Latest / Project Podcast / Project managers' salary (and job satisfaction) in 2025

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Project managers' salary (and job satisfaction) in 2025 · Project Podcast

• 0:14
  The APM 2025 Salary and Market Trend Survey takes a snapshot of
• 0:19
  life on the front line of project management, comparing
• 0:21
  how pay, compensation, job satisfaction, opportunities and
• 0:25
  challenges have changed since the 2023 survey and giving
• 0:29
  insights on hot workplace topics including AI, sustainability,
• 0:33
  government projects, and diversity and inclusion.
• 0:36
  It also charts the confidence of the profession, providing a
• 0:39
  litmus test for any project manager interested in
• 0:41
  understanding which opportunities are right for the
• 0:44
  taking. Find the survey on the
• 0:46
  apmwebsite@apm.org.uk but listen on for the key takeaways and the
• 0:51
  views of some of our experts who helped tell the story behind the
• 0:54
  data. The most important finding is
• 0:57
  that the average salary for project professionals increased
• 1:00
  by just over 10% since 2023, from 47 and a half £1000 a year
• 1:05
  to 52 and a half 1000 lbs. With pay expected to continue
• 1:09
  rising. This is the first time the
• 1:11
  average salary has risen since pre COVID times.
• 1:14
  What's more, project managers are feeling optimistic about
• 1:17
  their own careers and the future prospects of the organisations
• 1:20
  they work for. Project professionals aren't
• 1:23
  just feeling confident, they're behaving confidently too, as the
• 1:26
  uptick in salaries shows. Here's a PMCEO Professor Adam
• 1:30
  Budison's view on things. When it comes to the overall
• 1:33
  findings of this year's salary survey, I was particularly
• 1:36
  struck by the fact that the average salary level, both kind
• 1:40
  of median and, and meaning in that sense have gone up for the
• 1:43
  first time in, well, certainly all the time that I've been at
• 1:46
  APM, which is kind of 3 1/2 years.
• 1:48
  And, and actually I think going to kind of pre COVID times as
• 1:52
  well. And I think that represents 2
• 1:56
  things. One, I think it ties in with the
• 1:58
  kind of optimism that we've seen.
• 2:00
  And that optimism I think is quite striking actually across
• 2:04
  across the piece, both from organisations and individuals.
• 2:07
  And we're starting to see that reflected in actual salaries,
• 2:09
  which are, you know, so that tells me it's not just people
• 2:12
  feeling optimistic, but they're acting optimistic as well as
• 2:16
  they think they can pay those kinds of salaries.
• 2:18
  So I think that's the first thing.
• 2:19
  But the other thing it tells me is that actually positive things
• 2:22
  are happening in the project profession that I think are not
• 2:25
  necessarily happening in in other places.
• 2:29
  And, and this is a kind of broader point I wanted to make,
• 2:31
  which is that we've often seen this APM in the past, which is
• 2:34
  when the country goes into difficult times, recessions and
• 2:37
  the like, we actually tend to see a boom in membership
• 2:40
  numbers. Because that's when people say,
• 2:43
  oh, I'm going to take this opportunity to kind of retrain
• 2:46
  and I'm going to, you know, maybe change career or I'm going
• 2:48
  to make sure all my qualifications are up to date or
• 2:52
  I'm going to kind of re network again with my professional
• 2:54
  community. And I and I, I do wonder whether
• 2:56
  we're seeing a bit of that now, because there is kind of
• 2:59
  national investment into things like infrastructure and things
• 3:02
  like that and to create a demand.
• 3:05
  And at the same time, there's a lot of challenge in many other
• 3:08
  sectors and professions that we're actually seeing the
• 3:10
  benefit of that in the project profession.
• 3:14
  It's not all good news though. Work needs to be done by the
• 3:16
  project management profession when it comes to the gender pay
• 3:19
  gap. Compared to 2023, the pay gap in
• 3:23
  average salary between men and women has increased from 24% to
• 3:26
  35% in 2025. While this key isn't good news,
• 3:31
  drilling down into the data, it's evident that while the
• 3:34
  distribution of male pay has remained largely the same, the
• 3:37
  distribution of female pay is shifting upwards.
