Registration opens over a light breakfast and networking.  Grab a quick bite and mingle with the other attendees. 

Windsor Room

Opening Remarks presented by our host for the day Indy Calina

Windsor Room

Keynote Presentation with Lynn Shannon

Grab a coffee and a quick snack, connect with fellow attendees, and make your way to your next session.

Choose from three concurrent 45-minute breakout sessions, each offering practical insights and ideas to apply to your projects.

Windsor Room

Beth Tupala, Manager, Planning; Nova Scotia Health

Readiness Before Rollout: Lessons from Three Healthcare Capacity-Building Projects

Successful project delivery does not always lead to meaningful adoption. Drawing on healthcare program implementations in three provinces, this session explores how care provider readiness, internal champions, and stakeholder engagement influence uptake and sustained change. Through real-world examples and discussion, examine warning signs of resistance and consider when to pause, reassess, or change project parameters rather than proceed as planned.

Regency One

Inherited, Not Hired: Leading the Team You're Give

Speaker: Samji Cherian, Project Manager - Colliers Project Leaders

Most project managers don't get to build their dream team, they inherit one. Roles are already filled, dynamics are already set, and performance gaps are already visible before the project even begins. The question isn't how to get a better team. It's how to become the leader who makes any team better.

In this session, Samji draws on his years of leading complex, multidisciplinary healthcare infrastructure projects globally to share a practical framework for transforming inherited teams into high-performing ones, through intentional trust-building, deliberate empowerment, and targeted capability development. You'll walk away with tools to diagnose your team's current state, close performance gaps without replacing people, and build a culture where your team develops itself.Because the best teams aren't the ones you're given. They're the ones you grow.

Regency Two

The Three Ecosystems of Project Management: How Delivery Context Shapes PM Success

Speaker:  Ifeyinwa Anaele, Consulting Partner, FVA Project Consultants Inc.

Project Managers are often treated as interchangeable resources, with organizations relying on methodologies and certifications as primary indicators of success. However, in practice, project outcomes are shaped more significantly by the delivery environment than by methodology alone.

This session introduces The Three Ecosystems of Project Management—Client Delivery, Vendor Governance, and Internal Delivery—a practical framework that explains how delivery context influences Project Manager identity, authority, competencies, and success metrics.

Through real-world examples and structured comparisons, this session provides actionable insights that can be immediately applied to improve delivery outcomes and reduce misalignment risks. Attendees will leave with a practical framework to better match Project Managers to the right environments—enhancing both organizational performance and individual career success.

Grab a coffee and a quick snack, connect with fellow attendees, and make your way to your next session.

Choose from three concurrent 45-minute breakout sessions, each offering practical insights and ideas to apply to your projects.

Windsor Room

Vendor Risk Is Now a Project Management Problem

Speaker: Kevin Pike, Enterprise Lead -- Corporate Security, Privacy & Governance

Vendor risk now sits inside project delivery. Exposure is often created during requirements, product selection, configuration, data mapping, access design, integrations, and operational handover – well before security, privacy, legal, or audit teams can meaningfully intervene.

This session will show project managers how third-party risk becomes embedded in delivery decisions, why late-stage approval gates often fail, and where common control breakdowns occur. Topics include unclear risk ownership, weak evidence collection, misaligned platform configurations, poor exit planning, and treating security or privacy review as an administrative checkpoint rather than a delivery dependency.

Regency One

Managing Through the Pain Points

Inclusive Leadership, Psychological Safety, and the Power of Showing Up

Speaker: Siobhan Carlson, Senior Project Coordinator, Nova Scotia Power 

Inclusive leadership is often discussed as a set of competencies, frameworks, or best practices—but far less often as a deeply human skill shaped by lived experience. This session reframes inclusive leadership and psychological safety through the lens of the speaker’s journey as a project leader living with chronic illness and disability.

Drawing on real-world project environments, the presentation explores why inclusion is not a “nice to have,” but a critical driver of trust, resilience, and performance. Attendees will examine how assumptions about productivity, availability, and “professionalism” can unintentionally exclude talented contributors—and how psychological safety enables teams to surface risks earlier, adapt faster, and deliver better outcomes.

