Some “extra-curricular” influences on my project
management perspectives: 2
PERSONAL STORY
By Alan Stretton, PhD (Hon)
New Zealand
INTRODUCTION
Background to this series of three articles
As noted in the first article of this series (Stretton 2026c), I had earlier discussed some experiential influences on my perspectives on project management in Stretton 2025c, which was strongly focused on directly 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 second of three articles which discuss some of these. I have used the descriptor “extra-curricular” to distinguish these influences from the more direct career-related experiential influences discussed in Stretton 2025c
The first of these articles looked at some early-career education-related influences. This second article looks at some mid-career external help-related activities I undertook, and their influences. The third article 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 to this second article
My regular-career vocational activities in this mid-career stage
First, it should be noted that these external help-related mid-career activities were undertaken whilst I was working full time with Civil & Civic, and its parent company, Lend Lease Corporation (often abbreviated to C&C/LLC), which mainly operated in the Australian building industry. My many roles in over a quarter century with them were summarised in the first article of this series, so will not be repeated here.
The broad nature of my external help-related activities
The majority of my external help-related activities discussed below were education-related. Mostly they involved my working with established educational institutions in teaching mature-age students in graduate diploma or masters courses, generally on project planning and control, but also on other management-related topics.
Some personal background relevant to my external activities
We will first look at some personal background which underlay these external initiatives, initially in the context of project planning. Stretton 2025d included discussions of the introduction and deployment of network planning techniques into Civil & Civic (C&C) from 1962.
I described how we moved from arrow diagramming (the Critical Path Method – CPM) to Fondahl’s “activity-on-node” method (later to be described as the Precedence Diagramming Method – PDM) in 1963. I also described how enthusiastically this was taken up by our project managers, how it evidently contributed to improved project performance, and thence to C&C’s evolving reputation for on-time-and-budget project delivery.
Much of my role in all this (along with two of my staff in particular) was essentially educational. We undertook some formal internal education sessions, but mainly worked directly with project teams, helping them plan and control their projects.
More…
To read entire paper, click here
How to cite this work: Stretton, A. (2026). Some “extra-curricular” influences on my project management perspectives. 2. Some mid-career external help-related activities, PM World Journal, Vol. XV, Issue V, May. Available online at https://pmworldjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/pmwj164-May2026-Stretton-Extra-curricular-PM-influences-2-Mid-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/.
