This is the transcript for the video Project Management.
Catherine Killen (00:01):
Okay. Well, I will get started now. My name is Catherine Killen. I’m the head of school of the School of Built Environment at UTS. And you’re here, I’m hoping, because you want to hear about post-graduate project management courses at UTS. So we’ll be talking about those courses in this webinar. The courses included in this webinar are the Master of Project Management, the Graduate Certificate in Project Management, and the Master of Property Development and Project Management. I’ve got a short welcome video which actually features me, so …
Catherine Killen (00:44):
Hi. I’m Catherine Killen. I’m the head of school of the UTS School of Built Environment. Welcome to UTS. A degree from the UTS School of Built Environment will enable you to have a rewarding career and make a positive impact on society. Our courses prepare you for careers in planning, property development, property investment, project management and construction. Our courses are internationally accredited. They’re taught by experts with experience and industry connections. We are here to answer your questions about studying at UTS and we hope to see you here.
Catherine Killen (01:24):
Before we get started on the rest of the program, I want to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land that UTS sits on. I’d like to acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation upon whose ancestral lands our City campus now stands. I would also like to pay respect to the Elders both past and present, acknowledging them as the traditional custodians of knowledge for this land.
Catherine Killen (01:53):
So you’re here for the webinar of the Master of Project Management, Graduate Certificate in Project Management, and the Master of Property Development and Project Management. So those courses are our Project Management post-graduate courses. You may have heard about them through a number of different channels. And you may come from many different backgrounds. One of the things that I think needs to be clarified straight up is that we are the School of Built Environment. We have a lot of expertise in Built Environment topics. But our Project Management Masters and Graduate Certificate programs are multi-disciplinary. And we basically are the post-graduate Project Management program for UTS.
Catherine Killen (02:46):
So our students do come from, say, about 1/3 of them come from disciplines related to the Built Environment like architecture and construction property development. But we also have many students from other disciplines such as health, engineering, IT, business. We have students that are in the arts or in nonprofits. And it’s a very diverse and interesting group of people. So you’ll hear more about our courses, and I’ll be here to answer your questions. But one of the things that makes our Project Management post-graduate program, I think, really special is that we bring together people from so many different disciplines, and Project Management practices are something that can be shared across disciplines. It’s a field where you can shift into different disciplines but also where people do have a disciplinary strength often in their career. So we can talk about those sort of things and happy to answer questions as we go.
Catherine Killen (03:52):
So you’ve obviously come to this webinar because you’re thinking about UTS. I would like to just say a few things about UTS that I feel are really important, and those have to do with the reputation, the facilities, and I think what’s particularly important is the people. So if you haven’t noticed, UTS is a pretty vibrant place. The campus is a city campus. It’s quite exciting. But it’s also a young university that’s growing in many ways. Its reputation has been increasing, and we’re the first in Australia for the young universities in the numerous international studies, 11th in the world among young universities. And those are universities under 50 years. So we’ve come a long way, and it’s an exciting place to be.
Catherine Killen (04:52):
One of UTS’s strengths is strong industry connectedness, and this is exemplified particularly in the Project Management program and the other programs in Built Environment. We have high graduate employability. People graduate from our courses really ready to be launched into careers, and that is probably partly due to our strong industry connection but also enhances our industry connection. So that’s something we value highly. The city campus is an exciting place with a lot of new buildings. We are, as you know, right now not in those buildings as often, but we’re starting to transition something back to campus, and that’s something that is a good aspect of UTS, and being right near the main transport hub of the city just makes it really easy to get in and out.
Catherine Killen (05:54):
I think the people at UTS are the other thing that I think is particularly special. We have experienced educators who are committed to education, have industry experience. I didn’t list the students on my slide here as well, but the students are the most important people that make our classes what they are is dynamic and interesting and interactive. I must say even though our lecturers bring a lot, so do our students. And I’ll talk more about that later. We bring industry guests into our classes and other things to support the way that we can teach.
Catherine Killen (06:36):
Do remember that if you have questions, you can put them in on the Q&A part of the webinar chat line, chat box. Hopefully you can see that. I’m checking here and I don’t see anything to answer at the moment. But now I’m going to get into what you’re really here about is what are the options for post-graduate study in Project Management at UTS. So first I’ll talk about the Graduate Certificate and the Master of Project Management, and then I will talk about the Master of Property Development and Project Management which is a dual discipline Master’s.
