Building a Centre of Excellence in Project Management: Support, Not Surveillance

What Even Is a Centre of Excellence in Project Management?

Let’s be honest - “Centre of Excellence” can sound a little lofty. It sounds like something that belongs in a glossy corporate brochure, far removed from the real, fast-paced, often chaotic world of construction project delivery.

Technically, it’s a type of Project Management Office (PMO). At Iconic, we know that, for many seasoned project managers, the term “PMO” comes with baggage: visions of heavy governance, rigid control structures, and layers of reporting that do more to slow down progress than to support it.

We’re reclaiming the concept and reshaping it for the real world.

At Iconic, our Centre of Excellence is not a bureaucratic watchdog. It’s a support structure. It’s a quietly powerful system designed to help our project managers and our clients succeed.

Our Centre of Excellence is built around five key aims:

1.     Model best practice.

This isn’t from a distance, but in the thick of delivery. We’re drawing from what we’ve learned, what we’ve built, and what’s actually working on the ground.

2.     Provide consistency

We don’t want consistency just for the sake of order, but to make it easier for our project managers to do their best work, and for our clients to receive a reliably excellent experience.

3.     Drive efficiency

By simplifying repeatable processes, we give time back to the people doing the work, so they can focus on what requires their expertise, not reinvent the wheel each time.

4.     Embed continuous learning and improvement

We don’t chase perfection. We evolve by reflecting, tweaking, listening, and adapting.

5.     Offer genuine support.

This is the heart of it. Our Centre of Excellence exists to lift, not control. It’s there to hold the detail, standardise the scaffolding, and give people the freedom to deliver brilliantly.

So, yes, it’s a type of PMO, but not the kind that tells people what they’re doing wrong. Ours is the kind that makes it easier to do it right.

Why We Created It

Our Centre of Excellence project is still in its infancy, but its purpose is clear.

At Iconic, we are privileged to work with some of the most capable project managers in the industry. Our PMs are world-class. Each one brings a different style, different strengths, and a distinct approach to delivery. We see that individuality as an asset, not something to homogenise.

We are not building a Centre of Excellence to iron the personality out of project management. We are building it to liberate capacity - to remove the friction that slows great people down.

Each of our project managers brings their best work when they have the freedom to think, to lead, and to adapt. That means time spent on high-value actions: strategic planning, stakeholder management, problem-solving, and human insight, not time lost in chasing templates, duplicating processes, or manually updating repetitive trackers.

The Centre of Excellence exists to take the weight of the repeatable, the automatable, the administratively thankless, and to replace it with clarity and structure, so our PMs can flex their muscles where it matters.

We’re not here to issue rigid frameworks. We’re here to provide a trusted backbone that holds the shape of great delivery, so that each of our project managers can bring their own voice, experience, and judgement to the work that only they can do.

This isn’t about control. It’s about making excellence easier to deliver and easier to sustain.

Culture, Not Just Process

What we’re building is more than a set of systems. It’s a culture shift.

The Centre of Excellence is, of course, about improving process, but it’s also about protecting what makes Iconic different: our people, our ethos, and our unshakable belief that project delivery can be both rigorous and human.

Take productivity tracking, for example: we’re a data-rich business. We gather a huge amount of information - not for the sake of it, but to make ourselves better, day by day.

Productivity tracking is one area where we’re already seeing real impact, and it’s not about monitoring every move our team makes or justifying their existence. That’s not how we work. Instead, we’re using that data to make smarter, kinder decisions:

• Ensuring projects are appropriately resourced

• Spreading workloads in a way that protects well-being and delivery quality

• Forecasting accurately, so we know when we need to recruit

• Pricing our work fairly and transparently, so our clients receive excellent value, and we continue to return a healthy profit

Used well, this kind of data helps us make life better for everyone, not more stressful. In order for that to work, it needs something bigger than process: it needs trust.

Our deployment tracking system, like everything else within the Centre, only functions if our people believe in it. That means they need to know it’s not a tool for control or punishment. It’s a tool for support, visibility, and fairness.

It also means that we, as leaders, have to do the work to earn and uphold that trust. We have to be transparent about how the data is used, open to feedback, and consistent in our actions. We have to prove, again and again, that this isn’t about surveillance. It’s about building a business where people can thrive and not burn out.

That’s what the Centre of Excellence is really holding. Not just process, not just consistency, but a promise:

“We’ve got your back. Let’s build something excellent together.”

What Success Looks Like

Success for the Centre of Excellence isn’t about ticking boxes. It’s about freeing people up to do their best work and knowing they’re supported in doing it.

When the Centre is working well, our project managers:

• Spend less time duplicating effort, and more time using their judgement

• Feel confident in the systems that hold them

• Have access to the tools they need, without needing to build them from scratch

• Feel seen, supported, and trusted

From a business perspective, success means:

• Projects delivered with consistency and clarity

• Workloads that are balanced and realistic

• Clients receiving a smoother, more transparent experience

• Fee proposals grounded in data, not guesswork

• Growth that feels doable, because the infrastructure is already in place

The Centre of Excellence is there to raise the baseline, so that brilliant becomes normal, and excellence doesn’t rely on heroic effort.

It’s there to take some of the weight off, so that people have more capacity to think, to lead, to solve problems, and to build relationships. These are the things that truly move projects forward, and they can only happen when the foundations are strong.

The Big Picture

The Centre of Excellence is not just a project. It’s part of a much wider commitment to who we are and what we stand for.

At Iconic, we’re not simply here to manage projects. We are here to transform construction into a space of pride, purpose, and possibility. That’s our mission and the Centre is one way we live it.

We believe that great project delivery shouldn’t come at the cost of wellbeing. We believe that consistency doesn’t have to mean conformity. We believe that operational excellence is cultural, not just technical.

The Centre of Excellence gives shape to those beliefs. It’s about creating a system that holds people, honours their time, and enables them to bring the best of themselves to work every day. It’s about making excellence sustainable, not dependent on heroic effort, not propped up by late nights and spreadsheets built at midnight. Supported. Designed. Shared.

That’s the kind of business we want to build. That’s the kind of culture we want to lead

 This Is Just the Beginning

The Centre of Excellence isn’t finished and that’s the point. It will grow as we do. It will evolve with us. It will learn from what works and what doesn’t. It will listen.

This isn’t a closed system. It’s an open invitation to contribute, to shape, to speak up.

If you have ideas, bring them. If something isn’t working, say so. If there’s a way to make life easier for someone else, even in a small way, tell us.

This isn’t about perfection. It’s about building something real and useful and human - together.

The best systems don’t just run smoothly. They make space for excellence to happen and that’s exactly what we’re here to do.

Author

Rachel Hounsell-Roberts

Rachel is one of our project management apprentices. She completed her A-levels in Business, Geography and Drama before taking a year out to travel, visiting Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam.

Rachel is currently working towards a BSc (Hons) in Construction Management. She has taken the lead on managing the fitout of quick-service restaurants for an international franchise, developing a franchisee fitout design and process guide for a new franchise.