The Big Interview: Donna Sinnick

Emma De Vita, Editor of Project, met with Donna Sinnick, Babcock International’s newly appointed Chief Delivery Officer, who’s job title is comparable to the Chief Operating Officer (COO) position in other organisations. Donna reports directly to Babcock International’s Group CEO, David Lockwood, a reflection of how project and programme management is being welcomed to the top table.

When she first joined the organisation three years ago, Donna Sinnick was tasked with setting up a global project management organisation. The business already had 2,000 project and programme management professionals, but there was no one pulling it all together. Donna expanded the project management function, adding procurement, supply chain, quality, facilities management and IT to her portfolio. Her portfolio of programmes now covers everything from a Royal Navy dockyard major programme on the south coast to training the Metropolitan Police.

“The whole point of project management is to overcome the complexity,” Donna explained. “I’m a massive believer in simplification. So, if I can’t describe something in the simplest possible way, it probably means I haven’t quite unpicked it enough. The simpler we can make things, the more people understand.”

Complexity is just one of the aspects of project management she enjoys. Another is finding the best people. “I love getting into an organisation and finding those secret little ninjas… and I recognise not everyone has to go up a classic hierarchical route. Sometimes there are people buried in the organisation who are ready to be picked out and elevated really quickly.”

It’s a tactic she used to great effect during one of the pivotal moments of her career, when she was working on a highly complex aerospace defence contract with multiple customers at the same time as things started going tragically wrong with Boeing 737 MAX aircraft, in 2019. While Donna didn’t work on the Boeing 737 MAX programme itself, her programme did need sign-off from people who were working on it. She had twice turned down working on the programme, but her boss eventually told her to step up.

“Sometimes opportunities come even if you don’t see it as an opportunity. I didn’t want that role. I was in a fantastic world. I was loving my job. I was loving the team that I was working with all the way through to the customer, the supply chain. I thought that moment was pretty catastrophic, but actually it became one of my proudest moments and one of my pivotal moments. I wouldn’t be at Babcock now if it wasn’t for that, because of the level of confidence that it gave me, having said no,” she reflected.

It was a lesson in pushing herself beyond her comfort zone – and in saying no. “The point is: you can say no – you don’t have to take every opportunity – but if it gets to a stage where the business needs you to take a role or go in a new direction, my advice would be, at that point, go for it,” she said. “It was quite flattering, because someone had actively not only asked me, but told me that this is the role that I’m going to be doing. They must have great confidence in my ability.”

She explained. “If you’re really invested in and really love and enjoy what you’re doing, then fundamentally I do believe opportunities will either turn up or you’ll naturally find them.” Yet, she warns early-career professionals not to be fixated on moving too quickly. The danger is that they won’t learn the important lessons they need to digest along the way. “You’ll get to a certain level in your career where you can’t backfill that knowledge and experience… It’s great picking up bigger programmes, but that grounding is so important.”

This article is based on a longer interview feature with Donna Sinnick in Project, APM’s official journal. APM members can access all issues of Project free of charge here.

Listen to Donna’s interview with APM Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or via web browser