The Big Interview: Milla Mazilu

Emma De Vita meets APM’s new Chair and finds a humble and ambitious young leader. A railway lifer working on cutting-edge data projects, Milla Mazilu personifies the many different forces at play within the project profession. She’s the right person in the right place at the right time…

Milla Mazilu is making headlines despite her best efforts not to draw attention to herself. At 37, she is APM’s youngest ever Chair, and her commitment to volunteering work led to her being awarded the British Empire Medal for Project CARE (COVID‑19 African Rapid Entrepreneurs). Does she feel like a role model? “Everyone in a leadership position should be. I would like to be the kind of role model that allows people to look at me and say, if she can do that, then crikey, so can I,” she says with a laugh.

The video call might be a little fuzzy but Mazilu’s energy, determination and enthusiasm cuts straight through. She has found herself at home in a profession she evidently loves and in a sector that gives her the intellectual challenge she needs. Mazilu is a doer who relishes pulling apart complexities and finding a way to do things better. As Principal Programme Controls Manager in Network Rail’s Wales and Western Region, she is guaranteed exactly the kind of big‑thinking knotty problems she likes to get stuck into.

APM’s new Chair is well placed to help bring together the disparate facets of a changing profession. She is young and female and works on modernising project processes and systems using cutting‑edge data analytics in an old industry with a mature project management function and a predominantly male workforce. Her priority as Chair, she says, is to bring together the different generations of project management skills to lead APM through the next steps of its journey.

“Career‑wise, I can see both the youth coming in and all of these skills that have arrived with the technology, but also I work closely with people who’ve been in this field for a long time and have equally valuable skills that come from a different environment and from a different era of project management,” she tells me. “Sometimes I notice that we’re not necessarily able to bring all of those skills together to really harness the strength of what technology brings us and also maximise the use of those skills around understanding how to deliver projects.”

The obvious solution is to get everyone to talk to each other. “Ultimately, projects are all about people working together, and building relationships is what will help – this kind of organic process of knowledge and skills being shared, because I think it’s the main way we can bridge the gap,” reasons Mazilu.

At Network Rail, her role as Principal Programme Controls Manager means she is responsible for proactive planning, monitoring of progress, scope control, schedule control, reporting and analysis of projects. The latter is what she has been focusing on recently. As the software now available to (and trusted by) organisations has made data analysis easier and more accessible, the appetite has increased to join the data dots and improve project performance. “In the past we just had to rely on Excel spreadsheets to do any kind of analysis because IT departments were quite restrictive. Now there’s been a surge in analytical tools that are much more accessible. Business intelligence is now very actively talked about,” she says. “It’s made our work a lot more exciting and easier because people are interested. They want to know what’s possible.”

In Network Rail Wales and Western, Mazilu’s team has been focused on developing systems and solutions to problems around project reporting, analysis and handling large amounts of data. This means her colleagues now have access to the right information to support their project decision‑making and not waste any time trying to track the right data down. This, explains Mazilu, is part one of her plan. Part two will be about extracting more value from the project information that Network Rail holds by stitching datasets together to get better insights into what might be happening across a portfolio and prevent any nasty surprises.

Mazilu is wise to the temptation of believing tech can in itself fix the world. “I’m not one of those people who think the technology will solve everything,” she stresses. “It will really help, but technology is a tool and a skill to be used by people to make better decisions. What I’m hoping to do in my work is to get the tools as good as possible, to get the people skilled up to do some of the data crunching, which will then enable us to focus on the meaningful conversation about what’s happening on a project rather than arguing over the numbers. This will allow the people with the experience and the expertise to make the right decisions for their projects without having lost all this time trying to just manage the information.”

The work of her team of three has not gone unnoticed. They won Business Intelligence Solution of the Year at the British Data Awards, and also IT Project Team of the Year at the UK IT industry awards from the British Computing Society. For a project management team, the win was particularly rewarding. “I was really, really chuffed. It was so rewarding for our team to succeed in a national award outside of our industry,” Mazilu says, beaming. She has also been sharing her team’s work with APM’s specific interest groups, the National Audit Office and the Major Projects Authority – as well as working alongside Warwick University.

It’s evident that Mazilu enjoys being involved in changing things for the better – it’s one of the biggest motivating forces in her career. Not one to agonise over a detailed career plan, she has simply pursued what she enjoys, and railways and project management were the two things she stumbled across that fit her perfectly. Her love affair began in her 20s when she found an interesting sounding job on the Channel Tunnel Rail Link, now known as High Speed 1. “My heart was captivated by the railway industry itself and public transport and the benefits that it can bring to people – to be able to connect communities, travel freely, reduce carbon… it is really motivating. As an industry, it’s quite complex, which is very interesting to work in, and there have been lots of opportunities for me to make my part of it better,” she explains.

“I’m able to work on things that are sorely needed and ultimately we’re able to – in a small way – have an impact on this really big system that so many people rely on. In the work that I focus on at the moment, I’m able to harness the value of the data that we capture organisationally and use it to better inform the decisions that we make. And that saves time. It saves money. It reduces risk and there’s a fantastic opportunity to make things better… [Joining the project profession] was entirely accidental and not part of a big plan except to just work on good things with good people, and I’m lucky that that’s where I am.”

Mazilu is in thrall to the idea of working on projects that have a positive impact on society; that bring about meaningful change. “Projects are about change, and the ability to work on something that implements meaningful change is very compelling. To be able to do it really well so that you can leave a lasting impact is what I find very enjoyable and motivating,” she reflects. What needs to change for the profession is to have more coverage of successful projects, she believes: “One of the opportunities that we ought to do more with is actually looking at the projects that have been successful and trying to learn from those as well.”

What’s her advice to those starting out in the project profession? “Give it a go; just do it; get involved, whether it’s volunteering or work. If there is something you have an interest in, and you’ve got a bit of energy for it, then just do it. Find an outlet for your creative energies; always be ready to learn about things and be prepared to change and adapt.” It’s advice she takes seriously. She has long been committed to volunteering for APM and on heritage railways. During the COVID‑19 pandemic, she volunteered her project management skills for Project CARE, the main aim of which was to support African engineering entrepreneurs to make and supply PPE for use in sub‑Saharan Africa. “The impact report was just phenomenal… I just did this tiny thing in this wonderful, amazing project that impacted people in such a positive way,” she says with a huge smile.

When she’s not zooming (physically or virtually) between London, Cardiff, Swindon, Reading, Bristol and Bath for work, Mazilu is studying for an MSc in programme management at Edinburgh University, which is giving her plenty of brain food. One unexpected focus of study really piqued her interest. “The ethics and philosophy modules covered the importance of sharing one’s knowledge, so that linked in for me to professional associations, because that is their purpose.” And so the dots joyously join back to Mazilu’s latest role at APM.

CV: Milla Mazilu 

2019–2023 Wales & Western Regional Portfolio

2017–2019 Paddington to Reading Portfolio

2013–2017 European Rail Traffic Management System Programme

2009–2013 National Electrification Programme

2007–2009 FTN/GSM–R Programme

2006–2007 Step‑free Access Enhancement Programme

2005–2006 Channel Tunnel Rail Link/HS1 Programme

 

THIS ARTICLE IS BROUGHT TO YOU FROM THE SPRING 2023 ISSUE OF PROJECT JOURNAL, WHICH IS FREE FOR APM MEMBERS.