Folks, since 2010, I have been benchmarking some 40 globally recognized credentials against the US Professional Engineer (PE) license which is without question a highly respected and well known credential as well as Malcolm Gladwell's "10,000 hour" rule.   Unique to this scoring model is it INCLUDES the various degrees including Bachelor, Masters and PhD degrees in the scoring matrix, HOWEVER it is still very heavily weighted towards EXPERIENCE.

For those interested in the 2015 upsRW you can read it HERE http://pmworldjournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/pmwj30-Jan2015-Giammalvo-Certification-Benchmarking-2015-update-featured-paper.pdf

Why have I undertaken this research?  rThere are three reasons:

The FIRST is to try to provide some way for practitioners to be able to "cut through" the marketing hype and in some cases downright FRAUDULENT claims being made by some professional organizations as to what their credentials do and do NOT validate. (PMI being perhaps the most egregious but certainly not the ONLY professional organization do do so.) 

The SECOND reason is to try to provide a way to measure "equivalency" between any two or more credentials.  By using "Level of Effort Hours", we have zero point and the same units of measure, giving us a true RATIO scale.  Meaning we can say that one credential is half as challenging or 10% more challenging than another credential. For instance the Guild of Project Controls "Expert" level with a 4 year bachelors degree, has a PSCOR of 21,761 level of effort hours to earn.  This makes the GPC PS Expert 38% more challenging to qualify for and earn than the Professional Engineer license from an ABET accredited university, which has a PSCOR of 15,735 level of effort hours. (21,761/15,735 = 138%) and 10% (21,761/19,735= 110%) more difficult or challenging than getting a Professional Engineer license if you graduated from a NON-ABET accredited university.

The THIRD reason which is how the Guild of Project Controls used this research is to use it as the basis to develop a COMPETENCY BASED credentialing program around the PE licensing process.  Not only did the Guild of Project Controls adopt this approach when designing our competency credentialling program http://www.planningplanet.com/guild/certification but PMI has also used it for their PgMP and PfMP certifications as has the International Institute of Business Analysts and the Green Project Management Organizations. What this means is that as of right now, the Guild of Project Controls credentialing program is one of the top ranked certification programs IN THE WORLD in terms of project management related credentials.

Specifically addressing the original question, below is a screen shot showing the rank ordering for PLANNING and SCHEDULING certitications:

rank_order_ps_credentials.jpg

As you can see, the top ranked planning and scheduling credentials are those from the Guild of Project Controls and AcostE, both of which EXCEED the requirements to earn the Professional Engineer (PE) license (BLUE Vertical Line)   Those falling between the BLUE vertical line and the RED vertical line EXCEED Gladwell's "10,000 hour" rule but do NOT meet the level of effort required to become a PE.  Those falling to the right of the RED vertical line to the YELLOW vertical line meet the ENTRY LEVEL requirements to become a PE ("Engineer in Training" or EIT) but do NOT meet Gladwell's "10,000 hour rule and lastly, those certifications which fall to the right of the YELLOW vertical line do not even meet the entry level requirements to become a Professional Engineer as an "Engineer in Training" or EIT.

For those wanting to benchmark other credentials you can download the Excel based scoring model HERE http://www.build-project-management-competency.com/download-page/ , line item #32.

I plan on publishing a 2016 update in December of 2016.

BR,
Dr. PDG, Jakarta, Indonesia  

http://www.build-project-management-competency.com

There are two international certifications for planners in existence:

AACEi PSP – a heavyweight certification primarily aimed at heavy construction/engineering planners with a bias towards claims and ‘expert witness’ work. Anyone who holds this certification knows their stuff!

PMI-SP – a planning manager certification, the scop covers the knowledge needed to manage a PMO or work as a senior planning manager. The technical scheduling requirements are fairly low. We offer this course see: http://www.mosaicprojects.com.au/Training-Planning.html  PMI will be updating the certification requirements and changing the examination mid 2013, at this point I’m not sure of the new requirements (some Christmas reading…)

Both of the above are aimed at planners with 5 to 8 years experience.

The exciting news is the CIOB (UK) will be announcing today a practical entry level certification for planners. The PTMC – Project Time Management Certificate.  I will be updating out web site at: http://www.mosaicprojects.com.au/Training-CIOB-TM_Credential.html within the next 24 hours to detail the exam, the requirements and the value!!!  

PTMC is focused on the job of planning and scheduling projects so it should be far more practical……  as they say in the movies ‘watch this space’.