The University of Pretoria extends its congratulations to Dr Taryn Bond-Barnard of the UP Graduate School of Technology Management (GSTM), who’s been honoured with this year’s Global Young Researcher Award in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The award is administered by the International Project Management Association (IPMA), one of two global project management associations, with 40,000 members in 60 countries.

The ceremony took place on 3 September at a gala event during the IPMA Research Conference in Rio de Janeiro. Dr Bond-Barnard was awarded the prize for her PhD research, titled Project communication, trust, collaboration and success: A structural equation model and the influence of computer mediated communication. Prof Herman Steyn of GSTM was her study leader for the PhD, and Dr Lizelle Fletcher was her co-supervisor and assisted with statistical analysis.

Her research examines project success, as success is the goal of every project ever undertaken. Literature supports the fact that project communication in addition to several other ‘human-related’ factors has an influence on the ultimate success of the project – because it is people who ultimately deliver projects, not processes or systems. Her study identifies the main ‘human-related’ project success factors – Quality of Communication, Level of Trust and Degree of Collaboration, the variables that determine them, and puts forward an empirically verified model of the relationship between these factors and project success. Furthermore, the impact of computer-mediated communication (CMC) (specifically instant messaging and video conferencing) on the quality of project communication is also explored. 

The value of this study is that it presents a new ‘human’ perspective for investigating project management success. Previous studies focused on the traditional project success measures of time, cost and quality. Dr Bond-Barnard’s study addresses the relevance of existing project communication management theory in today’s settings, and its practical implications by assessing the benefits and usage of contemporary communication media.

Outputs from the research include six peer-reviewed publications consisting of four journal articles in the International Journal of Project Management, International Journal of Managing Projects in Business, South African Journal of Industrial Engineering, Acta Structilia and two international conference papers. 

Dr Bond-Barnard said she is “very pleased to receive the award, and would like thank IPMA for acknowledging my work, and for their support in promoting research excellence in the field of engineering project management research”.