After the meeting in Paris in April 2022 at the Headquarters of Naval Group, the Global Customers of International Project Management Association met in Munich (Germany) on 25^th November 2022 at the Headquarters of Infineon, the number one provider in the world for semi-conductor solutions in the automotive and power industry (www.Infineon.com).
With its 56.200 employees, the company generated annual revenue of more than 14 bn euros in their fiscal year 2022. Infineon’s semiconductor solutions can be found in many products in people’s everyday life, such as mobile phones, credit and ID cards, electric vehicles, washing machines, solar and wind parks, Internet of things, as well as in telecommunications, power supplies for handheld as well as industrial applications,  and in the automotive sector.

“The market of semi-conductors solutions will continue to grow in the upcoming years”, according to Alexander von Glasow, Senior Project Director at Infineon with over 25 years of experience in project management in this company and host of the meeting.

To develop and produce high-quality semiconductors and wafers in top-quality manufacturing plants around the world, a strong and high-quality project management culture, with adequate competencies and skills among the far more than 1000 project managers at Infineon is absolutely needed. This is why Infineon has chosen the IPMA competence-based certification model to train, develop and certify its project managers continuously for many years.
The meeting at the company’s headquarters, “Campeon” was the occasion to benchmark and share experiences with other representatives of IPMA Global Customers such as Renault, Siemens, Alstom and Naval Group, all heavy-weight industrial players in their sector.
The participants from over 7 countries shared their views and experiences on the positive impact the certification has on their project managers and projects, whether this was driven by the company on a compulsory or voluntary basis. The implementation of training and certification sessions heavily depends on the project culture of the company and the way, for example project or project portfolio is understood. In this context, the individual competence baseline of IPMA helps project managers to get a common understanding and development of practice, perspective and people competencies.

The meeting was also the occasion to address critical subjects such as the future of the project management profession and the development of role-based certification in project management.
It also became clear to many Global Customers that the ecosystem of IPMA, which was presented to them by members of the Executive Board of IPMA, was not only about certification. Indeed, to move the profession and projects forward, a series of products, services and tools around recognition, engagement, involvement and improvement were developed. In this context, and just to give an example,
the Project Excellence Awards, with its different categories for small-medium, large and megaprojects, was described as an attractive product for Global Customers.
This product is not only a means to recognize the excellent achievements of project outcomes and project management in a specific sector or a specific method or project methodology by project teams. It is also a valuable way of receiving an assessment report delivered by IPMA assessment teams in which a company or organization can recognize its strengths in project management and its development opportunities.

Lastly, the IPMA Global Customer meeting is an occasion to develop creativity and support each other in moving the profession and passion for projects forward. The next meeting is already planned and will take place at Siemens Austria in 2023.

Auf Wiedersehen in Wien!