Red Horse Steak House
Thursday, September 16, 2010
Project Management in the Middle East - Adventures of an Airport Project in Egypt
Presented by Steve Andrews, PMP
Dinner Meeting (Frederick, MD)
Need Directions? MapQuest
As Senior Project Manager for the new Cairo International Airport - Terminal Building 3 - IT project, Mr. Andrews gained much insight into how to get the job done in the Middle East. While PMP standards are used throughout the world, many aspects of project management have to be "adjusted" when working in a different country. Cultural, religious, financial, and socioeconomic differences have to be identified and respected. Cost, Quality, & HR Management ... all take on a challenging new role while working abroad. Process, procedures, & standards that may work in the United States may require creative modifications to be effective in the Middle East. Communications is a key challenge with language barriers to be addressed. Regarding Risk Management … there were lots of opportunities to address risk and to avoid risk. Just driving on the roads of Cairo for two years is enough risk for a lifetime.
ARINC, an Annapolis, Maryland based company won the contract to install all Information Technology systems in this new terminal, built to handle 11 million passengers per year. Fourteen systems were installed including some state-of-the-art technology never used before in the Middle East. Check-in desk computers, self-serve kiosks, biometric gates, flight information display monitors, LAN infrastructure, wireless LAN, telephony, information kiosks, and the host of servers that form the "brains" of airport operations (flight scheduling, passenger data, baggage handling, baggage reconciliation, resource scheduling, and more). While the construction phase took 18 months longer than planned, once the IT deployment could begin ... the installation, testing, training, and production-readiness of systems took almost 12 months to complete, with many challenges along the way.
Mr. Andrews' career in IT has spanned 29 years with the last 12 years as an Engineer, Project Manager, and now Senior Program Manager at ARINC, which provides communications, engineering and integration solutions for commercial, defense and government customers worldwide. Mr. Andrews has been a PMP since June 2006 and am currently pursuing RMP certification. He is also a member of the PMI Baltimore chapter and resides in Annapolis, Maryland with strong ties to the mountains of western Maryland.
Time and Location Information
Meeting starts with Networking at 6:00pm followed by dinner and the presentation for an hour. Meeting normally ends by 9:00pm.
UPDATE: Dinner will start at 6:45pm.
Agenda
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