Catherine Killen (07:21):
All of these courses are accredited by industry. And industry accreditation is a nice stamp of approval to have. And what it does is it’s an ongoing evaluation and benchmarking with trends within the industry that make sure that we have high standards, that we’re up to date and that we’re industry relevant. Our main accrediting bodies for the Master of Project Management are the Project Management Institute Global Accreditation Center and the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors. We also have a number of sponsored prizes and scholarships. We have some internship opportunities. And we have great careers that come from an education in Project Management. Good salaries, rewarding careers in a wide variety of industries.
Catherine Killen (08:22):
To look at who’s teaching the classes, we have four of the full-time staff and many sessionals who are part-time staff that come from industry that are pulling together to really steer the Project Management program. There’s just a brief outline here about the four main full-time staff that are dedicated to the Project Management program. Professor Shankar Sankaran is someone that comes from a background in engineering, telecommunications and health and brings a lot of his passion to talk about systems thinking and governance and working with communities as well. So he’s quite passionate about working with disadvantaged and developing communities among other things.
Catherine Killen (09:18):
There’s myself, so I’m Professor Catherine Killen. I’m teaching subjects on communication, human resources and stakeholders, and on project innovation and entrepreneurship. So my background comes from product development and manufacturing in the computer industry, bringing yet another perspective. And I’m also doing research in a number of areas including decision-making and innovation.
Catherine Killen (09:49):
Dr. Yongjian Ke is working, has his experience with project private public partnerships and relational contracting that’s in the construction industry. And his specialties are the risk and procurement quality management, advanced risk management. And we also have Dr. Leila Naeni who’s also got experience in the construction and engineering environments, teaching time and cost scheduling. She’s our analytical person with complexity modeling and analysis and earned value management expertise. That’s just a little bit of a brief overview of some of the people that bring their expertise and certainly their passion for education to the classes that we teach.
Catherine Killen (10:44):
So with the Graduate Certificate of Project Management and the Master of Project Management, the Graduate Certificate is a subset of the Master’s. So the students that come into the Graduate Certificate and first part of the Master’s are the same foundation component, and the Master’s students have the further subjects. So the structure here explains how the Graduate Certificate is four subjects. So those are four six-credit point subjects for a total of 24 credit points, which is the standard for a Graduate Certificate. If you’re doing that full time, that can be done in half a year, so that’s a six-month full-time course of study. A lot of our students do that part time because if you’re currently working, you can do this, fit it within your work and then you do it at half of the pace. The Masters then is basically three times as long. It’s 12 subjects total. The first four are the Graduate Certificate subjects, and they have mostly electives except for one other core subject. So to do the Master’s full time is 1 1/2 years, part time is three years.
Catherine Killen (12:13):
One thing that people often like to know is how do I get in? What is required to gain entry to the Graduate Certificate or the Master course? For the Graduate Certificate or either one of them, we require a Bachelor’s degree and one year of industry experience. We’re not expecting that people have already been a project manager. But we do require that people can demonstrate they appreciate a commercial setting and the types of projects that happen in industry, and you’re asked to explain that in a personal statement. This one year of work experience is actually a really important part of our course. Most of our students would probably have between three and five years of experience but some have 10, 15 or more years of experience, and some have been project managers for many years. The wealth of knowledge that comes from that experience and the perspective enables the learning to be at a much deeper and more practical level. So we require that in all of our post-graduate project management students.
Catherine Killen (13:28):
For the Graduate Certificate, it’s also possible to have experience but not a Bachelor’s degree. So there’s an alternate method for entry that can be assessed on an individual basis which may include some types of other training but usually quite a lot of experience and good exposure to projects. So there’s a way to get into the Graduate Certificate, an alternate path. Once the Graduate Certificate is completed, that can give you entry into the Master of Project Management as long as the Graduate Certificate has a credit average.
