GTA West Chapter of CDECA hosts their first Professional Development Day

A week ago our chapter hosted a fabulous Professional Development Day for members dealing with the subject of "Project Management for the Interior Decorating Profession"

Andrew R. Thomas, PMP, is a Project Management Consultant for companies such as Hatch Engineering, Barrick Gold, and teaches the George Washington University Project Management curriculum for numerous corporate clients.  Andrewwho  lives in the GTA west and understands the local market and how important P.M. is to the decorating profession.  He spoke to us for an hour at the Toronto PD day and returned to offer us an in-depth, hands-on 4 hour workshop, geared towards an actual decorating project.

Running from job to job, and working 18 hours a day, but still feel like you are constantly trying to catch up with your work load?  Well if that is the case, you need Project Management skills and we certainly were given many great tools to manage our businesses.

This workshop dealt with practices that are known to lead to project success. These practices include: assembling the right team, having clearly articulated goals and objectives, effectively engaging the client, understanding who all the stakeholders are and what motivates them…these are just a few of the key topics that will be examined.

 Andy broke us down into small groups and challenged us to work through a typical Decorating Project, and assisted us to learn the project management tools and techniques which in turn makes us more efficient as decorators and designers, thus increasing profitability, and client satisfaction.