Project Management for Development Professionals

We are delighted that six of our team have just successfully passed the Project Management for Development Professionals certification (PMD Pro) exam. This follows a month of intensive online training delivered by Pyramid Learning. The most recent cohort includes new project officers, procurement managers, research analysts and monitoring and evaluation staff, meaning that those directly involved in our delivery team and those who support our projects all speak the same ‘language’ and understand our core business of delivering our donors’ objectives ‘on time, on budget and within scope’.

ARK uses the PMD Pro approach to manage all our projects and to ensure successful implementation. It is a globally recognized project management certification for development professionals and covers both project management theory and practical training for those working in the sector.

We have opened this training up to all our staff to ensure that everyone at ARK benefits from the opportunity and are also offering other courses including the MEAL DPro certification. The next cohort of ten ARK staff and five project partners have just completed their first week of the PMD Pro course and will be sitting the exam later this month.

Professional development training is open to anyone at ARK, regardless of their role, and is offered to our partners also. In the past 12 months alone, ARK staff have completed over 250 internal and externally delivered training courses.

It is an approach we use to ensure sustainability, skills transfer and organisational capacity building with partners, as well as the increased efficiency and effectiveness derived through the use of a shared language. We believe it reduces risks to our donors, from safeguarding to fiduciary, and ensures that the impact of our programmes is sustainable beyond our own direct involvement.