WHAT IS PMI AND PMI COLOMBO CHAPTER?

Project Management Institute is the leading global Institute for certification and education on Project Management, Certified Project Management Professional (PMP) and Certified Associated Project Managers (CAPM), also PgMP, Programme Management Professionals in the world. At present, there are over 500,000 PMPs and over 750,000 PMI chapter members in 170+ countries. Globally this is one of the highest recognized and accepted professions.

WHAT IS PMP AND ITS VALUE TO THE COMMUNITY?

This is the highest professional qualification/Certification that can be achieved by a Project Manager. In order to maintain a Project Manager's certification one has to practice and report the minimum number of PDUs- Professional Development Units - by means of Education, updating of knowledge by participation in conferences, taking part in Social projects or writing/ publishing articles in related areas.

In Sri Lanka, we have over 200 PMPs and over 150 members with Colombo Chapter. We also conduct many workshops, professional update seminars, Member Forums, and Conferences for the benefit of members, on behalf of the related public and private professional institutions which are involved in Projects. PM Best practices will bring productivity, profitability, and professional obligations to stakeholders and project members. The main objective of PMI Colombo Chapter is to bring the awareness, education, and knowledge sharing with Global experts to its Project Management Professionals.

SOME OF THE ACHIEVEMENTS OF PMI COLOMBO CHAPTER:

We are the only chartered institute in Sri Lanka on behalf of project management institute in USA.
We have created awareness at the highest level by getting the president's office special project unit to implement some workshops with the ministry of planning and implementation last year, to conduct workshops for all secretaries and all project directors.

These were voluntary, non- fee based workshops in collaboration with a New-Zealand based consulting company. This was a great success as some of the ministries/ institutions are looking at re-training their officers who are engaged in projects to understand the value and practices of pm process in day to day projects.

We have also conducted many private sector and public sector awareness programmes and these are ongoing at places such as Sri Lanka telecom, CEB, Ministry of Finance and association of government accountants.

Our very first workshop for religious dignitaries and NGOs was to train how to handle tsunami reconstruction workshops for volunteers with the support of a Singaporean based consultancy firm which was a huge success.

PMI TODAY

PMI has many hundreds of education partners locally and globally as (reps) who are authorized to conduct PMP and CAPM related courses. Apart from these, PMI Colombo also conducts specialized workshops, in many industry sectors and knowledge areas.

We have started a major educative and awareness campaign with "Education Times" section of the Sunday Times to publish many articles to show the values to the private and public sector to consider project management as a primary career.

WHY THIS CONFERENCE IS IMPORTANT AND DIFFERENT?

This is the first ever SAARC conference in this profession. PMI global generally has three global congresses, now they have allowed the regions to have their own conferences annually and Sri Lanka - PMI Colombo chapter - took the leadership to promote the very first SAARC PM conference.

WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT TO SRI LANKA?

We are inviting foreign professionals and investors at a time that we can show our capabilities and the investment friendly environment created after 30 years of civil war, which has destroyed the economy and infrastructure. Now the government has created a new ministry for "Economic Development" to speed up the developing projects and focus on the key areas for country development.

Capitalizing on the recently achieved peaceful atmosphere, we are taking this opportunity to promote Sri Lanka as a tourist destination as well amongst all the overseas participants. We are working closely together with the Tourism Authority in this respect.

Infrastructure development covers means many mega projects which are executed concurrently. As HR re-training is a major project by itself, we need professional project managers/consultants locally. If not we would be forced to depend on foreign experts to implement these projects.