Our People

We are highly selective as to who can work for The Project Academy. Our size and niche focus means we never compromise on the calibre of our team. This is because our business strategy places higher emphasis on quality delivery for clients, where others tend to focus primarily on shareholder growth. Our two driving criteria for team selection are:

Aligned professional and ethical values
Niche expertise that can be leveraged to benefit our clients

Each client assignment is led by a senior partner, who takes accountability for successful delivery as well as acting as a trusted advisor to our client.

Below we provide short profiles of our core team of experts.

Marion Thomas

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Marion Thomas

Marion specialises in leadership training for project people, is a professional coach, and mentors candidates for the ChPP standard. She has spent over 30 years leading projects and programmes for organisations in the pharmaceutical, manufacturing, telecoms, IT, and public sectors.

Following the early part of her career in ICI/AstraZeneca, she has been working as a freelance project expert, and more recently as a project leadership trainer. She is typically called in when a project is in trouble, or when the client knows what they want to achieve, but not how to deliver the outcomes they seek.

She founded ExtraordinaryPM in 2017 and runs courses designed to develop leadership and people skills for project professionals.

She is a Certified Professional Co-Active Coach and completed the Coaches Training Institute’s Leadership Programme in 2013.

She is a Chartered Project Professional, a Fellow of the Association for Project Management, and was a finalist in the 2020 APM awards. She regularly speaks at APM and PMI events.

Paul Erricker

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Paul Erricker

Paul founded The Project Academy in 2007, following a fast track-career at engineering and construction group Costain. Having managed many successful projects and programmes, he became an internal consultant to the Board, leading on the review and improvement of project management capability across the Group. This period provided huge insight into the challenges of driving thought leadership and organisational change.

At The Project Academy, Paul specialises in the development and delivery of bespoke programmes for senior professionals, driving improved project and leadership capability. He is a coach to senior individuals and project teams, having formally trained at Ashridge School of Management. He is a coach on the UK Government’s Project Leadership Programme, where he also delivers electives on psychology of change leadership and collaboration.

Paul is an expert in the higher levels of professional standards of the Association for Project Management. He managed the APM’s key project to develop Registered Project Professional, the forbearer to the Chartered Project Professional standard. He has mentored over 100 senior professional to gain APM accreditations and to increase capability to lead in complex environments. He is an expert in the use of APM’s competence framework to assess and develop skills, both at individual and company levels.

Accreditations include: Chartered Civil Engineer, APM Registered Project Professional, Advanced Practitioner for Kirton Adaption – Innovation psychometric and an accredited practitioner for the Hogan suite of psychometrics.

You can read more about Paul here.

Trevor Dawes

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Trevor Dawes

Trevor joined forces with Paul Erricker shortly after he founded The Project Academy in 2007. Trevor’s early career included a number of years as Finance Director for a major recruitment business, followed by 5 years in Management Consultancy before he set up his own business in 1991. For the first 10 years he focused on developing competency frameworks for many blue chip organisations across a range of industries, including Shell, BP, W H Smith, Porsche, Carillion, Amey, etc. In 2001 Trevor’s team developed the first online competency profiling software which has been used by Shell and many other organisations from 2002 onwards.

In his work with The Project Academy, Trevor specialises in the development of behavioural, technical and contextual competency frameworks, often to support or supplement the APM’s own competence framework. In addition Trevor and his team develop and support online competency assessment using the latest technology for self-assessment, 360 feedback and coaching. This technology is in use with Shell, The Cabinet Office and other key clients who value its modern interface and ease of use.

Trevor’s expertise is in the area of assessment, via structured interviews, assessment or development centres at all levels of management. His deep understanding of competencies, and experience of working with the APM frameworks for many years, enables him to support TPA colleagues in benchmarking and development of high-performing project professionals and project teams.

Accreditations include: Member of the Institute of Financial Accountants and Member of the Institute of Public Accountants. Trevor also has a depth of experience in strategic HR and the use of various psychometric instruments.

Adrian Taggart

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Adrian Taggart

Adrian has been working with The Project Academy and its founders for over ten years after a successful career as a practising project manager and as an academic.

As a Chartered Engineer and ‘hands-on’ project manager he has successfully delivered numerous projects, including high profile engineering and infrastructure projects (hydro-power), both nationally and internationally. This has included positions with both Owner organisations, commissioning and overseeing projects, and with Supplier Organisation, including the role of Consortium Manager. As an academic he has written courseware and lectured students to M. Sc. Level.

