The role of competency-based certification in ensuring sustainable project delivery

For some time now, project-oriented business has been gaining importance in the private and public sectors alike, given that an increased number of organisations started to base their operations on projects as drivers of short-term performance and long-term value creation through construction of dynamic work environments that involve faster adoption of new technologies, more frequent organisational transformations, better use of limited resources, faster product/service development and reactions to impulses coming from the market (Bakker et al. 2016; Sydow 2017; Sołtysik et al. 2020; Nieto-Rodriguez 2021; Wagner and Radujković 2022). Research shows that this trend will continue and estimates the growth of project-oriented economic activity worldwide from US$12 trillion in 2017 to US$20 trillion in 2027, with more than 88 million people working in project-oriented roles (Nieto-Rodriguez 2021). While the project and organisational variables have a significant weight in the sustainable project delivery and consequently the realisation of the desired competitive position of project-based organisations, the main emphasis is on project leaders who can manage high levels of complexity and support delivery teams in a resource-constrained environment (Wong 2007; Pagell 2010; Bakker et al. 2016; Nieto-Rodriguez 2021; Wagner et al. 2021; Longhurst and Choi 2023). The role of project manager is thus evolving from the administration of the project towards strategic activities such as establishing clear and achievable objectives, balancing the competing demands and adjusting plans and approaches to the different concerns and expectations of the various stakeholders, managing complex adaptive systems, as well as facilitating high performance and training, coaching, motivating and developing teams to create value for their organisations (Ahsan et al. 2013; Nimmo and Usher 2020; Cabeças and Silva 2021). Consequently, the growing dynamics of the business environment requires an increasing level of competency of project managers, including formal education, qualifications, practical experience and multidisciplinary orientation (Bredin and Söderlund 2013; Alvarenga et al. 2019; Edum-Fotwe and McCaffer 2000) to understand diverse aspects of the project environment and ensure project delivery through coordination of work of a large set of people, while coping with challenges this way of work brings (Wong 2007; Ulrich et al. 2008; Anantatmula and Rad 2018; Verenych and Bushuyev 2018; Bukvić et al. 2020; Akhwaba 2021). Although approaches to defining the concept of competency significantly vary, it can be more narrowly understood as a combination of knowledge (information and experience), skills (technical capabilities to perform a task) and abilities (effective delivery of knowledge and skills within a certain context) – called the KSA model – used to improve performance (Rodriguez et al. 2002; Crawford 2005; Hayton and Kelley 2006; Ulrich et al. 2008; IPMA 2015; Lizunkov et al. 2015; Struková and Bašková 2017; Sołtysik et al. 2020). As assurance of the project manager’s competency becomes an important concern for business practice and taking into account their complexity and necessity for acquiring a variety of elements, in order to develop, improve or assess them, professional certification comes to the fore. The certification process should therefore be conducted in accordance with the framework of professional competence of the industry and include an evaluation of whether the project manager has the appropriate combination of knowledge, skills and abilities set out in the industry that can be adequately applied to the project for its sustainable delivery. The certificate should then provide legitimacy, which will generate a certain level of trust in potential employers, contractors and partners (Drechsler and Sati 2015; Loufrani-Fedida and Saglietto 2016; Kavosa et al. 2017; Blomquist et al. 2018). Once obtained, the certificate is valid for a limited time period, and certificate holders are obligated to keep up with trends and professionally develop, as well as periodically undergo the recertification process (Capuz-Rizo 2023). This way, the certification in the field can have a positive impact on the micro-level that includes the improvement of the individual performance and results of both the certificate holder and organisation and the macro-level that includes the improvement of reliability and quality of organisations in the industry, while mitigating various