Parallel Are Delighted To Welcome a New Member To Their Growing Team

The Parallel Project Training team recently welcomed Rob Marriott as the new Director of Project Management. He joins the team following 14 years at two major global consulting firms: PA Consulting Group and Arcadis, where he was involved in a variety of Learning & Development roles.

Career Highlights So Far

Rob spent the first 8 years of his Learning &Development career at PA Consulting Group, the innovation and transformation consultancy where designers, digital experts, scientists, engineers and technologists come together to offer end-to-end innovation from concept, through prototyping to manufacturing and distribution. He worked within the Learning & Development department to design and deliver training programmes focused on soft skills development for professionals involved in all aspects of projects.

He believes that project professionals should inspire change through lessons learned and that project management training should be more about actively involving people and asking them questions than about a trainer telling delegates what they need to learn. As such he is a perfect fit for the Parallel culture which has always been based around a range of innovative training and coaching methods that use interactive tasks and real-world case studies that accommodate different learning styles.

After his time at PA Consulting Group, Rob spent 6 years at Arcadis, the world’s leading company delivering sustainable design, engineering and consultancy solutions for natural and built assets. Here are just some of the Learning & Development areas that he was responsible for:

• Developing the technical curriculum for the Design & Engineering Academy for the UK arm of Arcadis, which was aimed at engineers, surveyors and environmentalists working in the world of construction and infrastructure.
• Designing and leading the Graduate Training Programme in which he was instrumental in changing behaviours, developing leadership skills and embedding an effective culture.
• Managing Skills Development Training Programmes for almost 2,000 people working with people at board level and also with candidates and stakeholders. He ensured the right people were selected for, and attended, training courses for the most effective outcomes of these training programmes.
• Executive Coaching and Mentoring for professionals in their development pathways to chartered status:  civil engineers to gain Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) accreditation, surveyors to gain Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) accreditation and project professionals to gain Association for Project Management (APM) Chartered Project Professional (ChPP) accreditation.

Rob first got to know the team at Parallel when he worked with John Bolton, the Joint Founder and Programmes Director, on the development of the Chartered Project Professional (ChPP) programme at Arcadis. Working with John for 2 years on the ChPP programme gave Rob the opportunity to provide executive coaching and mentoring to over 50 people within Arcadis who gained ChPP status and inclusion on the Register of Chartered Project Professionals.

What Next?

Rob will begin delivering APM training and coaching from the start of 2022 and will be involved in expanding the company in the coming years by drawing on his experience of working within asset and management consultancies, developing training programmes and providing executive coaching and mentoring to project professionals working towards chartered status.

Welcome to the Parallel team Rob!