Programme in Project Management

“In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.”

In April 1970, Apollo 13 was more than 300,000 km from Earth when an oxygen tank exploded.
The Moon landing was off. The only goal left was getting three astronauts home alive.

The crew moved into the lunar module and used it as a lifeboat. It was designed to support two people for two days. Now it had to keep three people alive for nearly four.

Then another problem emerged: carbon dioxide was building up.
The spare filters from the command module were square. The lunar module’s system needed round ones.

On the ground, engineers worked with only the materials the crew had on board — plastic bags, cardboard, hoses and duct tape — and found a way to make a square filter fit a round hole.
They talked the astronauts through building it, step by step.

It worked.
All three came home safely.

The mission never reached the Moon, yet Apollo 13 became one of NASA’s most remarkable examples of problem-solving under pressure.

What made it possible wasn’t simply luck.
It was a team that understood its constraints, trusted one another’s roles and stayed focused enough to solve one problem at a time.

Every project reaches moments when the original plan no longer works.
That moment is not the end of the project.
It is often where the team shows what it is truly capable of.

Many procurement problems start long before a contract is ever signed.

Months before a supplier is even appointed, requirements are defined, specifications are written, budgets are set and responsibilities are divided.

Every one of these early decisions shapes what happens later:

A vague requirement can become a contract dispute.
An unrealistic delivery date can become a supplier performance problem.
An assumption about who is responsible for what can become a costly variation.

Good project procurement means understanding who needs to be involved, what needs to be agreed, and how expectations around time, cost and quality are set before anyone commits.

Sometimes the best way to manage a contract is to manage what happens before it exists.

Project Procurement and Contract Management is one of the core modules covered in the Programme in Project Management (PPM).

Learn more: https://projectmanagementsa.co.za

There is still time to strengthen your project management skills in 2026.

Whether you are looking for a focused short course, practical skills in Agile or AI, or a comprehensive project management programme, there are several opportunities to get started before the end of the year.

12–14 October | Agile Project Management – Contact, Pretoria
A three-day practical course covering Agile principles, approaches, tools and techniques, with a focus on applying Agile in real project environments.

16 October 2026–4 June 2027 | Programme in Project Management (PPM) – Weekender, Pretoria
Complete the PPM through face-to-face Friday and Saturday sessions while continuing to work. The programme includes 16 contact days over approximately eight months.

29–30 October | AI for Project Success – Live online
Explore AI, Generative AI, ChatGPT, prompt engineering and blockchain, with a focus on their practical application in a project management environment.

23 November 2026–30 July 2027 | Programme in Project Management (PPM) – Online
A flexible online route through the comprehensive PPM, designed for professionals balancing study with work commitments.

Successful completion of each course leads to a University of Pretoria certificate.

All courses offer recognised CPD points and/or professional development units, with recognition varying by course.

Project Management Course | University Of Pretoria | PPM Leaders in project management for more than 30 years with lectures that are accredited by PMI in the USA. Top chosen course by South African students.

Every project leaves two things behind: what was built, and what was learned.

Tomorrow, South Africa celebrates Heritage Day. We honour what earlier generations passed on to us — from languages and traditions to hard-won wisdom about how to live and work together.

Project teams have a heritage too. It lives in the lessons learned: the risk that almost derailed a timeline, the stakeholder conversation that should have happened sooner, the shortcut that cost more than it saved.

Those lessons become most valuable when they travel with us, allowing experience from one project to shape better decisions on the next. It is not simply about recording the past, but about carrying its wisdom forward.

Wishing everyone a meaningful Heritage Day.

A project is never just a schedule.

It is people, budgets, contracts, risks, changing priorities and decisions that need to be made.

Managing all these elements requires more than an understanding of project management principles. It requires knowing how to apply them in practice.

For professionals in Namibia looking to strengthen these capabilities, the Programme in Project Management (PPM) offers a proven route. First introduced in 1997, the programme has been presented more than 200 times and is now offered face-to-face in Namibia.

The programme brings together key areas of project management, including:

• Project planning, scheduling and quality management
• People management and Agile Project Management
• Project finance, procurement and contract management
• Project risk management and the wider business context

Presented by experienced lecturers, each specialising in different areas of project management, the programme helps you apply what you learn directly in your workplace.

Professional recognition:

160 PMI PDUs
96 SACPCMP CPD hours
5 ECSA CPD points
5 SACNASP CPD points

Successful completion leads to a University of Pretoria certificate.

PPM Namibia – 2027 intake

Dates: 29 April–26 November 2027

Delivery: Face-to-face in Windhoek

Course fee: R54,835 incl. VAT

Explore the programme and take the next step in developing your project management capability:

https://projectmanagementsa.co.za/courses/programme-in-project-management-ppm-namibia

Project Management Course | University Of Pretoria | PPM Leaders in project management for more than 30 years with lectures that are accredited by PMI in the USA. Top chosen course by South African students.

Artificial Intelligence is becoming part of everyday project work — from analysing information and identifying risks to supporting communication and decision-making.

The AI for Project Success: From Basics to ChatGPT in Action course is designed to help professionals understand these technologies and, importantly, how to apply them in a practical project environment.

Presented by Dr Suzaan Pretorius, the two-day course explores:

• Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Generative AI
• ChatGPT and Generative Pre-trained Transformers (GPTs)
• Prompt engineering and how to write more effective prompts for AI tools
• Practical ways to use ChatGPT as an assistant in project work
• Blockchain and Smart Contracts in project management
• The changing role of the project manager

The course combines foundational knowledge with practical application, helping delegates move beyond simply experimenting with AI tools towards using them more purposefully in their work.

29–30 October 2026 Online | Live classes
Course fee: R6,500 incl. VAT

A University of Pretoria certificate is awarded upon successful completion.