Catherine Killen (14:09):
You may notice if you’re looking at applying that we do ask for the normal things that people get asked when they’re applying, like the transcripts of previous studies. But we also do ask for your CV and a personal statement. And those two documents help us evaluate what your perspective and your experience is. And there is no set discipline that prepares you for this course. As I said, we have people that have been in the arts or in theater as well as in many other types of disciplines like engineering or IT, health. The thing about projects is that they’re conducted right throughout the working world, and so that’s a very open area for a wide variety of applicants.
Catherine Killen (15:10):
The other thing that we have which is actually a new thing for our Master of Project Management is that there are some Commonwealth-supported places. So this Commonwealth-supported places option is available for local students, and when you apply you may be considered for those places. There’s a limited number but that basically gives you some extra flexibility and lower costs for your course.
Catherine Killen (15:39):
So if you want to get into the nitty gritty about what’s involved, our handbook online is an excellent source of information. So if you go to online and you type in UTS handbook and any of the courses that you’re interested in, you can look at the exact subjects, descriptions of the subjects, and get quite a lot of detail. So here’s just a quick overview to show you that, if you’re doing a Graduate Certificate, you do four core subjects. So those first four core subjects on the left are the basic foundations for a Graduate Certificate and they’re also the first four subjects done in the Master.
Catherine Killen (16:27):
If you are progressing to the Master, if either you’ve enrolled straight into the Master’s or you finished the Graduate Certificate and then apply for Master’s, you will do eight more subjects, one of which is the other core subject and then, of the elective subjects, you can choose seven of those. Or you can choose to do a sub major. You can do three of those and a sub major. So that’s one of the options is to do a disciplinary specialty within your Project Management Master’s program.
Catherine Killen (17:14):
Someone’s just asking a question here about within the Master’s of Property Development and Project Management course, which I’m going to explain in a moment, doesn’t have any ability to take the specialty in construction that’s being asked about. But the Master of Project Management does have a major in construction. So I’ll explain that in a moment. And I see another question here that I can answer next. So I’ll get back to that.
Catherine Killen (17:50):
In the Master of Project Management there is the seven different types of specialties, and one of them is construction, so that was what one participant just asked about. So the sub majors, business, information technology, health, engineering, construction, property development and local government management, each have a range of subjects that you choose four of, and you do those four subjects for a sub major, a sub specialty. So within the Project Management Master you can do a specialty in construction.
Catherine Killen (18:26):
When I explain the Master of Property Development and Project Management, you’ll see that there’s not space in there because that’s already a double major. There’s not space to have this type of sub specialty area. So if you are interested in a specialty in construction, you can do the Master of Project Management with construction, or you can start straightaway with the Graduate Certificate in construction management which we have as well. So that’s not the topic of this webinar but I believe we have one coming up on that. So that one’s answered.
Catherine Killen (19:03):
We have a question here about what is the pros and cons of doing a PMP Certification, which is a PMI, Project Management International Certification instead of a Master of Project Management. And is there a greater benefit of doing the Master’s? These are quite different type of qualifications. The PMP Certification is a professional body certification for the standards and the practices that are defined by PMI that is focused on tools and methods, and also requires you to go through some stages where you will show experience and show how you’ve applied the project. If you do a Master’s, of course that does give you some of the credit towards the path to get a PMP. But it’s actually quite a different thing.
Catherine Killen (20:00):
The Project Management at the post-graduate level is a more … we are looking at creating reflective practitioners who are able to evaluate a number of different approaches and standards, who we might say are agnostic to a particular philosophy by one of these … There’s different types of project management that are prescribed and done, like PRINCE2 or PMI or other standards. A Master of Project Management is a way to really understand the whole breadth of the way that project management is done and to also be able to learn a lot of the skills involved with negotiation and management and strategic thinking that sits around the project space. So we’re looking at really the higher level of thinking and learning. Some people do both qualifications because they are quite different, they complement each other. I can’t tell you which is the greater benefit because it depends on the person. Some employers will very much want a certain qualification, either the Graduate Certificate, the Master, or one of the PMP type of qualifications. So that’s something that it would be good also perhaps to talk to people who have done the course before.
