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As you may have read in the EDP's business section on 26 February, novo is a new management training joint venture between Moss King Associates and Oakes Environmental.

Novo is a specialist provider of management training solutions of the highest quality and integrity covering: change management, project management, environmental management, quality, health and safety.

Clients of novo will benefit from the extensive industry experience and excellent classroom skills that MossKing and Oakes Environmental bring together.

To find out more call novo on 01379 608054 or click here to preview some of our project and change management training courses.

FIRST PUBLISHED MKAL UPDATE SPRING 04

"We need to start a project. Who will we get to manage it? Why not Mary from Accounts - she's always keen? After all, anyone can run a project: you don't need any special skills or training. It's all a matter of making a few lists and using common sense."

Have you had a conversation like this recently? If so, it's no wonder survey after survey shows that 70% of projects fail to deliver on time, cost or quality.

Like it or not, the pace of change is accelerating. Whether it is self-imposed, or externally driven, such as the IPPC environmental legislation currently affecting the food and agriculture industries, companies are finding that staff are having to adapt to keep pace.

One example is the way in which "managing projects" has spread throughout organisations to become a normal part of many people's responsibilities. In the old days, if you wanted to change the way you worked, you asked someone in IT to select the best solution and then to get on with running a project to make it happen.

Today, it's not so simple. Many companies have embedded IT within their business functions, or outsourced all or part of their IT departments to specialist providers. Staff in customer-facing roles increasingly are being asked to take on project management tasks alongside their day-to-day work.

There are many benefits in this approach, of course, including the fact that business needs, not technology, naturally take precedence. However, the old school IT project manager was well-trained and had years of experience of running projects. This is rarely the case in other parts of the organisation.

There are two distinct ways in which companies are tackling this skills shortfall. Firstly, by using outside resources to work alongside staff running a project for the first time; secondly, by investing in a training programme to help the workforce move to a project-based way of working. This helps the individual by providing a framework for the technical aspects of project management whilst at the same time embedding company-wide standards.

So as your IT department shrinks, and along with it the project management skill base, there are options to bring new skills into the business.

If you have a skills shortfall, MossKing can help. We can work with you to manage projects or we can provide various Project Management training courses through our sister company novo.

FIRST PUBLISHED MKAL UPDATE SUMMER 04