PMP is a professional designation that means Project Management Professional. A PMP designation is very difficult to obtain and is only awarded to those that meet very specific credentials. Those credentials include obtaining a secondary degree and demonstrating a minimum of five years of professional project management experience, including 7,500 hours that were spent leading a project, and passing the PMP exam. Continuing education is a requirement.
Most professional firms, including architecture and engineering firms, will designate the person working on your project as the project manager. Normally, this does not mean that they are managing the entire project, just their particular discipline’s elements. However, if there is no overall project manager in place, the engineer or architect will usually step in as the project’s manager.
This does not give you or the project the best value. Engineer’s and architect’s bill rates reflect the entire overhead of the firm and are in the $185/hour range in the Puget Sound. In addition, that professional is taking time away from focusing on engineering your project to perform management tasks, which can cause expensive delays.
PMP’s follow specific processes that plan your project out from start to close, and incorporates risk management strategies that anticipate potential issues early on. By doing the planning up front, financing, budgets and schedules are in place, and the project team has an overall management framework to work under. Your project has an overall leader that orchestrates the success of the project through very specific PMP processes and tools.
Traditionally, project managers charge less than architectural and engineering disciplines, which translates to your project’s successful completion on time and on budget.
