Welcome,
I'm Steve Wake.
Steve Wake founded the EVM and the PMC Sigs in the Association for Project Management (APM) and was the Chairman of APM, leading it to chartered status. He is now a Freeman of the City of London and a Liveryman of the Guild of Educators. He is also a Cabinet Office advisor. He advises and guides many organisations and delivers training to several government departments.
He has set up a working party to develop a GCSE in Project Skills, now called the Project Skills Alliance. Read more here. He is a member of the British Standards Institution M/S 2 committee, responsible for national standards in project programme and portfolio management, and he was its Chair from 2022-24.
He led the development of BS202001 Project Controls, in which MOD is a participant and works closely with the PsACE community, harmonising estimating practices in government and its supply chain. He also represents BSi on ISO WG12, developing guides for EVM.
He will be the founding Chair of the newly named Controls and Skills Authority, formerly ACOSTE.
He continues to curate the long-running and highly regarded EVA conference. Founded in 1996.
He adores music and silence in almost equal measure.
Speakers Preview
Andrew Edkins
Professor Emeritus Management of Complex Projects at The Bartlett UCL
Andrew Edkins is emeritus professor of the management of complex projects at UCL. His career spanned being both an academic and practitioner focused on projects and their management. He is now in the post-career phase with roles as a non executive director, charity trustee, and peripatetic academic at Regents University and UCL. Messy projects - so what? Some projects are simple, but many are not. Some may say that we live in challenging times - they may be right. This presentation will reflect on both the nature of current projects and the context these projects are set in - and what the implications are for project management.
Louisa Scanlan
Founder & Director
Collaborate Business Solutions
Louisa is an organisational transformation specialist with over 25 years of HR experience spanning SME and FTSE 100 environments. In 2015, she founded Collaborate Business Solutions, a UK consultancy dedicated to creating more human workplaces through interventions that go beyond the transactional to the truly transformational. A licensed practitioner of Lumina Spark psychometric and the Emotional Culture Deck, Louisa brings an integrated approach to leadership development and organisational change. She is the creator of two proprietary, UK-trademarked frameworks — BREAKING™ and STRETCH™ — developed from both professional expertise and personal experience of navigating work-related stress. These frameworks help individuals and organisations sustain high performance without burning out. Louisa works with a diverse portfolio of clients including Arla Foods, WWF-UK, and the NHS, and her consultancy has built an award-winning reputation in the OD space. She combines deep leadership and organisational development expertise with innovative methodologies to transform organisations and develop authentic leaders, making her a trusted partner for businesses navigating growth and change. Emotions are Data As a leader, you will spend time looking at a variety of data sources; KPIs, financial information and sales targets. But do you spend time considering how your teams feel when they come to work? Emotions are data too and they impact our behaviours which can have a critical impact on the delivery of projects. In this session you will learn how to understand the impact of emotion at work, how to support the development of the emotions you would like your teams to feel along with recognising that our behaviours can impact others’ emotions daily. This workshop will introduce the delegates to the Emotion Culture Deck; a card activity which enables a deep dive into emotion in a highly interactive way.
Eddie Obeng
Sensemaker
No one doubts that the world of projects has changed. We have moved from dedicated teams operating in a few industry segments to managing all change by projects with teams that span the globe and all public and private sector activities – everything except business as usual. In his thought-provoking and pragmatic talk, Eddie will explain how his work researching project success led him to a clear way to cover not just the success of the outcome but also the stakeholder perspective of the success of inputs, activities and outcomes with a balanced emphasis on the hard and soft metrics of projects and not just time, cost and quality. He will explain how to use broader thinking as a working tool and decision guide for the project team and stakeholders. You will leave with new concepts, clear language and the ability to deliver projects that are more universally seen as successful. Eddie ignored the maxim, “Stay in your lane”. Prof Eddie Obeng travels many lanes in parallel. A world-class speaker, educator, author of ten books on change, leadership & innovation based on his TED talk-famous, World After Midnight. The best selling All Change! (1994) an adventure-story-style book on, 'How to make projects work for you', was widely read and, kick-started the global movement of project management from specialism to mainstream. His research & development of concepts, frameworks and practical tools earned him the prestigious Sir Monty Finniston award, The design community adopted, and teach his 4 types of project model to graduates. His Sparq innovation framework is used to allocate billions in UK investment. He created QUBE described by The Wall Street Journal as” the most human centred virtual campus for teaching global executives”. He founded the world’s first Virtual Business School, Pentacle with the public sector and bulk of the FT500 as clients. He says that skills as a helicopter pilot and education in Engineering, Biotechnology & Economics make it easy for him to see through today's complexity, New Edition of All Change! from EddieObeng.com
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EVA 33
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Attendees
Conversation Club is a broadcast series of linked discussions linked to EVA also takes place around the year. 1 hour Thursdays at 4. c.40 per annum. There is an archive of 60 recordings since October 2020. Attendees are invited to a free subscription. 1 hour CPD per broadcast.
Want to talk? Get in touch and talk it over.
Recent Conversations
Conversation Club s3, ep 4:
Scandi Sauna Suggestion Box Bob Arnold Ben Fitzgerald
Conversation Club s3, ep 2:
Admitting your project is in trouble Tony Welch