• 3:40
  The crossover point at which men now get paid more than women has
• 3:43
  increased from £53,000 a year to £63,000 a year.
• 3:48
  While progress is frustratingly slow, something is starting to
• 3:51
  happen now. What's critical in tackling the
• 3:54
  issue is to focus on roles, not just salaries.
• 3:57
  Here's Adam again on the broader diversity and inclusion findings
• 4:00
  from the survey and placing that into the broader political and
• 4:04
  social context. So when it comes to diversity
• 4:08
  and inclusion, I've always argued that the the project
• 4:11
  profession is probably right up there compared to other
• 4:14
  professions. It's not like you have to have a
• 4:16
  degree to enter, for example, you can have a degree and that
• 4:20
  is 1 possible route, but you can also kind of come through an
• 4:23
  apprenticeship route that you can switch careers quite easily
• 4:25
  from other professions into the project profession.
• 4:28
  So from that perspective, it's always been an inclusive
• 4:31
  profession. I think the challenge has always
• 4:33
  been on on the diversity side. So some of the traditional
• 4:36
  sectors are quite male dominated, for example, and we
• 4:39
  see that in some of the the the more mature sectors within our
• 4:44
  membership base. But actually if I look at those
• 4:46
  who are younger and early career people, actually we're seeing
• 4:50
  much greater diversity, particularly in terms of gender.
• 4:53
  I think what was interesting about the salary survey itself
• 4:56
  was the the data which was about the extent to which diversity is
• 5:00
  a problem or not when it comes to getting promotions and so on.
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  And what I thought was interesting is that those were
• 5:07
  the kind of white background were saying actually they didn't
• 5:09
  really see any change on, on what had happened previously,
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  positive or negative. It was kind of things were just
• 5:16
  kind of business as usual, if you like.
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  But actually on the when it came to those from other ethnic
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  backgrounds, we saw a real kind of Marmite type situation.
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  And I think that reflects probably society more broadly
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  where you've got some organisations where actually
• 5:30
  they're making investments in making sure they really are
• 5:32
  getting it right for those small kinds of different backgrounds,
• 5:35
  including different ethnic backgrounds.
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  And therefore that impact has been seen in a positive way in
• 5:40
  terms of career development by individuals.
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  But then there are others, and we've seen this with the kind
• 5:44
  of, you know, populist nature of particular leaders around the
• 5:48
  world. And we see that reflected in
• 5:49
  some organisations as well, where actually that started now
• 5:52
  to have a negative impact. So I think what the salary
• 5:54
  survey has shown is, is a kind of professional reflection, if
• 6:00
  you like, of the debate and the division that's happening in, in
• 6:03
  wider society on a global level. When it comes to another hot
• 6:08
  topic, the issue of sustainability, the survey found
• 6:11
  that there is room for improvement within the
• 6:12
  profession. While 86% of organisations have
• 6:16
  policies in place, fewer than half actually see any impact
• 6:19
  from them. Some organisations are clearly
• 6:22
  engaged in greenwashing and box ticking exercises and not
• 6:26
  putting the resources or strategic emphasis in place to
• 6:28
  make sustainability happen. In practise, this is a question
• 6:32
  of governance for the profession, with boards needing
• 6:34
  to ask the right questions and leaders who can drive a strategy
• 6:37
  forward. There's much more to do.
• 6:40
  Back to Adam again. So in sustainability, we saw
• 6:45
  from the salary survey that 86% of organisations actually have
• 6:49
  sustainability policies in place, but it was really
• 6:51
  interesting to read the kind of follow up statistic in there
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  which says that fewer than half of those organisations actually
• 6:58
  see any impact from those policies.
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  So I think it was a 48% figure. And So what I read into that is
• 7:05
  that there are some organisations out there who are
• 7:09
  effectively engaged in what I would think of as greenwashing.
• 7:12
  You know, they're kind of going through that box ticking
• 7:13
  exercise where they're saying, oh, well, we ought to have, you
• 7:16
  know, a sustainability policy. But actually what we're, we're,
• 7:20
  we're not doing is then putting the resource or the kind of
• 7:23
  strategic emphasis behind those things to actually see that
• 7:26
  delivered in practise. And my broader reflection on
• 7:29
  that is that that's a, a, a question of governance because,
• 7:32
  you know, when it comes to ESG sustainability, these are areas
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  that any board that's serious about these things are going to
• 7:41
  be asking the right questions and making sure they have
• 7:43
  leaders in place that can drive those things forward.