Catherine Killen (21:33):
Does a Graduate Certificate give you enough knowledge to gain work in project management if you have no prior experience? We’re finding yes, that project management is an in-demand field. And depending on your disciplinary background combined with your Graduate Certificate is often a good entryway to get into a project management role. The first role is probably, it depends on the size, might not be a project manager, might be assistant project manager or one of the parts of the team. If it’s a big construction project you’re not going to run in and be the project manager straightaway. But certainly yes, the knowledge is designed to get people ready to start working and obviously the learning continues in the career. But the way that we run our courses is also designed to help people gain experience through the experiences relayed by lectures and experiences that you gain yourself in actually doing project-related tasks in an intensive environment in the class the way we run that. So I hope that answers the question but send more in if you need more answered.
Catherine Killen (22:49):
And that actually leads me into the next slide which talks about how we do run our classes. For the post-graduate project management, the majority of subjects are run in block workshop mode. This is quite a unique way to teach and it’s something that we feel, and many people have responded to us really helps them get very deeply into the situation and to work on projects in a way that gives them a bit of project experience. An intensive block means that the face-to-face time in normal sessions, when we’re not online, is four days, full days where we’re working together in the room and getting a lot of work done during that time. But of course a six-credit point university degree is not just done in four days. There’s work to be done beforehand and that is the pre-class workshop assignment as well as readings and materials, so that when people do come to the class we’re really primed and ready to make the most of those four days. And afterwards there is an individual assignment that builds on what we’ve done in those four days.
Catherine Killen (24:13):
So the four days, however, are a really special environment that enable us to do things. And it varies very much in each subject exactly what and how we do it. But for example in some subjects you may be delivering quite a major project report by the end, something that may seem not possible at the beginning, but the groups really pull together and it’s quite a rewarding experience to pitch in, learn a lot and see what you can produce and how you can work with people because it is very interesting. Even as we’re going online, we’re incorporating a lot of interactivity and some of us are teaching still in fairly intensive modes and other subjects have been spread out a bit more in order to manage the type of learning best. And that’s going really amazingly well teaching online this last term. So that’s one thing that people need to think about in this course is that most of our subjects will be doing those four full days, and they are four days in a row. It enables you to leave work and other things behind and pitch in. So if there are any other questions that come up, we’ll answer them as we go.
Catherine Killen (25:38):
But the Master of Property Development and Project Management is the other thing I want to talk about. And that is a dual discipline Master’s. It’s useful for people in either side, property or project management, if they want to upgrade qualification and expertise or enter those other industries. And a lot of people come in trying to enter either industry but want to bridge those areas. That’s got a mixture of project management as well as that property development balancing private and public interest in urban management and assessing development feasibility.
Catherine Killen (26:20):
So the way that the Master of Property Development and Project Management is structured is that it is a two-year full-time course or four years part time. So it’s 96 credit points. That means we have 16 subjects and it’s half in Property Development and half in Project Management. So the Property Development subjects are defined and there aren’t electives there because it’s a shorter degree than the Master of Property Development by itself. The Master of Property Development if done alone allows for electives, but if it’s done in combined with the Project Management Master’s, then there aren’t electives. Within the Project Management side, the four core Project Management subjects are included and four of the advanced Project Management electives are included. So those are electives but they’re within the Project Management discipline. So as someone asked earlier, can they do this double degree with a specialty in something else like construction. There’s just not space. That would be like a triple Master’s. So there’s other ways to get that outcome if that’s a specialty that you want.
Catherine Killen (27:50):
So similar to Project Management, the double degree requires work experience, a personal statement and CV. It requires a similar level of background. But the Bachelor’s degree that’s needed for entry into Property Development and Project Management is restricted to these disciplines that we call cognate disciplines. But their main ones are listed here, architecture, building, engineering, management, commerce, law, economics and econometrics. So for Property Development, because there’s a bit more analysis and finance-type work in there, the Bachelor’s degree is meant to be in one of those disciplines. If you’re not sure, ask us because we can evaluate and see if your experience and/or degree match up enough to qualify you. Our interest is in ensuring that people that come into the degree are prepared to succeed in the degree. And we’re happy to answer questions.