safety-related risks (Cohen 2012; Kavosa et al. 2017). Also, as opposed to licensing, which does not imply levels of quality but is required by law to perform activities or practice the profession, certification in many cases is voluntary and is focussed on using a particular professional title defined by standards for education, experience and examination performance to ensure project practices that are more competitive and have a chance to provide better quality (Farinha et al. 2013). Still, in some countries, the requirements for performing project management tasks in specific industries are further formalised – certificates are becoming a necessity required by the employers for project manager positions, especially in technical projects such as construction and IT (e.g. Canada, Germany), professional bodies receive chartered status that gives them authority to award chartered status to individuals who satisfy the right competencies (e.g. the UK), or the certification for carrying out work in the area is regulated by national bodies, chambers and laws (e.g. Italy, Poland). In the Republic of Croatia, in 2015, the law ‘Zakon o poslovima i djelatnostima prostornog uredenja i gradnje’ (Zakon-NN-78/15 2015) (together with its supplement) ‘Zakon o izmjenama i dopunama Zakona o poslovima i djelatnostima prostornog uredenja i gradnje’ (Zakon-118/18; 110/19) was passed and since then prescribes cases when investors (who are considered public contracting authorities in the sense of regulating governing public procurement) must appoint project managers. In accordance with this law, the project manager will perform construction project management activities, and to be elected to the position, he/she must have (1) at least 8 years of work experience in the relevant jobs, (2) education in the field of construction, architecture or mechanical or electrical engineering and (3) additional education in the field of construction, architecture or mechanical or electrical engineering with an educational programme that includes at least 30 ECTS credits in areas relevant to construction project management or an internationally recognised certificate in the field of project management (Pravilnik-NN-85/15 2015). Although a range of project management certificates offered by international (e.g. AXELOS, International Project Management Association [IPMA], Project Management Institute (PMI) and national certification and qualification bodies (e.g. Australian Institute of Project Management, Association for Project Management, Project Management Association of Japan) are available on the market, the certificates are mostly limited to an exam with inclusion of certain situational questions to assess the knowledge and professional experience of the person, but without proving their actual ability to apply the acquired knowledge and skills in real project situations (Powell 2014; Kavosa et al. 2022; Capuz-Rizo 2023). The organisation that has come the farthest on a global level in its efforts to assess competencies of individuals in project management is the IPMA, with a certification process that includes the assessment of practical experience and competence demonstrated in the project environment. It includes a written project report, which is verified during an oral interview to prove not only the candidates’ knowledge and skills, but also the ability to apply them to achieve observable results for a task within a project context (Müller and Turner 2010), while levels are defined to describe the degree to which the candidate demonstrates competence: Certified Project/Programme/Portfolio Director – Level A, Certified Senior Project/Programme/Portfolio Manager – Level B, Certified Project Manager – Level C and Certified Project Management Associate – Level D. The IPMA certification is based on a global competency standard Individual Competence Baseline (ICB), complementary to the world’s renewed process-based project management standards, that defines the individual competencies presented in three areas – perspective, people and practice – required of people working in the field of projects, programmes and portfolio management regardless of the industry, while avoiding role-specific terminology due to the universality of the standard application (Vukomanović et al. 2016). Each competency within the standard is presented by definition, purpose and description and lists the general knowledge and skills that need to be demonstrated, as well as key competency indicators (KCIs) presented by description and measures that are used to assess the output performance (IPMA 2015).