Through practical examples, reflective storytelling, and actionable takeaways, this session challenges project managers to rethink what strong leadership looks like when not everyone starts from the same place. Participants will leave with a deeper understanding of how inclusive leadership practices such as empathy, flexibility, and transparent communication create psychologically safe teams where people can do their best work without having to hide, overcompensate, or burn out.

Regency Two

Transforming Crisis into Permanent PMO Delivery Excellence Leadership and team management.

Speakers: Melinda Kinney & Pallavi Sen

This session explores how Nova Scotia Power transformed a major disruption into a catalyst for long-term PMO excellence. We will examine the creation of a temporary “Recovery Office” during a crisis period and how its practices evolved into permanent ways of working. The discussion will highlight how urgency enabled faster decision-making, streamlined governance, and stronger cross-functional alignment, ultimately reshaping how large programs are delivered. Through real examples, we will demonstrate how crisis-driven innovation can unlock sustainable transformation and elevate PMO maturity beyond traditional models.

Terrace Lounge

Choose from three concurrent 45-minute breakout sessions, each offering practical insights and ideas to apply to your projects.

Windsor Room

Leaders Inspire - Lead by Example and Learning
Speaker: Alex Cann, Founder & Transformation Facilitator

Define the styles and behavioral traits of different leader, Habits of Leaders, Conflict resolution, Meeting and Communication Cadence.

Learn what type of leader you are, techniques for conflict resolution, framework for effective communication and meetings.

Regency One

Framed through an Agile maturity lens—moving from Adhoc Agile to Doing Agile and ultimately Being Agile.
Speaker: Nabeel Shahid, Delivery Lead & PMO - IBM

Team‑level improvements included restructuring squads, reducing Kanban board clutter, enforcing capacity‑based ticket assignment, and introducing daily stand‑ups enhanced with morale‑boosting rituals. These changes helped the team operate with “minimum volatility, more organized and aligned to their release goals. Help communicate the project status to stakeholders in a fast pace environment where its difficult to measure the productivity of a team.

Grab a coffee and a quick snack, connect with fellow attendees, and make your way to your next session.

Choose from three concurrent 45-minute breakout sessions, each offering practical insights and ideas to apply to your projects.

Windsor Room

Leading Smarter: AI-Augmented Leadership for the Modern Project Manager Leadership and team management.

Speaker: Ellie Braham, Founder & Principle Consultant | CamCass Innovative Consulting Ltd.

60 min Workshop

Explore how AI can strengthen your leadership and bring PMI’s M.O.R.E. framework to life in this hands-on workshop. Practice using AI in real project management scenarios and leave with a personalized leadership snapshot and practical AI prompts you can put to work right away.

PMI research tells us that when Project Professionals apply all four elements of M.O.R.E. — Manage Perceptions, Own Project Success, Relentlessly Reassess, and Expand Perspective — the Net Project Success Score jumps from 27 to 94. Yet only 7% of practitioners apply all four today. The gap is not knowledge. It is practice, confidence, and the right tools.

Artificial intelligence is reshaping every layer of project delivery. The project managers who will thrive are those who lead best, with AI serving as the force multiplier that enables it.

This hands-on workshop brings all four elements of M.O.R.E. to life through the lens of AI-augmented leadership. Don't just hear about AI, use it live in real PM scenarios, practicing each M.O.R.E. element as a leadership skill. Together, we step up.

What you will do:
• Complete a quick leadership self-assessment anchored to PMI's 12 Project Management Principles — identifying where you are already delivering M.O.R.E. and where AI can close the gap
• Watch AI-augmented leadership modelled across real stakeholder, team, and executive scenarios that map to each M.O.R.E. element
• Practice curated PM prompts with peers on challenges from your own projects: managing perceptions, owning outcomes, reassessing parameters, and expanding perspective
• Build a personalized AI Prompt Cheat Sheet organized by M.O.R.E. element and leadership moment

What you will take away:
1. A Leadership Snapshot Card — your M.O.R.E. profile, your gaps, your next step
2. A PM AI Prompt Cheat Sheet — organized by M.O.R.E. element, ready to use tomorrow
This session is designed for practicing PMs at all experience levels. No AI expertise is required. Curiosity and a commitment to stepping up are the only prerequisites.

M.O.R.E. Conversations, Better Connections

Terrace Restaurant

Not your typical networking session! Pull up a chair and join fellow project professionals for candid, peer-led conversations about the challenges, opportunities, and realities of project management today.