Catherine Killen (29:02):
So that’s the end of the main things that I want to cover on my slides. There’s always a lot of other questions that come up. At the moment, I don’t see anything waiting in the Q&A area. But what I put up here is our email address. If you have questions, you can contact the course director or myself directly on email if you have academic questions. If your questions are more about enrollment and administrative-type matters, there’s the DAB dot communication at UTS dot edu dot au there. So now is your chance to type away if there’s something else you want to know. Let me put myself on here. I’m putting myself on there so you can see that I’m here for you and I’m ready to answer questions. If you want to type any in, we’ll be happy to try to answer them now. Or feel free to contact us on our other contact options later on. I’ll give you a few minutes and see if any other questions come in. And Amanda and Luke, if you can think of anything that we might want to mention here, I can do that as well.
Luke Chess (30:34):
Yes, Catherine, a question’s come through on the chat. Can I just remind people ideally if questions are asked on the Q&A, we spot them more quickly. But it’s just asking about whether there are any external assignments with the courses. I assume that would be live assignments with actual organizations.
Catherine Killen (30:58):
So that asking about external assignments, so maybe that means assignments done in industry. We don’t usually use that kind of terminology, but I’m just thinking perhaps that person can clarify a bit more. We certainly do have-
Luke Chess (31:22):
It looks like we’re talking about, for example, in Project Management would there be the opportunity to work on live projects, actual projects.
Catherine Killen (31:31):
Right. Okay, well we do have a couple of subjects that have … well, we have different ways of doing actual projects. We have some subjects where a client, we might call them, an industry comes in and poses a problem that people solve in the classroom. And then at the end of the session, that client will come back and we will present to them what has been achieved. We also have had subjects where groups can go out to an organization and work with them. So there are a number of ways that we do work with real projects, keeping in mind that there obviously have to be smaller portions of a project in order to fit within the subject material.
Catherine Killen (32:23):
Now let me see, there’s some questions here about someone has a Graduate Certificate in Project Management from another university. Can this knowledge be accredited were you to transfer? It’s very likely that other post-graduate studies can be used for advanced standing. Undergraduate studies are not generally used. So it depends on what your qualification is. But if you’ve done a Graduate Certificate in Project Management, there’s a good chance that that will be credited. For anyone who does want advanced standing, it’s assessed on a personal basis of what that is. But in general, post-graduate study, a Graduate Certificate type of foundation would prepare you for the Master’s.
Catherine Killen (33:16):
There’s a question about confirm whether working in architecture meets the relevant work experience. Certainly architecture would be a very relevant work experience because there’s a lot of projects going on. And what we’re looking for in relevant work experience is somewhere where you can get a perspective of at least some components of the project cycles, and you can appreciate how project management is going to apply in the real world. Project management is a very … architecture is a strong one. But I also had a student once ask me, this person had actually run their own business like an entrepreneur, had run their own business for a few years and also had a few other types of jobs. But if you run your own business you’re managing finances, you’re managing invoices and orders and all sorts of things that give you plenty of perspective to appreciate projects in the real world.
Catherine Killen (34:29):
Is a live project in Master’s or Graduate Certificate as well? That’s a good question. When we say live project, working in the bigger live projects is not part of the Graduate Certificate. A Graduate Certificate has assignments which are based on portions of real projects, but because we’re covering a lot of foundation in the Graduate Certificate, there’s not a chance for a bigger immersive type of live project option.
Catherine Killen (35:15):
So I’ve already graduated from architecture. Do I need another year of work experience? We do need a year of work experience before applying for the post-graduate Project Management, whether it’s combined or not. So we do need that year of work experience. If you graduated from architecture but you haven’t yet built up some work experience, then that’s probably a good opportunity to do that and consider then post-graduate study with Project Management as part of the planning for the future. Enrollment deadline for spring. I think it’s slightly different if you’re domestic or local. Luke or Amanda, do you have that date detail?
Luke Chess (36:14):
I’m sorry, Cathy. I’ve been trying to trace that down for you and they have moved a little bit as a result of both the new government funding and the impact of COVID. So we can certainly get back to the person who’s asked the question on that. But we don’t have the information to hand of the exact date.
Catherine Killen (36:40):
Right. Okay. And I’m not positive at the moment either. I would say it would be a couple weeks or more, but if you let us know, make sure your details are in, we can get back to you on that one. Okay, so at the moment I think I’ve addressed the questions that are here. So are there other questions that people have about what they’re interested in or how it’s going to be? I noticed that the question about work experience says another year of work experience, but I guess if you’ve already got work experience before doing architecture or something, that may apply. But what we’re not looking at is summer jobs and things like that, that might not be in the industry, might add up to a year of work experience but we wouldn’t count that as relevant.