• 7:45
  So it says to me that we've still got a lot of work to do in
• 7:48
  the sustainability space as a profession.
• 7:52
  APM used the survey to find out which qualifications project
• 7:55
  managers are most interested in attaining and to dig into any
• 7:58
  trends behind it. Here's Adam again on what we
• 8:01
  discovered, including one surprising finding.
• 8:05
  So obviously when it comes to qualifications, I do have to
• 8:08
  declare somewhat of an interest, being the leader of an
• 8:10
  organisation that has a, a, a, a a, a clear backing of some of
• 8:14
  those qualifications. So it was obviously really
• 8:17
  pleasing to see that the project fundamentals qualification, the
• 8:21
  project management qualification are, are still booming with 50%
• 8:25
  of those responding to the survey actually who said they
• 8:28
  had that qualification. So that's obviously a, a really
• 8:31
  positive sign. That said, I also accept the
• 8:35
  fact that people with an APM qualification are probably more
• 8:38
  likely to fill out an APM survey if they see it.
• 8:40
  So there is probably some inherent bias within, within
• 8:43
  that data, but nevertheless, the direction of travel is the same
• 8:46
  because that bias will have been the same this year, last year,
• 8:49
  the year before. And we're seeing the increase
• 8:51
  Despite that. So, so I, so I think there,
• 8:54
  there is some kind of tangible gain that we can, we can
• 8:57
  recognise that. I think the bigger question in,
• 9:00
  in the qualification space is actually the, the, the reduction
• 9:04
  in, in kind of Prince 2, which was a dominant qualification,
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  you know, going back 1020 years ago.
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  And if I look over the kind of that period of the last six
• 9:12
  years, it's gone down from 30% down to 23%.
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  So, so actually we're seeing that what was a very well known,
• 9:22
  well understood qualification actually starting to lose
• 9:24
  traction in the market. And what's interesting about
• 9:26
  that is that that reflects anecdotally what I hear from
• 9:32
  corporates, from individuals about, you know, the kinds of
• 9:36
  qualifications that they're taking.
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  So, so I think that indicates a shift in the market.
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  The other thing for me is charter ship, obviously it
• 9:43
  started from quite a low base, you know, 2% to 6%.
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  If I wanted to be, you know, really sensationalist about it,
• 9:50
  I'd say well, that's a 300% increase over six years.
• 9:52
  But you know, it's still relatively small numbers in the
• 9:55
  in the grand scheme of things. But we are seeing from what was
• 9:58
  something that was not a qualification at all in the
• 10:01
  marketplace 10 years ago to now have 6% of people who who were
• 10:05
  surveyed. It's quite a big number of of
• 10:07
  people surveyed there. So I think that's really
• 10:10
  positive and I expect that to gain even more traction as it
• 10:13
  becomes more recognised as as as the standard and particularly
• 10:17
  because of the kind of government mandate behind
• 10:19
  chartership when it comes to senior responsible owners of
• 10:22
  government funded projects and publicly funded projects.
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  So I suspect that if we were having this conversation again
• 10:27
  in a couple of years and a couple of years after that,
• 10:29
  we'll see exponential growth in that particular line of
• 10:32
  qualifications. With this positive news
• 10:37
  surrounding APM qualifications, what does the optimism and
• 10:40
  confidence respondents said they felt towards their careers,
• 10:43
  organisations and the profession mean for its future prospects?
• 10:47
  Back to Adam. I, I think there's this point
• 10:51
  around the optimism rebound, if I, if I call it that, you know,
• 10:57
  and, and that kind of both, there's a thing that happens,
• 11:01
  isn't it, when you see governments are optimistic, but
• 11:03
  then, you know, business says, oh, you know, we don't, we don't
• 11:05
  share that optimism or businesses say they're
• 11:07
  optimistic, but the employees don't kind of feel the same way.
• 11:11
  I think what's interesting here is that you've got organisations
• 11:15
  and individuals both very optimistic about the future.
