1. Some early-career education-related factors
PERSONAL STORY
By Alan Stretton, PhD (Hon)
New Zealand
INTRODUCTION
Background to this series of three articles
In Stretton 2025c I discussed many experiential and closely allied influences on my perspectives on project management, and on my 280+ published articles. The focus in the 2025 article was strongly on direct career-related experiential influences.
However, there have also been other types of influences which have helped shape my perspectives and writings on project management. This is the first of three articles which discuss some of these. I have used the descriptor “extra-curricular” to distinguish these influences from the more directly career-related experiential influences in Stretton 2025c
This first article will look at some early-career influences, which were mainly education-related. The second article will look at influences from many of my mid-career external “helping” activities, whilst the third will be concerned with some late-career and post-retirement activities and their influences.
Figure 1 broadly relates these career stages with my primary activities at those times.
Figure 1. Relating career stages with primary activities at those times
Some background and preview to this article
I will try to briefly set the scene regarding lack of learning support in the early post-WW2 construction industry in Australia, and, in this context, preview some aspects of my learning experiences in my early-career stage, broadly up to the mid-1960s.
Most practitioners of my generation, who began their careers in the early post-war era, and who later became actively involved in project management, came to the latter from a variety of different vocations. In the construction-related domains in which I worked from the early 1950s, these included people from many branches of engineering, architecture, quantity surveying, and specialist trades, amongst others.
But, as many of us moved into positions which have since been identified with project management, we had to learn a whole new range of skills. However, we had few, if any, credible guidelines on what these skills were, and/or how to go about developing them. Consequently, in practice, we were all basically “learning on the job” – typically a combination of learning by working with more experienced people, plus a good deal of learning by personal trial-and-error.
The latter is an unenlightened way of learning new skills, and is very expensive for employing organisations. My three employers of the first decade of my early career did not provide organised learning programs. However, most fortunately, that was to change in the early 1960s, when I joined Civil & Civic and its parent company Lend Lease Corporation (C&C/LLC). I will focus on two major education programs which were undertaken in all Lend Lease group companies, plus a personal learning experience I had with the parent company. These are now briefly previewed.
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How to cite this work: Stretton, A. (2026). Some “extra-curricular” influences on my project management perspectives. 1. Some early-career education-related factors, PM World Journal, Vol. XV, Issue IV, April. Available online at https://pmworldjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/pmwj163-Apr2026-Stretton-Extra-curricular-PM-influences-1-Early-career.pdf
About the Author
Alan Stretton, PhD
Life Fellow, AIPM (Australia)
Auckland, New Zealand
Alan Stretton is one of the pioneers of modern project management. In 2006 he retired from a position as Adjunct Professor of Project Management in the Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building at the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS), Australia, which he joined in 1988 to develop and deliver a Master of Project Management program. Prior to joining UTS, Mr. Stretton worked in the building and construction industries in Australia, New Zealand and the USA for some 38 years, which included the project management of construction, R&D, introduction of information and control systems, internal management education programs and organizational change projects. Alan has degrees in Civil Engineering (BE, Tasmania) and Mathematics (MA, Oxford), and an honorary PhD in strategy, programme and project management (ESC, Lille, France). Alan was Chairman of the Standards (PMBOK) Committee of the Project Management Institute (PMI®) from late 1989 to early 1992. He held a similar position with the Australian Institute of Project Management (AIPM) and was elected a Life Fellow of AIPM in 1996. He was a member of the Core Working Group in the development of the Australian National Competency Standards for Project Management. He has published 280+ professional articles and papers. Alan can be contacted at alanailene@bigpond.com .
To see more works by Alan Stretton, visit his author showcase in the PM World Library at http://pmworldlibrary.net/authors/alan-stretton/.
