In order to chance infrastructure project management and uphold standards in Uganda, engineers and members of Project Management Institute (PMI) have called on government to put in place a legal framework that will ensure proper management of projects through a policy that will guide the profession.
During the 2nd National conference of PMI and celebration of 50 years of Global PMI in Kampala yesterday, the President of Project Management Institute, Moris Bagire (in featured photo), urged all stakeholders to support drafting of a policy that will guide the professionalism of project managers and have all engineers certified as a requirement.
He said that after citing so many project management challenges related to timeliness, costing, among others that have led to loss of funds due to poor management, they have realized the need to fix gaps in the engineering profession.
“The desire for members now is to improve infrastructure project management. Reports from Auditor General have showed that almost 50 percent is lost, projects aborted, the reason being lack of capacity of project managers. Project Manager should be certified to run probexts for standards,” he said.
The State Minister for Finance, David Bahati who was the chief guest told engineers that though government injects 12 percent of GDP to infrastructure, project management of infrastructural project has been having challenges in terms of performance.
He said that if investment into infrastructure would relate to implementation, it would impact the economy through efficient resource utilization
The minister pointed out that most project failures are caused by procurement processes, lack of adherence to code of conduct, capacity among others which he says have caused shoddy works and fraud.
PMI Uganda chapter is a member of the Global PMI that was established in 1969 in the USA
The theme of the conference was “The role of project management in Uganda’s infrastructure development.”
It attracted member from Nigeria, Canada, Ethiopia among others.
By Drake Nyamugabwa