• 11:17
  And we've seen that in the golden thread as well.
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  We saw, you know, different levels of optimism for the
• 11:22
  future in that, in that survey as well.
• 11:24
  So we're hearing that and at the same time you've got government,
• 11:28
  because of the economic situation that they're actively
• 11:30
  investing in publicly funded projects, probably at a quicker
• 11:35
  pace than they might have done otherwise, because that's
• 11:37
  obviously a route to to drive economic growth.
• 11:40
  So there's kind of a perfect storm of things that have
• 11:43
  happened both around how people feel and how people are
• 11:46
  behaving, both at an organisational, individual
• 11:48
  level, which I think is driving a good, honest, true reason to
• 11:54
  be optimistic. Going back to the headline
• 11:58
  findings of the survey, I asked project management guru and APM
• 12:02
  Vice President Professor Antonio Nieto Rodriguez for his take on
• 12:06
  its findings, particularly the high level of job satisfaction
• 12:10
  felt by project professionals, with 80% of respondents saying
• 12:14
  they are satisfied with their current role.
• 12:16
  It's good to see that positive things are happening despite
• 12:19
  this not necessarily happening elsewhere.
• 12:23
  First of all, I think what is very positive is that there's an
• 12:26
  increase I think was 10% increase on average salary,
• 12:30
  which is something that is very much welcome and not every
• 12:34
  profession will have those 10% increases.
• 12:37
  So I think that is very exciting.
• 12:39
  Also for the younger professionals, I think those
• 12:42
  that are looking for starting their career knowing that
• 12:45
  they're entering a job where their, their expectations is
• 12:49
  that their salary will increase is, is really good.
• 12:53
  The other thing that came to mind was the, the high level of
• 12:57
  satisfaction, around 80% satisfaction, which again, I
• 13:02
  think this is something that we know project managers, we love
• 13:05
  what we do. But when you see that in, in the
• 13:08
  results of the survey, it just highlights that this is a
• 13:12
  profession where people enjoy working with colleagues, people
• 13:16
  enjoy the pressure, the learning that we have to do on a regular
• 13:21
  basis and then delivering something that's valuable for
• 13:24
  organisations, for society at large.
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  So I think that was the, the other big highlight.
• 13:31
  And there was at the end somewhere like also a, a quote
• 13:34
  about optimism. I, I think was 82% of
• 13:38
  respondents say they feel optimistic about there being a
• 13:42
  good supply of quality, fulfilling jobs in project
• 13:44
  management. This is 100% in line with my
• 13:47
  research, the project economy where we see that there's more
• 13:51
  and more need for qualified project managers.
• 13:55
  And, and so that's also a really nice high note to finish the,
• 14:00
  the research. So I think really, really great
• 14:04
  news for for the profession. To delve into job satisfaction
• 14:08
  further, I spoke to Doctor Clara Cheung of the University of
• 14:11
  Manchester, who authored the recent APM report, which you can
• 14:15
  find on the APM website called The well-being of Project
• 14:18
  Professionals. I asked her about the
• 14:20
  relationship between well-being, job satisfaction and the
• 14:23
  importance of flexible working, which the respondents rated
• 14:26
  highly, and ultimately the link to productivity.
• 14:30
  Here's what she thinks. So first of all, these three
• 14:34
  elements, job satisfaction, well-being and flexible work
• 14:39
  even dates back in my study, we already talked about the
• 14:42
  connection. They should not regard a
• 14:44
  separate issue. They are connected, OK.
• 14:47
  And I'm not surprised actually I'm quite happy to see the
• 14:51
  survey. They are satisfied about the
• 14:54
  job, which is very good. And when they say they regard
• 14:58
  flexible work as important, I totally agree with that as well.
• 15:03
  So to me, flexible work because of COVID, OK, before COVID we
• 15:08
  are not that aware of that. But after COVID, I would say
• 15:12
  flexible work no longer is nice to have.
• 15:16
  It becomes a fundamental to how people experience their roles.
• 15:20
  I heard a lot of story, just like people, if they, the
• 15:23
  company say you need to work 9:00 to 5:00 every day in the
• 15:26
  office, they would just turn down the offer.
