Gilbane Inc. trains most of its managers to lead construction projects such as the new GTECH headquarters, which the developer has nearly completed building in downtown Providence.
Less known is that Gilbane needs other managers to coordinate the development of new software, to support the company’s construction business. In fact, Providence-based Gilbane is one of several companies in the state – including Citizens Bank and Hasbro Inc. – that are faced with a growing number of information technology projects.
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“I think that what most organizations are going to find, going forward, is that there are going to be more tasks to be managed in [information technology],” said Kathy Kearney, manager of transfer technology at Gilbane.
With input from Gilbane and other employers, the Tech Collective – a nonprofit alliance of local industry groups – has developed a program to train IT workers in project management. The R.I. Department of Labor and Training awarded the alliance a grant of $112,000 to coordinate the effort, said Tech Collective Executive Director Katherine O’Dea.
The Executive Development Center at Bryant University has agreed to add the IT-specific training to project management courses, beginning in September and continuing for the next year, according to Bryant and the Tech Collective.
O’Dea said her group realized the need for a project management course for IT workers in recent years, while administering a $2.7 million grant from the U.S. Department of Labor.
The grant funded training for 945 IT workers in the state, 176 of whom took courses in project management, according to the nonprofit. Yet those previous courses in project management were not industry-specific and lacked lessons for IT workers, O’Dea said.
“[IT workers] may be really, really good programmers, but they don’t always understand how to read a budget – let alone develop a budget,” O’Dea said. “Again, they may be really good systems administrators, but they don’t know how to work as a team.”
Companies have a vested interested in assuring the success of their IT projects. Any glitch can derail systems that, say, support a bank’s electronic transactions or the Web site where a retailer does business online.
“Technology projects fail when they are not delivered on time, on budget, or [with] functions as required,” said Tim Hebert, president of Tech Collective’s board of directors and chief operating officer for Atrion Networking Corp., an IT consulting firm in Warwick. “Only a small percentage of [IT] projects are deemed successful, and those projects are managed and controlled tightly,” he added.
With many companies depending on the success of such projects, some are now requiring employees to have certifications in project management, said Paul Dacey, program manager for Bryant’s Executive Development Center. The center has been offering the courses for the past five years, since gaining accreditation from the Project Management Institute, a group in Newton Square, Pa.
The training, offered in seven-week or one-week “boot camp” sessions, helps prepare students to take the Project Management Institute’s certification exam. They must also complete case studies and 45 hours on an actual project before the exam, Dacey said.
The new courses will offer much of the same training as the standard class, he said, but their case studies will present scenarios related to the IT field.
Kearney, one of several technology managers who helped Tech Collective devise the new training, said that IT projects are “a little bit different [from] your typical project management … although the basics are the same.”
