On Wednesday night I attended the APM North West branch meeting which was being held in Morecambe (seaside town, famous for its cockle pickers and comedy connections), specifically at the Midland Hotel. The Midland Hotel was originally built in 1933 (the image on the left is the original building) and named after its owners, the Midland Railway. From that time, ownership has changed many times ( see the history of the hotel) as well as changes of how seaside resorts were perceived by holidaymakers in the North West. The hotel fell into disrepair (five years ago I remember walking by and seeing the sad art deco building and thinking what a waste) until it was purchased by regeneration company Urban Splash.
The development manager, Paul Jones from Urbansplash provided the main presentation at the APM meeting, taking the audience through the ups and downs of the restoration in his role as project manager (amongst other things!).
State of disrepair pre 2005
There were a few things that stood out for me in Paul’s pitch, first the importance of communication in stakeholder management. The Midland is obviously a building which the locals take an interest in (it even has its own Friends of.. group), and the locals became project stakeholders. Paul reminded me just how important communication is in projects and when you’ve got joe public taking an active interest in a successful outcome you know you want them on your side from the outset.
The second thing was Paul’s own drive, ambition & pure passion and belief in what he’s doing and the project he’s delivering. He’s lived and breathed the project since 2003 and for all the ups and downs he had delivering that project, the vision of what they were trying to achieve kept him focused and determined.
The Midland Today
The tour around some of the rooms (the hot tub on the balcony in the suite!) were followed by conversations in the bar and a lot of the conversations were around the skill of project leaders in communications. In fact, what are project managers if they aren’t skilled and effective communicators?
Without the ability to direct a team; articulate what needs doing, by whom and by when, the project manager ain’t a project manager at all.
The meeting was a great reminder that for all the talk about project methods, qualifications, training, tools yadda yadda yadda, it’s often the basics – like communication – that gets a group of professionals talking until the early hours
