A graduate perspective on managing Thales Programmes

Thales is involved in a project to design and deliver an anti-submarine sonar suite to a new class of Royal Navy Frigates, the Type 26 Global Combat Ship. With a proud heritage of delivering sonar products to navies across the world, Thales allows fantastic opportunities for graduates to gain valuable experience and expertise in the industry. The GradMail team managed to catch five minutes with Mike Canning, Thales Graduate Development Programme alumni and current Bid and Project Manager for Thales UK, who is currently working on the project.

Before you started working on the Type 26 project, what was your background?
I studied Business Studies at Lancaster University and then joined Thales in 2012 as a new graduate. My first role was in Human Resource Management, based in Crawley, followed by a 9 month placement in Project Management in Glasgow and finally took on a Bid and Project Manager role in Cheadle, Manchester. I had no real PM experience before joining Thales, but this isn’t really expected, as long as you are willing to learn, Thales is willing to give you the opportunity to grow into a role.

How would you describe your role and responsibilities?
As a Bid Manager, my responsibility is to ensure that the business doesn’t commit to delivering projects that we cannot properly resource and technically deliver to the required targets. This means that I need to ensure everyone working on the bid has a common understanding of what we are trying to achieve and what the timescales are. Also, it’s my responsibility to ensure that projects are set-up to deliver value for the customer, this means providing the right products and services at the right time in order to support the operational needs of our customer.

As a Project Manager, I need to ensure that the work we have committed to in the bid phase is delivered to the required standard, both from a business and customer point of view. This involves liaison with the customer and with Thales senior management to ensure that work is properly funded, resourced and delivered. The key challenge is bringing together technical experts and ensuring that everyone is working for the same cause.

Have you had any difficult problems to overcome on the project?
The type of projects that Thales are involved in are usually long-term. The key challenge from a bid management point of view is that we have to make decisions that affect the business in decades to come. We need to be careful that we don’t over-commit to deliver, or agree to project milestones that are unachievable in the long term. Specifically for Type 26, we have overcome this difficulty by ensuring a common understanding with the customer as to what the project will look like in years to come, allowing us a mechanism to alter the contract when different priorities come to light in the future.

What lessons have you learnt?
I’ve learnt that there is more to project management than scheduling activities and delivering presentations. The profession is much more complex than it seems from the outside and Thales allows graduates to gain a breadth of experience across programmes giving them the authority to make real decisions that make a difference to project success.

I find that I learn something new every day on the project, from technical awareness of the products, to management skills. The world of Project Management is a diverse, interesting and complex one, where opportunities for development are everywhere for both business and engineering graduates.