Ian McDuffie ⋅ Alexandria, VA U.S. Marine Corps, Lieutenant Colonel ⋅ 20 years served

Wow, thank you both so much. That is profoundly informative. To be honest I never considered the paradigm of gov cost focus vs OEM schedule focus. Further I never really considered the liberating feeling of being freed of all the annual training and compliance requirements we have in the government. I think this confirms my belief that OEM PM work can be rewarding in many other ways. Thanks so much for those insights and those helpful article links!
Thanks again!
Ian

John Morgan ⋅ Southport, NC SRA International ⋅ 44 years experience

Ian,
Thanks for your question. To help set the stage for my comments, I'll share a little of my background. I retired from the Army with my last assignment in the Pentagon. I transitioned into a contractor role supporting the Joint Staff. I subsequently earned my PMP certification from PMI and worked as a project manager and program manager for over two decades. During that time I worked on both DOD (Joint Staff, OSD, Army Staff, SOCOM) and civilian (FEMA, DoJ, ATF, USBoP, IRS) projects and spent over five years working as a senior manager on commercial projects with large and mid-sized corporations.
In my experience, Government "Program/ Project Managers" are focused on managing the contractor's team to insure compliance with the Statement of Work and the schedule and quality of deliverables. They were the avenue for routine reporting of project status to the agency's leadership. Government PMs most often served as the Contracting Officers Technical Representative (COTR); they usually completed their agency's formal COTR training. While their technical expertise was rarely as deep as the contractor's team, they knew how to best navigate their organization's processes and procedures to keep the project on track.
By comparison, the contractor (Defense OEM) PM was the primary interface between the Company and the Government on a daily basis. When I was a contractor PM, I managed the project team (hiring, clearances, leaves, recognition, appraisals), drove task completion per the project plan and schedule, insured deliverables were met, managed risks, and (unlike the Government) focused on scope creep. I spent a lot of time with the COTR and their boss learning their real expectations and explaining the capabilities of the company and the team and the limitations imposed by the project's contractual scope.
My role as a contractor PM versus a commercial PM were not dissimilar except for the client's emphasis. In government projects, the emphasis is on maintaining the project within its planned budget. When I was working for commercial firms, the emphasis was normally on schedule - getting the deliverables completed as quickly as possible.
You asked if I liked one over the other; I liked being a contractor PM because it allowed me to lead my own team. As a contractor or commercial PM, you engage with more diverse clients in a wider variety of projects. The financial compensation was better in the private sector, but job security was not. I too often experienced that the best team for the project loses the job because of price. As a Government PM, you can usually expect to remain with the same agency for a long period, and generally oversee the same type of projects, albeit with different contractors. So, there is stability but also frustration as results happen much more slowly. Much of a Government PMs time is consumed with mandatory agency meetings and training that are unrelated to their projects.
I hope this helps give you some insight into project management on both sides of the Government versus Commercial equation. All the best wishes for your future success.

ACP AdvisorNet Staff ⋅ New York, NY ⋅ 10 years experience

Hi Ian,

Thanks for reaching out. My first reaction is to look for Program Managers on our `Community' Section. You can search for experienced managers by Industry, Experience and even Zip Code. There should be quite a few Defense Advisors with former service experience in the Alexandria/Virginia area.

I'm not sure if this is exactly the same role, but I also found an article from the Project Management Institute that compares different civilian and defense management experiences. I have included the link below.

I hope this helps!

https://www.pmi.org/learning/library/civilian-non-government-defense-projects-6522