Thursday, March 25th from 13:00—14:00 (GMT+2)
This webinar will take place online.

Register in advance: https://maties.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_19kygpw_TMSByAlPbC27WA

Join us for a Webinar in our CST series of Webinars 

Applying Systems Thinking to Managing Projects

Recent evidence shows that better governance practices are helping to improve the overall performance of megaprojects. Despite the United Nations setting 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) to be achieved by 2030, there are severe shortfalls in initiatives from governments, public organizations and private businesses endangering the achievement of targets set for these goals. In this webinar we will explore how we developed the Viable Governance Model for project management and how it could be applied to accelerate the achievement of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.

Discussants: Prof Shankar Sankaran (University of Technology Sydney, Australia) and Prof Nathalie Drouin (Université du Québec à Montréal and Exec Dir of KHEOPS)

A person wearing glasses Description automatically generated with medium confidenceProfessor Shankar Sankaran, PhD, M., Eng., BSc, DMIT PMP®, MIEAust, CPEng., is currently a Professor of Organizational Project Management at the School of the Built Environment, at the University of Technology Sydney, Australia. He is a core researcher of the Centre of for Informatics Research and Innovation (CiRi) at his university. Shankar teaches project leadership, organizational project management and systems thinking in a Master of Project Management Program at his university. He has won international awards for his research on balanced leadership from the International Project Management Association. He has over 200 publications including authored and edited books, book chapters, refereed journal articles (in project and construction management and systems sciences) and conference papers. Shankar has worked on projects in India, Middle East, South East Asia and Oceania and is the current Chair of the Global Accreditation Centre of the Project Management Institute, Past President of  the International Society for the Systems Sciences and committee member of the College of Leadership and Management at Engineers Australia. His profile can be viewed at https://profiles.uts.edu.au/Shankar.Sankaran

A picture containing person, wall, indoor, clothing Description automatically generatedProf Nathalie Drouin, PhD, MBA, LL.B. is the Executive Director of KHEOPS, an International Research Consortium on the Governance of Large Infrastructure Projects, the Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Managing Projects in Business, a full professor at the Department of Management, École des Sciences de la gestion, Université du Québec à Montréal (ESG UQAM), Adjunct Professor at University of Technology Sydney (UTS), Australia and Associate Researcher at École nationale d’administration publique (ENAP), Canada. She teaches initiation and strategic management of projects in the Graduate Project Management Programs at ESG UQAM. She is looking at organizational project management, leadership issues and megaprojects. She is a member of the Board of Directors of the Logistics and Transportation Metropolitan Cluster of Montreal (CARGO M) and an Audit Committee Member of Parks Canada Agency Audit Committee, Government of Canada. With Ralf Müller and Shankar Sankaran, she has won the 2019 Walt Lipke Project Governance and Control Excellence Award for the following paper: Müller, R., Sankaran, S., Drouin, N. (2019) A Model of Organizational Project Management and its Validation Project and Program Symposium Vol.2 Edition 1. 17 October p.5-20, as well as the 2019 International Project Management Association IPMA Research Award for the research work: Müller, R., Drouin, N., Sankaran, S. (2018) Balancing Person-Centric and Team-Centric Leadership in Projects. White Paper, Project Management Institute May.

References for the talk:

  • Müller, R., Drouin, N. & Sankaran. S. (2019) Modeling organizational project management, Project Management Journal, 50(4), 1-15. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F8756972819847876
  • Müller, R., Drouin, N. & Sankaran, S. (2020), Governance of organizational project management and megaprojects using the viable governance model, in G. Metcalf, K. Kijima & H. Deguchi, (Eds.) Springer Handbook of Systems Science, Singapore, Springer Nature. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-0370-8_14-1#ESM
  • Sankaran, S., Muller, R. & Drouin, N. (2021) Crearting a ‘sustainability sublime’ to enable megaprojects to meet the United Nations sustainable development goals. 37, 813-826, https://doi.org/10.1002/sres.2744