Catherine Killen (37:50):
But some people have worked in other type of work for some time in between degrees. So it’s a matter of we will evaluate when people apply, and that’s what the personal statement and CV helps us understand. And as I said before, the important thing is that we want to make sure that that we have a wealth of experience and an ability to move to a deeper level by having that background. And that makes our classes really quite rewarding. And sharing of learning between people is probably what I love the most about it, is there’s always some new perspective and something new to learn. And that I think is also what people in the class appreciate as well. Looking to see if there’s any more questions coming up. A question for people that are possibly listening is are any of you also attending other webinars or interested in other disciplines? We don’t have answers there. That’s all right. So nothing else visible on the chat, Luke and Amanda?
Luke Chess (39:23):
No, it would seem not, Catherine. So thank you very much, first of all, for your time. There is one more question that’s just popped up there, so I’ll allow you to answer that. But I’ll just say thank you from us for your time. And after we’ve answered this question, I guess we can call it an evening and thank you to everybody’s who’s attended.
Catherine Killen (39:45):
Well, thank you for the early thanks, Luke. And if questions come up, up till 6:30, we’ll keep answering them. But otherwise it is great to have some people here interested and wish I could be there in person, but we’re not. Someone’s asking about looking into the Master’s of Construction Management course. Does this have a Spring 2020 option? We have a Graduate Certificate of Construction Management and a Graduate Diploma of Construction Management. And we do have a Spring 2020 option. So the Graduate Certificate of Construction Management this spring as well is part of the higher education support scheme, the government stimulus. So you can get more information about that as well. And it does have a Spring 2020 intake. At the moment we don’t have, but we are considering expanding our Construction Management into a Master’s, but at the moment some of those students will choose to do a Master’s in another discipline and use some advanced standing, for example, to move that into a Master of Project Management or something else.
Catherine Killen (40:56):
Someone else is also asking when I say four consecutive days, are we talking four full days, weekdays or weekends? Our four full days of those block classes are usually Monday through Thursday. We’ve started a couple of our classes also are available on weekends during the summer and winter sessions. But our normal pattern in the autumn and spring, so our main timetable is the four days are Monday through Thursday. But we are making some of those electives available on weekends. So that would be four days, two days, Saturday, Sunday, and then a few weeks later another Saturday, Sunday. So there also are a few subjects that do run as we call it a block mode, but it’s actually spread six times over the term and an evening. So we do have two subjects that run that way. Any other questions from anyone?
Catherine Killen (42:07):
The block mode situation is something that a lot of people have found out for the first time when they attend one of these sessions because it is quite unique. I think a very standard way for post-graduate education is to come once a week in the evening, say after work if you’re working, and do a subject over a 12-week setting. And what we found is that that’s a bit … it suits some people very well, but for a lot of people that means that they’ve still got work on their brain, they’re rushing in, they’re tired, and then they have to keep on switching in and out of these modes. So for our students, it works for them well to be able to put work aside and really dedicate that time to that learning. And that’s why we started that really intense mode. And it’s been quite successful but we are offering a few different types of patterns depending on the subject.
Luke Chess (43:06):
Catherine, I do actually have the information now on the spring enrollment deadline as well. Look, the absolute latest that domestic students can enroll for spring courses at UTS in our faculty for the upcoming semester is the 12th of July.
Catherine Killen (43:30):
That’s the application date?
Luke Chess (43:31):
That’s the application date, yes, sorry. That’s the application date. That application date does not give us a lot of time to assess applications. So if you feel that you’ve got anything that might require particular attention, we’d encourage you to apply earlier than that date. But yes, that’s the final application date, latest information.
Catherine Killen (43:57):
All right, okay. Thank you for digging that up, Luke. I knew that they had extended it a bit, so that’s good to know. So that final last absolute date is the 12th of July. There won’t be much time after that. Okay. So I think that it’s been good to have the interest and thank you for coming around to our webinar tonight. And you have the contact details if there’s any further questions. I will say goodbye. Thank you again for coming along. And thanks, Luke and Amanda, for helping out.