Portugal: We expected 50 Project Engineers, we reached 100!

31 January 2022
Newsroom

Carole, Delivery Manager for our Portugal business unit, explains us how this hub has grown twice as fast as planned, with 100 Project Engineers specializing in PMO and Project Management today.

Our Project Management expertise in Porto

How did the Portuguese business unit story started and how did it faced the pandemic?

Our Porto Business Unit (BU) was established just after the first lockdown in March 2020. Our first project started in May 2020 and we now have more than 106 consultants working with 7 customers, which is a huge achievement!

A few years earlier, we found that we needed to develop new ways of working with customers, so MP launched its first extended services* center in Seville, Spain.

This project was a success and, at the end of 2019, MP decided to extend the concept to Portugal. We chose the city of Porto due to its thriving industrial environment, particularly in the automotive sector, which was our objective of development, and we launched the Porto BU in the beginning of 2020.

A top customer of ours quickly noticed that the pandemic would strongly impact not only the automotive market but also the company’s ways of working in general, and we began extended services for almost all missions we had with that customer. This change led to the strong and quick development of the Porto BU on the first semester of 2020.

Since then, other customers from the group became interested in this way of working, which contributed to our rapid development.

*Extended services: This means that we provide our Project Management Services, remotely, from our MP offices, rather than from our customers’ locations as we used to doing.

Did you expect to reach 100 consultants in just a year and a half?

No, we were planning for 50 consultants by the end of 2021.

How was 2021?

Challenging and exciting!

2021 has been the year of diversification of our activities, projects, and customers, in all project phases and for different areas of project management.

In terms of diversification, we now cover the energy, aeronautics, IT, and automotive sectors, all in extended services for now, for countries like Italy, France, Spain, and the UK.

2021 has also been the year of structuring and improvement:

The development of the corporate team for recruitment, administrative and IT management, business management and human resources.
The structuring of the teams with the nomination of team responsibilities and the support of transversal teams, ensuring everyone gets trained, and well-integrated, with all the tools to work well remotely.
The relationship with the Vigo (Spain) team of consultants (1h30 from Porto), supporting us with their knowledge, experience, and strong team spirit.

In 2021, many internal projects were developed thanks to the help of all employees in the company, suggesting new ideas for the company and giving them life with their colleagues, as good project managers! Thanks to this collaboration, we even managed to prepare and get the 9001 ISO quality certification in November!

New Project Management activities in Lisbon

What are the next goals for the Porto Business Unit?

Our next goals are now to consolidate what we developed in 2021, and to extend our brand in Portugal to local market to have a wider range of services and to make us better known.

We will also invest even more on the skill development of our employees to ensure the quality of our delivery, and a better efficiency in our project management, following the trend of the industry towards digitalization.

And lastly, we are opening a new office in Lisbon in February, which will help us welcome our consultants in person, who are already based there, and also help us to develop our activities in Portugal. A big milestone is about to be achieved!

What is Porto’s “secret” – if there is one?

Not sure if it is secret since many key players are involved…!

I would say that a very valuable ingredient in our Porto BU recipe is the team spirit, thanks to our team members. Actually, what we have in Porto is similar to what we have in our company worldwide. Our values are excellence, commitment, and team spirit, and usually everyone joining the company highlights the great atmosphere, working as a united team.

Another ingredient which gave us the foundations for a stable and sustainable development is the support of our company at an international level. Experienced and skilled people from other countries we are in are able to support us to start from scratch for IT, HR, administration topics, offices… and also to ensure us to surf safely on the waves of the pandemic crisis.

Without all which that these people have developed and contributed, it would not have been possible to reach such a high step in Portugal.

Something else to add?

A huge thank you to our team members, in Portugal and in Vigo (Spain). Without each of you, this amazing adventure would not be as sweet!

A big thank you also to all our partners from Spain, France, United Kingdom and Italy that have helped us build the great community we have today.

A special “agradecimento” to the IT team, happiness team and Integration team, all the management and corporate teams and our other pillars who created their own small projects in the company to ensure the right development and quality in our activities. You are amazing!

Thank you Carole!

Carole Foglia

Delivery Manager
@ MIGSO-PCUBED Portugal

Interested in project management?

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