B&Q’s Programme Management Office wins coveted award

B&Q, the UK and Ireland’s largest home improvement and garden centre retailer, has been named Project Management Company of the Year in the Association for Project Management (APM) Project Management Awards 2013.

B&Q is one of only a handful of retailers with a dedicated Programme Management Office (PMO), and is the first retailer to have won an APM award. The awards recognise what people can achieve through project management and have been celebrating excellence in the profession for over 20 years

The PMO at B&Q was set up from scratch 18 months ago out of a desire to better evaluate the impact and outcomes of projects designed to deliver the B&Q strategy. In that short time the PMO team has articulated the need for a PMO, sold the vision, designed and recruited a team and achieved significant and quantifiable benefits in terms of cost, flexibility, project success and overall planning and decision-making.

The awards were announced on 4 November.

About B&Q

B&Q has 356 stores in the UK and Ireland, employing more than 30,000 people nationwide, more than a quarter of whom are over 50 years of age, with a similar number under the age of 25.

About the Association for Project Managers (APM)

The APM is a registered charity with over 20,000 individual and 500 corporate members making it the largest professional body of its kind in Europe. Its aim is to raise awareness and standards in the profession, under the mission statement “To provide leadership to the movement of committed organisations and individuals who share our passion for improving project outcomes”.