Q&A with Milla Mazilu APM’s new Chair

Milla Mazilu has been appointed as Chair of APM, taking over from Debbie Lewis. Milla began her railway career in 2005, initially working on the Channel Tunnel and then with Network Rail. In her current role, she leads initiatives in project data analytics across the portfolio. She was awarded the British Empire Medal in the 2022 New Year’s Honours list for her vital work during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Q How do you feel stepping up into the Chair’s role?

A I feel fantastic. It is a truly exciting time in the project profession and I am thrilled to play a part in leading the organisation through the next steps of our journey. My priority is to bring together the different generations of project management skills. We have a diverse range of skills, from more experienced project professionals to young project professionals with new technological skills and techniques. If we can find a way to bring all these generational skills together, we can take APM to another level.

Q What advice do you have to APM members looking to volunteer?

A Do it. Volunteering gives you an opportunity to exercise your professional curiosity, get exposure to things you wouldn’t see during your day-to-day work, experience another side of the profession, and make connections with a varied and interesting group of people. I have relished my years of volunteering with APM; it really opens doors and I hope that APM will grow in being able to create more of these opportunities for project professionals.

Q You’ve spent your career working in rail. What have been the biggest project management lessons you have learned so far?

A Project management is really about people – understanding people, understanding teams, understanding how organisations come together to deliver one goal: the project. We have great techniques, processes, tools; and yet, across many projects, none of these work when the people don’t come together to focus on the same goal. Perhaps our next step as an association is to merge the techniques, processes and tools with that core understanding that we still really need it to be about the people.

Q What is the biggest challenge that worries you and the biggest opportunity that excites you for the profession and your industry?

A Clearly the challenge is in bringing people together, but also doing this in the fastest-changing project data environment there has ever been. The data side of project work is changing so fast, with oodles of information being generated across all aspects of project work, from team communications to planning, scheduling, BIM, document control and, of course, when interfacing across organisations. Things have changed dramatically over the last two decades, and this is only accelerating. Our challenge is to embrace this and find ways of harnessing these innovations, while not forgetting the core issue, which is that projects are about people.

THIS ARTICLE IS BROUGHT TO YOU FROM THE WINTER 2022 ISSUE OF PROJECT JOURNAL, WHICH IS FREE FOR APM MEMBERS.