Choose a topic that interests you, exchange experiences, share ideas, and learn how others are approaching similar challenges across different industries. No presentations, no formal speakers — just meaningful discussions and connections you can take beyond the conference.

Windsor Room

From Project Manager to Strategic Leader: How to Build Influence Without Losing Yourself

Speaker: Carleigh Bell, Director of Preconstruction & Pursuits

For many project professionals, career growth is expected to follow a straightforward path: deliver successful projects, build technical expertise, and leadership opportunities will follow. In reality, the transition from project management to strategic leadership requires an entirely different skill set - one that is rarely taught in traditional project environments.

This session explores the often-unspoken shift from execution-focused leadership to enterprise influence. Drawing from firsthand experience moving from project delivery into executive-facing leadership within the construction industry, this presentation will examine how modern leaders must navigate perception, visibility, communication, and influence in increasingly complex environments.

Attendees will gain insight into the realities of leading beyond scope, schedule, and budget - including how to build credibility at the executive table, communicate strategically, manage stakeholder perception authentically, and maintain personal leadership identity while evolving professionally.

This session is particularly relevant for emerging leaders, experienced project managers navigating career growth, and organizations looking to develop the next generation of strategic project leaders in a rapidly changing industry.

Regency One

HARD HATS & SOFT SKILLS

Speaker: Meriem Merbai, Design Team Lead- Build Nova Scotia 

Most project managers enter construction with solid credentials, a PMP, a methodology, a plan. What they rarely have is preparation for the environment they're walking into: fragmented teams, evolving scope, decisions made with incomplete information, and stakeholders they have no authority over.

This session explores the gap between what formal PM training teaches and what construction projects actually demand. Drawing on experience managing major public healthcare infrastructure, this talk goes beyond frameworks and tools to examine the human skills that determine whether a project moves or stalls.

Attendees will explore three core competencies that construction PM develops — and that no certification fully prepares you for: influencing without authority, deciding under ambiguity, and translating across the professional languages of design, construction, and operations. 

Whether they're new to construction or seasoned practitioners, attendees leave with practical shifts they can apply immediately and a clearer understanding of the leadership capabilities they may already have but haven't fully recognized.

Regency Two

Making the Invisible Visible

Lessons Learned from Implementing a Continual Improvement Program Stakeholder engagement and communication.

Speaker: Tanya Dent, Continual Improvement Practice Lead

Most of us think about continual improvement every day. You streamline processes, solve problems, and make operations run smoothly. But how often do you get to hear the unfiltered truth about what actually happens when someone designs and implements a continual improvement program from scratch?

This session offers a transparent look at lessons learned from designing and rolling out a technology-enabled continual improvement program. You'll hear about the what, why, and how of the design but more importantly, you'll get the story of implementation: what worked, what spectacularly didn't, and the uncomfortable pivots required along the way.

Discover early wins that exceeded expectations, resistance that came from unexpected places, and the messy reality of getting people engaged in tracking and visibility. Learn about the moments of struggle and best practices from someone willing to share both the successes and the failures.

As a PM professional who loves a good lessons learned session, you'll hear first hand of how it's going. Leave with insights already earned through trial and error so you don't have to repeat the mistakes, plus the real talk about what it takes to create lasting change...including the parts we don't want to admit.\" Reflect on what's working in your projects and what's not and how you might embed in continual improvement in YOUR everyday.

Windsor Room

Speaker: Travis Barlow, HackFirstAid

AI is transforming how projects are planned, managed, and delivered, but it also introduces new cybersecurity risks that project managers can’t afford to overlook. As AI-powered tools become more integrated into everyday workflows, understanding potential security threats, data vulnerabilities, and responsible AI adoption is increasingly important. Led by cybersecurity expert Travis Barlow of HackFirstAid.com, this session explores the evolving cybersecurity landscape, the risks associated with AI, and the role project managers play in protecting sensitive information, managing security risks, and building more resilient projects and teams.

Windsor Room

Our host Indy will wrap up our day and present our prize draws.

Terrace Lounge

Keep the conversations going as we celebrate being “More Together.” Connect with fellow attendees, share ideas from the day, and enjoy food and a complimentary drink ticket.