As this Edition of the Journal goes to press, several events since the last Journal signal the increasing growth of the Project Production Institute. Our December 2018 Annual Symposium was the most successful yet, with a full capacity audience attending sessions ranging from an Introduction to PPM, accompanied by case examples presented by industry practitioners, to Production Systems Optimization.
The ensuing six months have brought increased outreach across the globe by the Institute. Part of this increase comes from demand – interest expressed by corporations and academic institutions seeking to learn more about PPM and its applications to capital project delivery. The Institute received invitations to hold introductory seminars at various locations almost every month since our Annual Symposium, in locations from Houston to India. The other component of increased outreach has been the regular activity of the Institute to increase awareness through open seminars such as in June, where the Institute complemented a highly successful breakfast roundtable with the Natural Resources Forum in London with two introductory seminars.
Our activity in physical outreach has been accompanied by publications in external fora such as the Offshore Technology Conference in May. We will be presenting in the coming months at ADIPEC in Abu Dhabi in November 2019, and the IPTC in Saudi Arabia in January 2020. The increased awareness has resulted in invitations to the Institute for interviews on PPM – the Voice, the internal magazine for the Construction Users Roundtable, produced in collaboration with the Construction Industry Institute, has published an interview with the Institute and with Chevron about PPM.
As we explained in the last edition of the Journal, a core activity of the Institute is to expand the breadth and depth of technical content in response to the growing demand from our expanding membership to learn more about the technical aspects of PPM. The Journal represents the primary thrust of our effort, and this edition is representative of our aim to broadly delineate a comprehensive body of knowledge on Operations Science and Project Production Management through successive Journal editions. This edition begins to touch on a number of hitherto unaddressed topics which have come up in seminars and Symposia. There are several articles on the financial impact of PPM, and we publish the first of several forthcoming articles on PPM as a platform for emerging digital technologies. We also delve further into the implications of a PPM perspective in managing supply chains.
Last December’s Symposium saw the announcement of the new joint Stanford CIFE-PPI Certificate Course on Project Production Management. The older VDC course is now retired – the last courses were given earlier in 2019. Stay tuned for dates for the inaugural course offerings.
Finally – as this year sees continued growth and interest in the Institute, we are reconfiguring the leadership of the Institute to position for the future. Having had a retrospective look at our different committees, we decided to increase our emphasis on the Industry Council, looking to expand advocacy of PPM through the activities of our Industry Council members. We have therefore decided to adopt a few principles. First, we’ll be more active to encourage renewal through rotating members on and off committee memberships. Second, we’ve decided to merge the former Advisory Board with the Industry Council, and we seek to greatly expand the membership of the Industry Council. Finally, we’ll be more formal in Technical Committee activities to cultivate and expand the PPM body of knowledge.
The coming months reflect the increasing momentum of the community of PPM. We will hold our first European Symposium in September 2019. This is in response to requests over the last two to three years for an event comparable to the Annual Symposium in San Francisco. It will initially have a smaller audience, just as the first PPI Symposium over 5 years ago. We anticipate our Annual Symposium in San Francisco Dec 3-4 to have our largest attendance to date. Please be sure to register your interest in either or both Symposia, and attend one of the upcoming seminars listed in our Calendar Look Ahead, following this letter.
