracting and related pro- curement services, and the industrial and technological benefits (ITB's) are provided by Innovation Science and Economic Development Canada (ISEDC). The PM's responsibilities are laid out within each Project Charter. While definitions of their responsibilities vary across organizations, PM's gener- ally lead a team to organize, plan, and execute projects while working within assigned constraints (e.g. policies, op- erational requirements, budget, and schedule) and resources – resources also including in Canada's case those in different departments assigned as con- tract and ITB managers, and of course the prime contractor. DND PM's are thus responsible for government planning and coordinating of the necessary activities to advance projects from the operational require- ment definition stage through to deliv- ery of the equipment, establishment of the in-service support system and sub- sequent project closeout. This includes being the lead risk manager responsible for addressing disruptions and barriers to executing projects successfully over many years or even decades. PM's must be highly skilled at both management and leadership to ensure that a myriad of stakeholders remain aligned as the project deals with many overwhelming challenges – challenges that regularly disrupt planned sched- ules and routinely include unforesee- able emerging risks that often include a lack of collaboration among key stake- holders. Most experienced PM's believe that 'schedule is king' in high perform- ing projects, and thus DND PM's encour- age a high degree of urgency every day. From my experience, that hackneyed saying 'herding cats' comes to mind, and as one retired Assistant Deputy Minister of Materiel was fond of saying, "projects slip one day at a time." To address the project management challenges within DND, a Project Man- agement Competency Development (PMCD) program was established by the Director of the Project Management Support Office (DPMSO) in response to the Canada First Defence Strategy of 2010. PMCD qualifies personnel to three levels of competency and is open to the three Groups conducting project management in DND (see Figure Three). The PMCD has apparently been adopted as a template by the Treasury Board (TB) use across government. DPMSO strives to maintain links to professional asso- ciations such as PMI headquartered in the USA and the International Centre for Complex Project Management in Aus- tralia. Other organizations that produce useful benchmarks are the Internation- al Project Management Institute with headquarters in Geneva (the Canadian Chapter being the Project Management Association of Canada) and the Major Projects Association in the UK. The Canadian School of the Public Service (CSPS) also offers project man- agement courses for the broader Pub- lic Service – some dozen on-line self- paced short courses largely based on critical project activities as defined by PMI's Project Management Basic Body of Knowledge, but these lack treatment of emerging techniques to navigate complex projects. However, the Telfer School of Management at the Univer- sity of Ottawa offers educational op- tions tailored to government complex projects, including an MBA option and a certificate in Complex Project and Pro- curement Leadership (CPPL). Project management policy resides with the TB under the leadership of the Comptroller General. However, the TB analysts of DND's major projects dur- ing my tenure (ending in 2017) typically had no experience and minimal knowl- edge of complex project management. Furthermore, and as with CSPS, TB poli- cies catered only to the most common projects across government, not those that are complex. A related concern is a recent recommendation published by Policy Options in late September 2024 to authorize TB with "the power to pause or terminate procurements and technol- ogy projects that have gone off the rails". Clearly, interventions of this magnitude would render TB partially responsible for the resulting project outcomes despite the lack of any significant degree of rele- vant knowledge and introduce one more barrier requiring PM's to navigate. I started this article by asking why we should care about International Project Management Day. I would offer that: • Project management in DND is criti- cal to equipping the Canadian Armed Forces to survive when in harm's way. • It is worthy of much greater invest- ment to prepare all involved in the practice of project management, from DND, PSPC and ISEDC to senior gover- nance and TB. • PM's are significantly responsible and thus accountable for very complex and expensive weapon system plat- form acquisitions, but the perceived failure of such projects does not make them automatically culpable. Based on 17 PM's I worked with, I ob- served accountability, dedication, cour- age, perseverance, and situational leadership as they worked 60–80-hour weeks. Those projects were delivered as a testament to PM's in government and in industry. Therefore, we should be celebrating those involved in project management of major equipment acquisitions. We should not be publicly shaming their projects (and by extension those execut- ing such complex projects), as PM's and their teams execute complex projects, in a very complex and demanding govern- ment bureaucracy, and as their projects are buffeted by a broader complex and interconnected world best described as exhibiting compounding polycrises. On 7 November, I invite every media outlet and defence consulting company to select and showcase a team engaged in the project management of weapon systems projects in government and in industry. Rear-Admiral (Retd) Ian Mack served for a decade (2007-2017) in the Department of National Defence, with responsibilities re- lated to the National Shipbuilding Strategy, three shipbuilding projects and four vehicle projects. Ian is a Fellow of the International Centre for Complex Project Management, the World Commercial and Contracting As- sociation and the Canadian Global Affairs Institute.

• Cover