However, despite the global acceptance of certification among project management professionals and the significant increase in the number of certified individuals, previous research still insufficiently examines the actual importance of different types of certifications in the context of project performance (Pinto and Winch 2016; Joseph and Marnewick 2018; Aslam and Bilal 2021). The focus of the studies was on the links between project management certification and specific areas such as: (a) selection and recruiting (de los Ríos-Carmenado et al. 2011; Farashah et al. 2019), (b) motivation for obtaining certification (Blomquist et al. 2018), (c) salary (Carden and Callahan 2006), (d) importance of legal regulations (Szewc 2022) and (e) project success and quality (Catanio et al. 2013; Abu-Rumman 2014; Drechsler and Sati 2015; Robertson and Stock 2023), but the results are usually either relevant to a specific community or inconclusive. With the aim of building on the perceived research gap and to make contributions in the field, the authors conducted empirical research among certified project professionals and examined their attitude towards the competency-based certification and its legal regulations, as well as its role in ensuring the sustainable project delivery. The rest of the paper has the following structure – detailed explanation of the research methodology, sampling procedure and sample characteristics, followed by the summary of the findings and discussion, and conclusion with limitations and suggestions for future research endeavours.

The quantitative research was carried out using a specifically designed questionnaire consisting of both close- and open-ended questions related to the research problem and demographic and professional background of the respondents. The respondents were firstly asked to provide the details about themselves such as their age, gender, education level, certification level, experience in project management and domain within which they work on projects, as well as to rate (on a Likert scale from 1 to 5) the reasons behind their decision to obtain professional certification in the field (1 having the least and 5 having the most importance). In addition, the respondents were asked to express their opinion in open-ended questions about the importance of the project management certificate for sustainable project delivery, the legal regulation prescribing the certification of construction project managers for construction projects and the introduction of the obligation for projects to be managed exclusively by certified project managers. The estimated time for completing the questionnaire was 10 min.

The questionnaire was sent to the population of certified project, programme and portfolio managers in Croatia in October 2023 (all levels according to the IPMA 4-L-C certification system) with the help of the IPMA Hrvatska – Croatian Member Association of IPMA. During the research, all ethical principles related to implementation were respected in terms of anonymity and voluntariness, as well as the right to express one’s own opinions and the right to withdraw. A total of 246 correctly completed questionnaires were collected, which constitutes 27.03% of the total number of active IPMA-certified professionals in Croatia. Excel and SPSS 27 (IBM Corp. Released 2020. IBM SPSS Statistics for Windows, Version 27.0. Armonk, NY: IBM Corp) were used for quantitative statistical processing of primary data, which included descriptive statistics, the Relative Importance Index (RII) and the Mann–Whitney U test. Qualitative primary data were analysed by using the grounded theory approach.

The sample characteristics are presented in Table 1.

As shown in Table 1, men constituted 73.2%, while women constituted 26.8% of the sample. Only 0.41% respondents were under the age of 25 years, 13.01% had ages between 25 years and 34 years, 34.14% between 35 years and 44 years, 35.77% between 45 years and 54 years and 16.67% above 55 years. Most of the respondents obtained a graduate education level (82.52%), followed by respondents who held a postgraduate degree (16.67%), while only a minor part of the respondents obtained the bachelor education level (0.81%). As for the work experience, around a third of the respondents have more than 15 years of experience in project management (34.15%), followed by respondents with 5–10 years (25.20%), 10–15 years (24.39%), <3 years (8.54%) and 3–5 years of experience (7.72%). The majority holds the IPMA level C project management certificate (49.59%). Level D is represented in 39.43% cases and level B in 9.35%, while level A is under-represented with 1.63%. However, this is not unusual as the total number of A-certified project professionals in Croatia is 14, while other categories have significantly more certificate holders (level B – 94, level C – 277 and level D – 525). The respondents were mainly from the field of civil engineering/architecture (56.5%), while the remaining 42.5% came from different industries, such as IT and electrical engineering (16.26%), education (4.47%), mechanical engineering (3.66%), telecommunications (3.25%), state administration (3.25%), banking (1.21%) and other fields (8.94%).

To obtain a deeper insight into the reasons for certification and the respondents’ opinion on the importance of certification and legal regulations in project delivery, the authors divided the respondents into two categories – those from construction/architecture, considering the existence of legal regulations that attribute the necessary criteria for managing projects in the domain, and other non-construction/architectural categories. The results were divided as follows.

The rapid development of the project management profession and the organisation of work within temporary project organisations, as well as predictions of future trends in the field, emphasise the importance of developing and continuously improving the knowledge, skills and abilities of individuals in project roles through the professional certification process. The results of the conducted research among certified project professionals further strengthen the opinion that the formal recognition of project management competencies can contribute to the increase in individuals’ professionalism, which will ultimately result in improved performance and sustainable project delivery, ensuring the organisation’s operations in accordance to market conditions and achieving a competitive advantage. The evolution of certification systems is expected to be determined by complex technological developments, changing demands, recognition and inclusion in the value systems of the organisations, regulating the profession status at the state level and forming project management chambers to socialise new recruits and control entrance to the occupation, as well as social and cultural trends from the market. In addition, with the aim of not merely creating a more comprehensive view of the topic and ensuring a potential way for professional associations to introduce continuous professional development that starts with certification and directs individuals through different paths of training and improvement, but also overcoming the limitations of the present research, the authors suggest including non-certified project experts in the sample, gathering longitudinal data in the countries that conduct certification based on globally recognised project management standards and examining the gap in research between different types of professional certification in the field and objective measures of project performance.