This combination of a broad practical insight and academic analysis provide a detailed and holistic understanding of the challenges faced by the full spectrum of the project management community members. Coupled with this, his natural empathy and excellent communication skills allows him to enjoy a reputation as a friendly, popular and approachable professional whether acting as a consultant, coach, lecturer, trainer, assessor, auditor or author.

Within these roles he has assisted very many other fellow professionals and organisations (including public and private, owners and suppliers) to enjoy similar levels of success with the management of their own projects. He continues to do this for a number of clients of The Project Academy, most notably writing and delivering bespoke training courses.

He has a particular interest in the tailoring of the established approaches to project management to the role and context of suppliers and has authored the book ‘Project Management For Supplier Organizations; Harmonising the Project Owner to Supplier Relationship’. (2015)

Accreditations include: B.Eng (Hons) (Mechanical Engineering, Bradford University, 1988), M.Sc. (Engineering Management, Bristol University, 1999) , C.Eng., M.I.Mech.E., MAPM, PMP®

You can read more about Adrian here..

Adrian Wilson

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Adrian Wilson

Adrian Wilson draws on 30 years experience of many project and line-management roles in both military and civilian environments. He is an experienced consultant in project management and is also an accomplished educator. He has business skills developed in many client-facing environments, both within the public and private sectors. He regularly lectures at Warwick University on a MSc programme. He joined the Project Academy in 2013.

At The Project Academy, he teaches project management to business and technical clientele. He undertakes training needs analysis, course design and tailoring material for tutor-led courses. He specializes in teaching the APM Fundamentals Qualification, the Project Management Qualification and general project management skills courses.

His consultancy engagements have included: running project initiation workshops, health checks, setting-up framework and governance arrangements, project manager coaching, process improvement and acting as an interim project manager. His customers have included: Network Rail, Samsung, Red Bull, BT, Bank of England, RBS, Lloyds Banking Group, Legal & General, BAE Systems, REMPLOY, John Lewis, Ocado, nPOWER, Eurostar, Met Office, MoD, Home Office, charities and various other government departments.

Accreditations include: Chartered Engineer, accredited PRINCE2® Professional and Fellow of the Association for Project Management

You can read more about Adrian here.

Paul Hirst

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Paul Hirst

Paul is a content expert in Portfolio, Programme and Project Management as well as portfolio level Integrated Assurance. Paul is known for his enthusiastic and engaging approach and by using this with his strong stakeholder management skills has been at the forefront of portfolio management and developing project leadership skills in Government. Paul is particularly well known for his pragmatic approach recognising that local practical delivery wins over theory. Paul has worked for 8 Government Departments and 2 Private Sector organisations delivering major transformation and complex business change projects.

At The Project Academy, Paul specialises in coaching senior professionals on the Cabinet Office’s Project Leadership Programme, a gold standard development programme for senior Government project Managers who have been targeted by their Heads of Profession as having significant potential to be future Leaders of Major Projects.

Paul has a significant track record of influencing the direction, pace and implementation of portfolio/project management in Government. Working collaboratively with Cabinet Office Paul introduced the PPM Head of Profession role, created and was founder member of the cross Government PPM Council and the first ever APMs Portfolio management special interest group. Paul has 5 years experience of running and influencing Portfolio Management in HMRC. As HMRCs PPM Head of Profession he developed a strong, highly professional and qualified community of 1,000 project managers. Paul has worked with APM on their journey to getting “Chartered Body” status where he is a member of the Professional Standards and Knowledge Committee.

Paul is a high risk Cabinet Office Gateway Review team leader and is a Fellow of the Association of Project Management.

You can read more about Paul here.

Doug Copestick

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Doug Copestick

Doug has over 25 years of experience and a proven track record of delivering complex, multi-vendor projects in the business and operational environments for the telecoms and data sector. These include: British Telecom’s Holiday Uplift Payment solution to meet the EU directive on the inclusion of contractual overtime, commissions and allowances into holiday pay, leading the technical PMO for BT’s migration of their Global HR capability to a cloud based solution and a project to deliver substantial cost savings by recovering and re-using UK data network equipment. Doug is experienced in the analysis of business processes in order to compile baseline metrics against which clear business benefits for a project can be derived and agreed with key stakeholders.

