New Association for Capital Project Professionals: Its Mission; Accelerate Professional Development and Team Innovation across the Supply Chain

Capital projects are increasing becoming more complex and shorter in duration while the engineering and construction industry remains fragmented. A knowledge transfer gap exists between large groups of retiring experienced employees and minimally experienced newly hired personnel. A need exist for an organization to facilitate sharing best practices and innovation between all project professionals (business, engineering, procurement, construction, commissioning) and stakeholders on capital projects (owners, contractors, suppliers, academics and students). A group of capital project personnel have created the first association for capital project professionals across the entire supply chain, Capital Projects Professional Exchange (CPX), the objective of this organization is to virtually connect capital project stakeholders as an online community to enhance professional development by supporting and encouraging sharing of best practices, resources and opportunities. The initiative is currently in its research phase which includes social media integration and crowdsourcing techniques as a method to exchange knowledge between various capital project stakeholders. Initial feedback indicates that such an organization can accelerate the learning curve of new professionals entering the capital projects construction industry and facilitate the exchange of best practices and innovation.