Sustainability in Projects Requires Training in Managing as Designing

Problems that present project managers have to deal with are more and more concerning complexity, i.e. unexpected, uncertain, unstable or unique situations. This seems also the case with sustainable building projects. It is therefore necessary that project managers are trained to deal with these problems, especially by learning from their performance. In this article we motivate why and propose how. Based on literature study we elaborate on the concepts of reflection-in-action, design-thinking and managing as designing. In sustainable building projects the problem occurs on a regular basis that the often big ambitions in the initiative phase are not realised in the realisation phase. These ambitions perish because of a lack of substantial knowledge regarding the quality-, timeand cost-aspects of sustainable building projects. More important than this sufficient substantial knowledge is an integral approach of the entire building process. Exactly this integral approach of the process with its characteristic of working from sketch to detail –and backwardsappears to be very suitable for sustainable building projects and requires a management approach that allow, support and stimulates this; an approach that can be characterised as designing project management. Where the concepts of reflection-in-action, design-thinking and managing as designing are interrelated in the concept of learning we introduce the project management design cycle. Project managers do not only need to use this searching and experimenting approach with awareness in order to learn from their performance, but students in project management will also have to be trained in how they can learn from their performance as a project manager. We propose that training related to cases e.g. as in management games seems to be the most suitable.