The Institute of Project Management Professionals (IPMP) has inducted into its fold 64 new members across all levels as the institute seeks to maximise its influence in project management and execution in the country.
The inductees included eight at the Chartered level, four at the Master level, 31 at the Consultancy level, 13 at the Professional level and eight distinguished fellows.
The induction ceremony took place on Saturday at the Institute’s 2023 annual conference here in Accra.
The two-day conference was to equip project professionals to be responsible for ensuring that their work minimises or ideally positively affects ongoing sustainability and ensure that outputs, outcomes and benefits are sustainable over life cycles.
It was on the theme “Maximising project management professionals’ influence on project sustainability.”
In his closing remarks, chairman of the conference and a Professor at the Strathmore University Business School, Kenya, Jonathan Annan, said the country lacked proper project management and execution in its development pursuit.
He said many environmental challenges were because there was no project management analysis to examine the cause of such developments on not only the environment but the intended beneficiaries.
Project management professionals, Prof. Annan said have been relegated to the background in the national development discourse and that it was time they took their rightful place to ensure sustainable development.
For this reason, he said the institute would be lobbying the relevant stakeholders for a legislation to make project management analysis a prerequisite before execution.
“To start any project, the management of that project must be a key consideration to understand how that project affects the people and the environment,” he stated.
Acting Head of Civil Service, Dr Evans Aggrey-Darko, who was inducted as a Distinguished Fellow, said government is seeking to develop the competence of project management professionals at the various ministries, departments and agencies.
He said his outfit was willing to engage stakeholders to rejuvenate the legal framework to enhance project management benchmarks in the country.
To him, subjecting every project and its management to the analysis of professionals is so critical.
“If you don’t rely on professionals for their advice, the projects will fail. So we have to activate the skills and competences of the professional to ensure that our projects are sustainable,” Dr Aggrey-Darko stated.