NCC

Background and need

At NCC, project leadership is a central discipline - both for securing progress in the projects and as a decisive driver for the business's overall results.

At the same time the demands on project leadership are rising. Projects are becoming more complex, stakeholder landscapes more demanding, and the need to lead people, direction and cross-cutting collaboration has become more visible. That places new demands on the individual project leader and on the entire project-leadership chain.

NCC therefore needed a more systematic and coherent capability lift - from new project leaders to experienced project directors. The ambition was to create a shared professional foundation, strengthen the leadership dimension in the projects and establish a clear development path that can also support IPMA certification at several levels.

Solution

We designed the NCC Project Academy as a unified development frame for the entire project-leadership chain - with two connected programmes: one for project leaders and one for project directors.

The programmes are built so they can stand alone while at the same time supporting a shared direction and progression in the organisation's work with project leadership. A central principle is the link between learning and practice: throughout the programme, participants work with their own projects and leadership challenges, and new knowledge is continuously translated into concrete action.

Programme for project leaders - foundation and role understanding

The focus is on building a strong foundation for professional project leadership:

• Use of central project-planning tools and methods.
• Clarifying the project-leader role - from planner to leader who steers and follows up in a good way.
• Building effective project teams, strong meeting facilitation and securing progress and deliverables with ownership.
• Leading the project and the individual, so motivation stays high and conflicts are avoided.

The programme consists of four modules supplemented with impact days, where participants work further with their projects and receive targeted sparring. It closes with a practice-near exam and qualifies for IPMA D/C.

Programme for project directors - strategic and leadership scale

The advanced programme is aimed at project directors and shifts the focus from project leadership to leadership of (project) leaders:

• Leadership of (project) leaders and personal leadership.
• Handling cross-cutting collaboration: supplier management and negotiation.
• Developing strong project environments, direction and leading other leaders.
• Working with a positive conflict culture and organisational cohesion.
• Strategic leadership, prioritisation and the link between projects and business.

The programme consists of five modules and takes its starting point in participants' own leadership tasks. Impact days are also a central element here, and the programme closes with an exam aiming for IPMA B level.

Across both programmes, impact days function as a decisive link, where learning is translated into practice and where participants work iteratively on their development through feedback, reflection and sparring.

Results

The Project Academy has strengthened project leadership as a unified discipline at NCC - not only at the individual level, but as an integrated part of the organisation's way of working and leading.

For the individual participant it means:

• Greater security in the role and a clearer understanding of responsibility and scope.
• Strengthened capabilities in both steering and leadership of projects.
• Increased ability to navigate complexity and cross-cutting collaboration.

For the organisation the effects are:

• A shared professional foundation - project leadership is practised more consistently across the organisation.
• A strengthened leadership chain - the interplay between project leaders and project directors has become clearer and more effective.
• Increased delivery power - projects are run with greater consistency, better progress and higher quality in deliverables.
• Closer link to the business - projects are prioritised and led to a greater extent on the basis of strategic goals.

The academy has also helped position leadership of projects as a strategic core area at NCC by creating a clear standard for capabilities and a shared reference for quality. All in all, the Project Academy has moved project leadership from being an operational discipline to also being a leadership and strategic lever for NCC's continued development.