Find out more or enrol: https://projectmanagementsa.co.za/courses/ai-for-project-success-from-basics-to-chatgpt-in-action

After a disaster, one of the first challenges is not rebuilding.

It is understanding what has actually happened.

Which buildings have been damaged? Which areas have been hit hardest? Where should limited resources go first?

Traditionally, answering those questions can take weeks — at exactly the point when decisions need to be made quickly.

The UN World Food Programme (WFP), together with Google Research, developed an AI-powered tool called SKAI that analyses satellite imagery to assess building damage after disasters.

Following the 2023 earthquakes in Türkiye and Syria, SKAI assessed around 600,000 buildings and released damage data covering parts of southeast Türkiye where an estimated 5 million people were affected.

WFP has reported the technology as 13 times faster and 77% cheaper than manual assessment methods.

AI did not make the response decisions for the humanitarian teams.

It helped them understand the situation sooner.

And that points to a useful role for AI in many projects.

A team can have people, equipment, funding and good intentions ready to go. But if it does not yet have a clear picture of the situation, important decisions are delayed.

We often think about AI in terms of doing work faster. But perhaps one of its greatest contributions will be helping project teams understand what is happening faster — by analysing information that would take people far longer to process.

Because sometimes the biggest delay in a project is not the work itself.

It is getting enough reliable information to make the next decision.

Faster insight can mean faster action.

Source: UN World Food Programme

Week 1: Final layout to be confirmed by client.

Week 2: Still awaiting the same confirmation.

Week 3: Contractor needs layout before ordering materials.

Week 4: Procurement may be affected.

Nothing dramatic happened in any one of those weeks.

Read together, though, they tell a different story: a decision has been left open long enough to start affecting the project.

You can think of this as decision debt — unresolved decisions that accumulate over time and create uncertainty and risk.

Like technical debt, it can build up quietly in the background. A supplier is waiting for confirmation. A question has come up in several meetings without being resolved. A change is still awaiting client confirmation, but the project team has already started working as though it has been approved.

The longer these decisions remain open, the more likely the project is to pay for them through rework, delays and conflicting assumptions.

Part of the problem is that actions and decisions can easily become blurred in project records.

"John to investigate the supplier options" is an action.

"We will use Supplier B, subject to confirmation of delivery by Friday" is a decision.

A project can therefore look very busy while the decisions that actually determine what happens next remain unresolved.

The difficulty is that no single set of minutes shows the pattern. It only appears when you read several weeks together — exactly the kind of review AI can help with.

Using information your organisation permits you to share, give an AI tool several weeks of meeting minutes and ask it to:

– identify decisions that still appear to be unresolved
– flag assumptions being treated as facts
– list issues that have been deferred more than once
– highlight contradictions between meetings

Then add:

Show the evidence for each finding. Make no decisions on my behalf. Where the records are unclear, say so rather than assuming what probably happened.

That last instruction matters more than it may seem. AI tools can sometimes fill gaps with something that sounds plausible, so it is important to tell them clearly when you want uncertainty identified rather than assumptions made.

AI can review large amounts of project documentation much faster than we could do manually. It still cannot determine whether a stakeholder’s ‘that should be fine’ should be treated as formal approval.

That judgement remains yours, and it becomes more valuable as the tools get better, not less.

Using AI effectively in project environments therefore involves more than knowing which prompt to type. It means knowing what to ask, how to verify what the tool finds, where it can mislead, and when human judgement must take over.

These are some of the practical issues explored in UP’s Graduate School of Technology Management course, AI for Project Success: From Basics to ChatGPT in Action, presented online on 29–30 October 2026: https://projectmanagementsa.co.za/courses/ai-for-project-success-from-basics-to-chatgpt-in-action

A warm welcome to all our delegates starting the Agile Project Management (Online) course on Monday, 14 September.

Over the next four weeks, you will explore Agile principles, life cycle selection, Agile delivery, team environments and the practical application of Agile approaches across different project contexts.

Presented by Prof Lizette Weilbach, the course is designed to provide practical knowledge and tools that can be applied in your own project environment.

We hope you find the course valuable, informative and rewarding.

Welcome, and all the best for the journey ahead!

Finding time for professional development can be difficult when you are already managing projects, deadlines and day-to-day responsibilities.

That is one of the reasons the Programme in Project Management (PPM) is also offered in a Weekender format.

The programme is structured over 16 contact days — 8 Fridays and 8 Saturdays — across approximately eight months, allowing delegates to learn face-to-face with lecturers and peers while continuing with their professional responsibilities.

The programme covers key areas of project management, including:

→ project planning and scheduling
→ project quality management
→ the people side of project management
→ financial principles and project cost management
→ procurement and contract management
→ project risk management
→ project management in the broader business context
→ Legal Aspects or Agile Project Management as an elective

A particularly useful part of the learning approach is that much of the assessment is based on practical assignments, giving delegates the opportunity to apply what they are learning to projects and situations relevant to their own working environments.

On successful completion, delegates receive a University of Pretoria certificate.

The programme also carries professional recognition:

→ PMI PDU hours
→ 5 ECSA CPD points
→ 5 SACNASP CPD points
→ 96 SACPCMP CPD hours

The next PPM Weekender runs from 16 October 2026 to 4 June 2027, with contact sessions in Pretoria.

If you are looking to strengthen your project management knowledge but need a format that can fit around your work commitments, you can read more about the programme here:

https://projectmanagementsa.co.za/courses/programme-in-project-management-ppm-weekender

Project Management Course | University Of Pretoria | PPM Leaders in project management for more than 30 years with lectures that are accredited by PMI in the USA. Top chosen course by South African students.