School of Project Management celebrates second graduation
The School of Project Management (SPM), established and funded by BP and its partners in the Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli (ACG), Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC), Shah Deniz (SD), and South Caucasus Pipeline (SCP), on June 10 celebrated its second graduation. In an event hosted by BP in its offices in Baku International Masters Certificates in Project Management were presented to 52 graduates representing a range of sectors, including oil and gas, government, engineering and construction, marine and geology, education, banking and finance, telecoms and others.
Since its start in 2011, SPM has successfully trained 205 specialists representing 96 private and public sector organizations. Of these 103 were qualified for Masters and 102 for Associates Certificates from the George Washington University. SPM exclusively uses globally-recognized project management training curriculum which is now available in the Azerbaijani language along with English. SPM's another major achievement over the past two years is its award of a contract by the Ministry of Education of Azerbaijan to provide training to a group of 30 representatives of various ministries as part of their "Public Investment in Capacity Building" project.
Addressing the event Huseyn Mammadov, BP's Vice-President, Communications, External Affairs and Security, said: "We are proud that the initiative that we launched two years ago has turned into a successful and credible educational project,- which supports Azerbaijan's efforts to raise the quality and standards of non-oil sector management to international requirements. Therefore we are particularly pleased that the number of non-oil sector representatives has this year prevailed that of the oil and gas sector. We are encouraged by this fact and are confident that SPM will continue to achieve the objectives that BP and its co-venturers had set for it when it was established. We are pleased with the overall results and remain committed to supporting major educational initiatives aimed at enhancing Azerbaijan's capacity-building efforts.
"I would like to congratulate all the graduates on their completion of this prestigious international project management training and would also like to thank the Khazar University for successfully managing the project and the ESI International for their high-quality implementation of this excellent initiative".
BP and its co-venturers announced in January 2011 that they would contribute one million dollars to establish a new School of Project Management (SPM) in Azerbaijan.
SPM was designed as a tool to provide private and public sector representatives access to a globally-recognized, comprehensive project management programme. It focuses on simultaneous goals of improving immediate project management performance and establishing long-term project management capability in the country.
SPM curriculum consists of seven modules - Managing Projects, Project Leadership, Management and Communication, Risk Management, Scheduling and Cost Control, Quality for Project Managers, Project Management Applications, and Project Management Professional (PMP) Exam Preparation.
In addition, the project is aimed at increasing the capacity of the local training institution, and therefore while initially the language of the course was English local professionals were then trained to deliver the same programme in the Azerbaijani language. For this purpose the entire training curriculum was translated into Azerbaijani enabling other organisations to offer the same training to those employees who don't speak English.