Paul, Project Manager PMO
"My current role allows me to employ the skills I learned in school as well as the ones I acquired in the Military. Things like planning an operation, providing leadership to a team. Risk management is another big one, and that's probably my favorite."
Houston TX, United States of America
We used to go on surfing expeditions along the Texas coast back in high school. While my friends would go out on Friday night, I would stay at my house and pack the truck and sit there with a list of inventory and make sure we had enough water. I really geek out on the planning side of things. Once I got to Fugro, it was the people who work here that helped me figure out how to use that: The urge to make any expedition a success.
It wasn't until I got to Fugro that I had that opportunity where I really could employ not only the skills that I learned in school, but also the skills that I had acquired in the military. Things like planning an operation, providing leadership to a team. Risk management is another big one, and that's probably my favorite.
Risk Management
A big part of mission planning in special operations is risk management. It's planning. And that's the whole idea, to develop a mission that's going to actually be executed. There's hours and hours of rehearsals going through dry runs, identifying the weak points in the mission where things could go wrong. And then, as you identify these things that can go wrong, you develop a contingency. You develop a mitigation plan. It is exactly like project management.
When you're doing this review of your scope, you know it's going to require us to mobilize a vessel from this location all the way across the ocean. And you consider: What are all these risks? What could go wrong? And you sit there and you do your risk review and you develop a risk register. How are we going to mitigate the risk and make sure that it is a success?
Landing at Fugro after coming out of the Military
From my experience there are a few things that you're trying to replace when you come out of the Military: Camaraderie, challenges - things that make you feel like you've accomplished something - and being part of something bigger.
And then, of course, getting to explore, right? Getting to go out there with a group of people whose company you enjoy and seeing something new. The things we experience when we grow. So when you work on a project, you're part of a project team. Nothing here gets done by one person. It is critical that the team works together and through that you get to develop the relationships very similarly to how we develop friendships in the military.
