This section is devoted to keeping site visitors current with events in the area of project management, in particular events that may impact your PMP® certification accreditation. You'll also find information about what's going on with threeO Project Solutions - new products, changes to existing products, etc.

Steelmaker Fined

Essar Steel Algoma was recently fined a total of $375K (CAD) under the Ontario, Canada Occupational Health and Safety Act for an fatal accident that cost one worker his life. Essar has made some radical changes to the way it manages risks to workers safety and health, including the adoption of some processes from Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) .Read the complete article.

e-Health Under New Management

eHealth was in the news again recently. The Toronto Daily Star story was reasonably kind to the new CEO, Greg Reed, but there are signs that the honeymoon may be coming to an end. The latest update in Ontario's eHealth saga. Read the complete article.

e-Health Follow-up

Some additional insights into the e-Health story. Converting paper records to electronic records may not be the best solution as this ComputerWeekly article suggests, read the complete article.

Vendor Management Gone Wrong

eHealth Ontario, the province of Ontario initiative to put health care on line by 2015 sounded another sour note today as fired CEO Sarah Kramer fired back at the government with a few accusations of her own. To read what Sarah had to say to the Toronto Star, and find out why this is a text book case of how not to manage procurement, read the complete article.

Pandemic Strategy Needed for Firms

An article in the July 21st edition of the Toronto Star by business reporter Dana Flavelle investigates the risk posed to business by the threat of the H1N1 virus, better known as the swine flu. Experts on swine flu and risk management give business managers and project managers the benefit of their insight in this article. To read the entire article, click on this link.

The British Tory party has announced its intentions to scrap large scale government IT projects if it should form the next government. The intent is to reduce IT spending by the government by up to 50%, beginning with the elimination of IT projects which centralize information about their citizens in government databases. Instead, they would purchase existing products and services from private industry. Click on this link to read more about their estimates of the waste in government IT and their proposed remedies.

Bell & Telus Upgrade Their Mobile Networks

Bell Mobility and Telus have entered into a joint venture to integrate HSPA with their CDMA networks. This will make their networks compatible with Apple Inc.'s iPhone and compete with Rogers Communications for that business. iPhones are extremely popular, 1 million of the new iPhone 3G S models were sold in the first 3 days after their launch in June 19th. The joint venture will enable Bell and Telus to offer iPhones to their subscribers in time for the 2010 Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver. Click on this link to read more about this example of sharing project opportunities.

Green Project Management

Focus on the environment has spawed a whole new vocabulary: "environmentally friendly", "green", and "green project" are just a few examples. Green projects are attractive to project sponsors because they not only reduce expenses or increase revenue, they improve the corporate image as well because of the positive affect they have on the environment. Or at least that's the theory. Click this link to read our article about solar farms in Ontario, and the difficulty the projects' sponsors are having convincing everyone of their benefits.

Project Management on the Move

North America has long been the center for the project management discipline as espoused by the PMI but this may not be the case for much longer. Click here to read an article about how project management is changing globally.

Managing Projects in Tight Times

This article explores some of the changes the downturn in the economy has triggered, and offers some advice on how project managers can deal with the challenges these changes present. Click here to read the article.

Prince2 2009: Prince2 Gets a Facelift

Prince2 is the de facto standard project management methodology for the UK government and is also used in private industry there. The government department responsible for supporting the standard decided to upgrade, modernize, and simplify the methodology in response to demand from their user base. To find out what's changed in the standard, click here.

The EU announced on April 28th that approval has been given to begin Free Trade talks with Canada. Talks are scheduled to begin in Prague on May 6th. Some analysts predict that a free trade agreement between Canada and the EU could generate an extra $13bn in revenue for Canada and $18bn for the EU. We predict that, if talks are successful and a free trade agreement is reached, there will be an increased demand for skilled project managers to lead the new projects the increased trade will generate. To for more details on this story, and how it may effect project managers, click here.