The Problem
Having a widely dispersed group of project professionals at different sites across the United States presented communication challenges with regard to a refining company’s internal training initiative. This spurred the projects director to seek a turnkey solution to building a community of project professionals through frequent training and relevant discussion.
IPA’s Solution
The IPA Institute first worked with the client to identify a list of topics addressing subjects of particular interest, with each topic building on the previous. The topics included contracting strategies, portfolio management, project governance, owner’s costs, and others of interest to the group.
The IPA Institute developed standalone webinars for each of the topics based on industry learnings from IPA research and benchmarking studies. When applicable, the IPA Institute incorporated data from the client’s own projects to better communicate key messages.
Approximately every 8 weeks, an IPA Institute instructor with experience relevant to the assigned topic led 120-plus participants through a focused, 1-hour private webinar. These interactive webinars provided opportunities for question and answer sessions and often concluded with a client representative facilitating a discussion of how the material covered was applicable to the company.
Delivery and Client Use of the Results
The IPA Institute webinar program became extremely popular within the client organization. The private setting not only helped foster the sense of community the organization was after but also stimulated discussions on how the information could be integrated into the company’s own project management processes for continuous performance improvement.