MSc Engineering Project Management student Eldar Hasanli wins the prestigious APM YNL Student of the Year 2023 award

We congratulate Eldar Hasanli (MSc Engineering Project Management student) for receiving the APM Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire Branch Award for Student of the Year 2023. The Association for Project Management awarded this to Eldar in recognition of his work with the Chirag Gas Lift Project (CGLP) in the Azerbaijan hinterland of the Caspian Sea.

[Eldar Hasanlı receiving his award]

The APM Branch Awards Student of the Year 2023 allow students to showcase their project skills and achievements. The entries are assessed based on the project (description, decision for choosing this project, etc.), results and benefits of the project and the personal achievement. Branch level winners will be entered into a national final.

The seasoned project professional will recognise the challenges Eldar faced on the Chirag Gas Lift Project as a lead project engineer within the project execution team. Time critical, budget-constrained but quality and safety unstated must-do priorities, too. In addition, international teams had to communicate across time zones, handovers between teams had to be organised and key people changed during project delivery. Those familiar with offshore engineering will also relate to the finite resource availability of engineers and the constraints imposed by a single construction vessel being vital but prioritised for other project activities. Add to that typical, the atypical of Covid-19; and the successful installation works upon ageing infrastructure are to be applauded. The project was executed throughout 2021 and completed within budget by mid-2022.

[The construction vessel for the Chirag Gas Lift Project]

A particular strength of Eldar’s work were the professional practices and academic theory he introduced to deal with this novelty such as client involvement and wider stakeholder engagement using power-interest matrices, PESTLE and SWOT analyses. He also employed agile practices creating smaller packages of prioritised work, improving stakeholder collaboration and decision-making, and being more readily responsive to rapid changes. As a young project professional he also found himself with the challenge to manage Covid-19 specific requirements by implementing practical strategies to ensure upgrades to PPE, testing, and pre-deployment quarantining, to ensure the safety-first achievement of project goals. These are all examples of valuable integration of theory and practice in a project space as well as of the demonstration of reflective skills and learning.

[The construction vessel for the Chirag Gas Lift Project]

This same implementation of Agile is now the subject of Eldar's dissertation entitled “Uncovering Motivations: Key Drivers for the Recent Adoption of Agile Project Management in Energy Industry” in the broader context of a similar industry space. He is expected to graduate with his MSc Engineering Project Management in autumn 2023.

[Eldar Hasanli receiving his award from Hannah Taylor Hemingway, Tetratech, representing the Association for Project Management Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire Branch Committee]

Congratulations, Eldar !! APM Branch award for Student of the Year 2023. Well deserved.