• 15:29
  It's no longer the norm. Now, OK, you still need to have
• 15:33
  a degree of flexibility on how people want to work in terms of
• 15:38
  location, but I would say flexible work isn't only about
• 15:42
  remote working. Flexible work, in my research we
• 15:45
  saw that as having control over your schedule, over your
• 15:50
  workload, how you want to deliver your work is the
• 15:53
  critical factor when we look at flexible work because that will
• 15:58
  also relate to your well-being. So just imagine when you have
• 16:02
  more autonomy of how you want to deliver the work or at the
• 16:06
  location of work. A lot of studies already show it
• 16:10
  will improve our positive emotion.
• 16:13
  You'll feel happier and then you'll have a stronger sense of
• 16:15
  purpose on what you're doing. You'll have a higher level of
• 16:19
  engagement and that will be more likely to make an individual
• 16:23
  more committed to their organisation.
• 16:26
  And then it's also worth highlighting, well-being isn't
• 16:29
  just separate from productivity, all right?
• 16:33
  Because that's why we want to study this subject area a bit
• 16:36
  more, because when well-being is compromised, productivity
• 16:40
  definitely will suffer. And then I will have a call from
• 16:45
  organisation then how can we make all this work in practise?
• 16:50
  OK, given that we know, OK, flexible work is important,
• 16:53
  well-being is important. When people are happier or more
• 16:55
  satisfied, the productivity will be improved.
• 16:58
  What can we do actually in practise for organisation?
• 17:01
  I think for organisation nowadays we need to move beyond
• 17:06
  offering flexibility as a benefit, instead it need to be
• 17:11
  embedded into as a part of a strategic or system wide
• 17:15
  approach to well-being and to leadership as well.
• 17:19
  So that includes empower people with the choice and voice in how
• 17:24
  they work, create psychological safe environment and foster
• 17:29
  leadership that actively support well-being and flexible work.
• 17:35
  So I think that would be my key takeaway.
• 17:38
  But to conclude, I think job satisfaction, well-being and
• 17:42
  flexibility of work are not separate issue.
• 17:46
  They're deeply connected. And when people feel healthy and
• 17:50
  in control of how they work, they're not only stay longer in
• 17:54
  their role and in their organisation, actually they
• 17:57
  flourish in terms of performance as well.
• 18:01
  For the first time, the survey asked project managers about AI
• 18:04
  and the impact it's having on their work.
• 18:07
  Nellie Haas said their organisation was using it for
• 18:09
  the automation of routine tasks, enhanced data-driven decision
• 18:13
  making and additional insight gathering.
• 18:16
  But more widespread use is being hindered by lack of
• 18:19
  understanding about its benefits and the fear of data breaches.
• 18:24
  I asked Daniel Armanio Speedy, Professor of Major Programme
• 18:27
  Management at the University of Oxford Saeed Business School, to
• 18:30
  put these findings into the bigger picture and give some
• 18:33
  practical tips on using AI in the right way.
• 18:37
  A couple of things that I've seen prevailing in both this
• 18:41
  survey, but others is this combination of quite a few
• 18:46
  people, 47% agree that AI is currently having an impact on
• 18:50
  project management. At the same time, quite a few
• 18:54
  are having difficulty understanding how to use it.
• 18:59
  The benefits, which was 32% had difficulty with lack of
• 19:02
  understanding of benefits. Fear of cybersecurity issues was
• 19:06
  another 14% and 11% about inadequate regulation.
• 19:11
  So almost the same amount of people saying there's so much
• 19:15
  importance in my work also have the same difficulties
• 19:18
  understanding how to use it. We see this actually parallel
• 19:22
  quite of other aspects where a lot of, you know, some, some
• 19:25
  surveys, even 6070% will say this is really influencing my
• 19:28
  work, but I don't understand how to use it.
• 19:30
  Which I think the key insight here is there needs to be
• 19:35
  understanding of how to recognise the division of labour
• 19:41
  or the interaction of labour between the algorithm, whatever
• 19:45
  you ask it to do for your project and you.
• 19:49
  And I think what I've noticed before is there's a recognition
• 19:52
  that a lot of the AI work, which also is in the survey that a lot
• 19:58
  of it is used for routine predictive kind of tasks.