After successfully obtaining the APM’s Registered Project Professional (RPP) accreditation in 2011 Doug has been a member of the APM’s RPP assessor pool for both RPP1 and RPP2 competence frameworks. During this time Doug successfully performed the APM’s RPP assessor role for the APM/Shell contract in the Netherlands. Doug is also an examination marker for the new suite of APM’s Project Professional Qualifications (PPQ).

Doug is a very keen advocate of the APM’s RPP and Chartered Standard and has successfully mentored over 100 plus project professionals across the UK through the RPP process for both Provek and The Project Academy.

Carole Osterweil

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Carole Osterweil

Carole joined The Project Academy team in early 2016, bringing her experience of leading complex change and transformation programmes in the NHS and other sectors including pharma, oil and gas, and IT. Based at Ashridge Business School for almost 20 years, she’s worked as an organisation consultant, and has educated and coached hundreds of senior leaders from across the globe – equipping them with the skills to read and influence the relationship and organisation dynamics that undermine project delivery.

This informs all of her work with The Project Academy. You’ll find it not far below the surface when she is coaching project leaders, project sponsors and project teams, and when she designing and delivering programmes and interventions to support client’s business change and transformation initiatives.

With expertise from the emerging discipline of neuroscience, Carole empowers those she works with to understand how the human brain works, how this creates project uncertainty and how we can use this knowledge to enable (rather than inadvertently disable) individual and organisational change. She has recently written Neuroscience, Uncertainty and Project Delivery – a Practitioner’s Guide, based on her work as a coach on the UK Government’s Project Leadership Programme

Accreditations include: Carole is a Cranfield MBA who gained her Ashridge Executive and Leadership coach accreditation in 2003 following an EMCC process. She holds an Advanced Diploma in Integrative Psychotherapy and the Arts and is a PRINCE2 Practitioner. She is licensed to use many psychometrics including LVI, Profilor, FiroB and MBTI, and is listed by the British Psychological Society (BPS) on the Register of Qualifications in Test Use (RQTU). She is also an associate member of the APM.

You can read more about Carole here..

Tanya Durlen

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Tanya Durlen

Tanya is an Experienced PPM professional and leadership coach, with 30+ years cross-sector business experience.

Areas of expertise include project and programme management capability development, embedding portfolio management and benefits management, organisational development and transformation, change management and developing leaders of change.

Starting her career as a BBC worlds service journalist, Tanya has worked across sectors delivering business change and development.

You can read more about Tanya here.

Samia Shehadeh

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Samia Shehadeh

Samia has over 25 years coaching, Change Management Consulting, Occupational Psychology Consulting, communications and business experience working within leading Change Management and Occupational Psychology firms, as well as freelancing and owning her own business. Samia’s career experience varies and has worked with companies such as IBM, the BBC, Marks and Spencers as well as a number of government departments.

With extensive experience in people development and coaching, Samia has worked across Europe and in the Middle East. In Abu Dhabi, Samia, set up her own business, hired staff and whilst making extensive use of digital marketing, social media and PR, her business became a famous landmark in the city.

You can read more about Samia here.

Sasi Panchal

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Sasi Panchal

Sasi is passionate when it comes to supporting organisations to unlock innovation, creativity and performance held within their greatest and most, valuable assets: leaders, teams and projects.
She does this by actively engaging with her clients needs and delivering creative solutions that keep her constantly evolving her leadership coaching approach. Most recently, through applied neuroscience techniques and development of anovel coaching model that supports sustainable behavioural change.

She has 20 years of project change management experience in the pharmaceutical industry. During this time, she has managed and led global matrix teams and projects to fruition. Over the last ten years she has delivered internal leadership coaching to senior leaders, specialising in developing talent through cross cultural coaching.

You can read more about Sasi here.

David Coombes

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David Coombes

David is a Project Management Consultant & Registered Corporate Coach. He has a broad range of experience which has been acquired over 40 years from roles in the military, defence industry and financial services. David is an experienced coach and mentor and is quick to build relationships and develop others.

Starting his career in the Royal Air Force, David gained experience working in project management at Bupa and delivered high level change across a range of programmes. Having worked at BUPA for over ten years, he then moved to QinentQ and quickly movedin a programme manager role, and was responsible for the management of flight trailsand systems evaluations.

David then founded Coombes Associates which provides coaching, training and interim delivery services, with an ethos to share knowledge and best practice for the benefit of others.

You can read more about David here.

Brian Dubrie

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