The Civil and Criminal Liability of a Project Manager

In this episode, Ricardo asks: can the project manager be subject to criminal or civil liability for something that went wrong on the project?

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Episode transcript

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Hello everybody welcome to the five Minutes PM. Podcast Today I like to discuss and to share with you some thoughts. What about the civil and criminal responsibility of a project manager? Remember, I am not a lawyer. I am an engineer, so I'm not the most capable person to understand. And it's very important because in the Portuguese version, I spoke a little bit more about the Brazilian context on this English version. I'm talking more broadly.

So I wanted to apologize if my statements do not apply directly to your country or your field of expertise, but for me, the general census that we need to have the same, that project management. Is this still not in most of the country's at a binding professional, a profession with a regulation behind liked engineer, like medicine, like to be a doctor or like to be a lawyer. So all this three professions, they have a very strict code of conduct and the profession SROs are legally responsible for their act.

So it's very important that you understand that is because the management action itself, unless its a fraudulent action, it's very hard to transform it and this into a court action or in the process. So let me give you an example. Let's suppose you are in, in here engineer and you were working on a construction of a building and you are in the project manager. So you are legally responsible for your engineering work because the engineering has a very strict codes, right?

What is the best practice and how you can do, but it's, there is very hard to have. What is the best practice on managing projects? For example, let's suppose you use a critical chain project management and your project is that fail. Will you be persecuted for that? It's not so easy to get to that because there is no binding rooms on the project management plan. Gotcha. So it's very, very important. We need to understand this too. It's if you are a product manager and you work with a team of experts, so let's suppose that your building and in the hospital.

So you have engineers, you have doctors X with expertise in the equipments you are installing. So if you give an order, that makes no sense. That is completely wrong too. What an engineer, he or she must deny doing that because at the end and the legal responsibility is it will be the engineer responsibility because the engineer has this one that can go expertise because if you are project manager or you can say, Oh, I'm sorry.

I was not aware that for example, this wall is not thick enough to sustain the building, but the engineer must be able to say, if this wall is tic enough to do that, it's a very fitting line. This is my main concern. I'm chairing this podcast to you is that there is a very thin line. It's not so clear. We are a cut on where the responsibility realize, but that can tell you base it on several people. We discuss it.

It's much easier and much more evident is that this responsibility or we will be on the professional side or the doctor, the engineer. So it's very important that you understand that there is an, a simple understanding that let's suppose that you are an orchestra. The project manager is the conductor, but the violin player is an expert on how to work with the violin. So this professional must understand if the violin breaks or make something wrong.

He or she is the one with the expertise to fix that and to repair the, the conductor, if someone that makes up the flow of the works of other people. So of course in a moral site, a lot of people think, Oh, it's the conductor responsibility, but in legal terms, it's not so easy to prove that again, I'm not talking about for out about stealing money because this, the project manager can be persecuted.

Not because he or she is the project manager, but its just a professional responsibility that it doesn't matter who, who you work and to, and or how do you do your work. So it's there a very important on a final note, it's not really the important to understand that several organizations, professional associations like the project management Institute and several credentials, like the project management professional, they required that the candidate sign the code of ethics.

And this is a binding document for that. Is that the association and that credential, Oh of course it doesn't have the legal framework behind, but it's very, very important you to understand that. Yeah. If you sign up and you believe that you will do on the best benefit of your Project okay. So it's a very, very important and I suggest you that you'd take a look at, you can read the code of ethics of PMI and of course PMI can do sanctions to you. If you do not follow the code of ethics, it's very, very important that this is not legal, but it's morally very, very relevant.

I dunno if the future of that profession will be a registered professional. I really don't know. And I would love to hear from you. I'm not here to give answers, but to ask questions, put your comments and see, do you believe that the project managers should be legally responsible? Do you believe add that the PM should know that the B so put your comments. You have to be great to here at the different opinions. I hope you enjoyed this podcast. It's your next week with another five minutes BM Podcast.

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