• 20:01
  So 27% on routine tasks, data-driven decision making,
• 20:06
  another was 17%. And what that means is we're
• 20:10
  allocating a lot of the prediction to AI.
• 20:13
  And by prediction I mean taking my existing data, generating
• 20:17
  novel information, novel insight from that data.
• 20:20
  But what is still remaining with humans is the judgement, which
• 20:24
  is how do I assess the value of this?
• 20:26
  How much is this truly the information I need?
• 20:30
  Or is this something that's really not verifiable?
• 20:33
  So what that means is if you're struggling in this gap between,
• 20:38
  I want to use AI productively for tasks, but I'm not clear
• 20:43
  what it's doing. What that is imperative upon is
• 20:46
  a couple of things. One is you need to triangulate
• 20:49
  beyond the tool, right? So you try it, triangulate with
• 20:53
  other things, triangulate with your own experience.
• 20:56
  There are things you've learned in your project, experience at
• 20:58
  work or not. That is not clear in these
• 21:00
  algorithms. The other thing which is
• 21:03
  important but is a struggle is that because quite a few people
• 21:07
  don't understand what's going on with AI, they don't know what
• 21:10
  kind of information would be useful to help people decide how
• 21:14
  to use it. And so we need to think more
• 21:16
  like a prescription label, nutrition label, or some kind of
• 21:20
  rating system for AI that tells you what's the kind of data that
• 21:24
  it was trained on. And also increasingly, how much
• 21:27
  power is it using, What is it vulnerable to, What are the
• 21:31
  issues so people can be more informed.
• 21:33
  Because what we're finding, and this is also reflective in these
• 21:36
  these insights we just shared, is that people do find that AI
• 21:41
  can help them be more creative. But interestingly, they're also
• 21:45
  cognitively offloading more to AI.
• 21:47
  What that means is is they're seeing there's a lot of novel
• 21:50
  thinking, possibly from AI, but they're not critically thinking
• 21:54
  about the outputs, they're just adopting them wholesale.
• 21:57
  So there's this kind of tension where it's making us more
• 21:59
  creative and also less critically thinking, which is a
• 22:02
  real problem. I think if I had to summarise
• 22:04
  the two key takeaways is we're still in this issue of the
• 22:09
  people being asked to use the algorithms don't have enough
• 22:13
  information on where and how to properly use it.
• 22:16
  We need to bridge that gap between prediction and
• 22:18
  judgement. So that was the horizontal
• 22:20
  interface, the one before. There's an issue of the vertical
• 22:23
  interface, which is those at the upper echelons of a project that
• 22:27
  are better equipped to understand ambiguity and test it
• 22:31
  and train it and Philtre that out are not using the
• 22:34
  algorithms. While those that are doing the
• 22:37
  more routine tasks who who are not equipped or don't have
• 22:40
  enough experience often to handle that uncertainty are
• 22:43
  being asked to use it and and at the same time judge that value.
• 22:48
  And so that's a recipe for a lot more stress, a lot more
• 22:52
  inefficient use. And so the second takeaway is
• 22:55
  perhaps, and one of some things I've been pushing is you need
• 22:59
  intergenerational teams around the algorithm.
• 23:02
  You need to focus on the context around the algorithm.
• 23:04
  So it's best if you have older, more senior project
• 23:08
  professionals working with younger ones because there's a
• 23:10
  lot of cross fertilisation. The older generation understand
• 23:14
  from experience what is really useful insight and what is maybe
• 23:17
  not so great based on their insights.
• 23:21
  And the younger generation are trying out these tools and can
• 23:24
  help the older generation understand how to leverage these
• 23:28
  tools. So then perhaps if you have
• 23:29
  intergenerational teams, you get both the critical thinking that
• 23:32
  you need and understanding, as well as the opportunity to
• 23:36
  leverage it and harness the creativity.
