The Impact of ICB 3.0 Competences on Project Management Success

There is a great deal of literature written on how different project management standards and models bring success to projects. IPMA has introduced a competence model (ICB 3.0), which encompasses 46 competences, and which, according to IPMA, increases the success of projects and the way they are managed. However, there is a scarcity of studies which support and validate this notion. Therefore, in this study we sought to find a connection between ICB3.0 and project management success by measuring the level of each ICB competence across different projects. We mainly targeted the construction industry where we analyzed 472 project management professionals, among which 88 were certified under the IPMA-4-L-C system. We found that the level of achievement of project management success greatly depends on the perception of competences. Behavioral competences were identified by the respondents as the most important ones, followed by the technical and the contextual ones. Furthermore, we found that project managers working on projects with significant time overruns did not perceive the importance of: Ethics, Information and Documentation, Health and Security, Safety and Environment. In addition, project managers working on projects with significant cost overruns did not perceive the importance of: Assertiveness, Start-up and Close-out. This research, although founded mainly on data from the construction industry, clearly demonstrates the importance of the ICB 3.0 system. Then, we call on further research which will be expanded to other industries and countries and which will validate the use of the ICB 3.0 competence system in project management.