• 23:38
  But right now, we're seeing a lot more of the younger routine
• 23:41
  kind of work potentially being done and less of the higher
• 23:46
  executives using it. And this is a recipe for
• 23:49
  psychological safety and emotional issues later if this
• 23:51
  is the kind of pressure, because the expectation is it will
• 23:54
  improve my productivity, it'll help me get more timely, better
• 23:59
  costs on the Iron Triangle kind of way of looking at projects
• 24:03
  without any guidance or understanding of what these
• 24:06
  algorithms can or cannot do. So I think it's showing a lot of
• 24:09
  promise, but there's a set of fissures that are opening both
• 24:14
  horizontally and vertically that we need to be much more attuned
• 24:17
  for. And we need better conceptual
• 24:19
  frameworks and guidance on how to properly organizationally
• 24:24
  deploy AI along the horizontal and vertical interfaces and the
• 24:27
  fissures actually that are emerging from this survey.
• 24:31
  Now I wanted to revisit one of the earlier themes of the
• 24:34
  survey, which was the distinct lack of confidence that was felt
• 24:37
  about the delivery of government major projects.
• 24:40
  Who better to speak about this than Jonathan Simcock, the
• 24:43
  author of the forthcoming book The Delivery Gap?
• 24:46
  Why Government Projects Really Fail, and What can be done about
• 24:49
  it? I asked what he thought about
• 24:51
  the survey's findings and how the delivery of major government
• 24:54
  projects can be fixed. I had some thoughts on the most
• 24:59
  negative findings in the survey, which were about lack of
• 25:02
  confidence in the success of government projects.
• 25:06
  But first, I think it's good to recognise how positive the
• 25:08
  findings are overall. People are reporting
• 25:11
  improvements in pay and diversity and the opportunity
• 25:15
  for successful and and fulfilling careers.
• 25:18
  I think that's really good news for the profession.
• 25:23
  So back to government projects. So the survey finds that most
• 25:28
  professionals are not confident about the UK government's
• 25:31
  ability to deliver projects. And I must say that at least for
• 25:37
  the largest projects, I do share the pessimism and it is it is a
• 25:44
  real problem. So as a country with low growth,
• 25:49
  poor productivity, high levels of debt and facing a less secure
• 25:54
  international environment and and of course the climate
• 25:58
  challenge, we have to squeeze every ounce of value out of the
• 26:04
  investments that the government makes in infrastructure and the
• 26:08
  and the other improvements that the country needs.
• 26:12
  Some of the problems are well known, even if they're hard to
• 26:16
  solve. Lack of delivery experience in
• 26:20
  the formation of policy over restrictive pallet planning
• 26:25
  regulations, getting a lot of of air time at the moment and
• 26:29
  something that I see all the time is painfully slow decision
• 26:35
  making and over reliance on complicated process and too much
• 26:41
  assurance individual project managers can't solve these
• 26:46
  problems. But there are things that we can
• 26:49
  do and I'd I'd maybe point to three of them.
• 26:53
  The first one is to really try to avoid the most complex
• 26:59
  approaches to to delivery. Make it as simple as you
• 27:03
  possibly can, because complex things tend to fail and simple
• 27:08
  things tend to work. The second is to recognise and
• 27:14
  openly acknowledged the level of uncertainty that's inherent in
• 27:18
  in large government projects. You can't know everything at the
• 27:23
  beginning, despite the pressure to appear to be able to.
• 27:27
  And finally, we all need to live up to our duty to be candid
• 27:33
  about the reality of our projects and not let the
• 27:38
  incentives in the system encourage us to overstate the
• 27:42
  speed in which something can be done or the cost at which it can
• 27:45
  be achieved, or to understate the risks.
• 27:50
  So yeah, I I share to some extent the concern about
• 27:56
  government projects, but professional project managers
• 28:01
  are part of the solution and we really have to do better.
• 28:06
  Thanks again to our experts for joining us and to you for
• 28:09
  listening to the APM Podcast. Just to mention, you can access
• 28:12
  the full APM Salary and Market Trend Survey 2025 on the
• 28:16
  apmwebsite@apm.org.uk. Also, don't forget to look out
• 28:21
  for more episodes or to rate and reviews.
• 28:23
  Wherever you get your podcasts. We welcome you to get in touch
• 28:26
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  apmpodcast@thinkpublishing.co.uk. Spotify users can also leave us
• 28:36
  our comments on the app. This podcast has been brought to
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  you by APM, the chartered body for the project profession.
• 28:43
  For more information on APM, visit apm.org.uk.