Vehicle Mechanic to Entrepreneur: How a military skillset can lead to success in project management.

Project management is a proven route that many service leavers take. For good reason; your military skill set translates smoothly into the function. However, getting into project management is likely more complex than you first thought. There’s a wide range of routes to choose from, courses to take, or areas to specialise in. 

We chatted to Wayne Smallman, project manager and entrepreneur. Wayne tried out various different styles of project management after he left the REME before he finally found the right role for him.

In this newsletter, he shares how he found the transition out of the military and into the civilian workforce, how he settled on the right style of project management for him, and ultimately how he found success. Expect some actionable takeaways in here too.  

Check it out! 👇

[Jade] Hi, Wayne. Thanks for talking to me today. First things first, could you please tell us about your military career?

[Wayne]  Sure. I did 10 years with the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (REME) as a vehicle mechanic. I joined straight from school at 16 and went into basic training. That was a bit of a culture shock working with 30-year-old guys, as a 16-year-old, especially a cocky 16-year-old as I was! 

I travelled all over during my military career. My first posting was in Germany, and then I was up to Scotland, and then Bath. Then I got posted to my hometown in Gloucester, I'm not too far from the camp now, actually. 

I finished on Challenger 2 tanks down at Tidworth, which was fun, considering I was a wheel mechanic. It led me to tanks, very interesting, especially as hammers were used a lot more than spanners. But yeah, good career.

I left in 2015 as a Corporal, probably pushing for sergeant at that time, but I wanted to settle down with my wife and have a family, looking back on it, though, part of me had fallen out of love with the military, and I really wanted to pursue something a bit different. 

At the time, I didn’t think I fully realised that I needed a BIG change, so I ended up staying in engineering when I left. 

[J] Wow, incredible career. Why did you feel that engineering was the way to go after you left the military? 

[W]  LinkedIn wasn't really a thing in 2015 when I left. It was mainly just to hold your CV as a record, nobody used it as a networking platform. Plus, the support services on networking and building your CV that the military offered at the time was a two-day workshop. So you don’t really understand that there are other avenues out there for you. 

Now, the military offers career fairs and things like that to help you find a career opportunity when you leave. And there are lots of services out there now, like Redeployable and support groups available on LinkedIn to utilise and maximise your potential when you leave. 

My passion at the time was engineering. I was good at it, I didn’t think much beyond that. I took a job as a service engineer, it was my first interview and my first job offer, so I took it.  That’s where I started to find my enjoyment in working on projects. In this role, I installed and commissioned large production machinery for projects all over the world. I travelled to China, India, South Africa, North Africa, America, Mexico and parts of Europe. I travelled a lot more in that job than I ever did in the military,  it was a bit of a shock to the system and went against what I wanted after I resettled.  

I think that was down to a lack of guidance and mentorship, which luckily is abundantly available to service leavers now. After four years in the role, I was looking around me and there were a lot of people who had been there for a very long time, all the way up to retirement age. I was thinking, do I want to be turning spanners up to that age? 

I never did any courses, but at that point, I was working on a complex project and I started to understand what project management was. So I switched gears. There was an opportunity in sales, which I took, and I was there for a couple of years, that was my first proper experience of the product life cycle.

[J] That’s quite a drastic shift.  How different is life in project management from the military?

[W] I think project management can be oversold to a lot of people. Sometimes, people equate event management with project management and they think that can transfer easily onto civvie street, but it’s very different. 

When I started doing it informally as a sales engineer, I wasn't qualified and I wasn't following a framework or set of practices. I was using my own experiences of managing people, managing money, and managing a set of requirements. Then there’s an added layer of understanding you need; like the many things that make the machine work and the client’s requirements. 

There was no formal project management role at the company, I just sold the machine, and then I would take the requirements and the options the customer needed, and hand it over to the technical team. Then I would just keep an eye on touch points throughout the life cycle of that build. 

I learned all of these management skills from the military, there are similarities, but not in the way you expect. As a vehicle mechanic, the closest I ever came to “project management”  was probably on a repair programme. It was very similar in the sense that I had a customer, and a set of requirements that I needed to fulfil, a team, and spares that we needed to fit into the vehicles, and we forecasted that work throughout the time given.

So similar elements and lots of transferable skills, but less exposure to the finance aspect. This is probably the biggest difference I found when comparing project management to my experience in the military. 

[J]  In terms of the actual role, what is it that you really love about project management? 

[W] What I enjoy is being able to have oversight of the life cycle of a product or project. I love orchestrating every aspect of a project. In the beginning, I wasn’t really a fan of the “work” side of things, I wanted to be hands-on with projects.

I did a formal job as a project manager, and I didn't enjoy it as much. It was in quite a small company and that's where I switched to a framework called Scrum, which is more of an iterative delivery model.

My formal job now is a job called a Scrum master. It's very similar to a delivery manager role where you're working within a team, you're helping them remove impediments, looking at their processes and flow. These are the things I really enjoy about project work now; engaging with my team and my customers and working on technical products that deliver value to people who use them. 

Working with people is my favourite thing about my job and looking at improving continuously as well. I think it’s something I’ve taken from the military. That camaraderie aspect and the need to work within and lead a team. 

[J] Well, that's a good segue into my next question which is; were there any unexpected crossovers in terms of your military skill set?

[W] Yes, time management is definitely one of these skills. In any project work, you have to manage time, and it’s part of three main pillars; scope, money, and time. 

I'm very good with my own money. Maybe not so early on in my military career, living for the weekend type of thing, but towards the end of my career when I had a mortgage I needed to be on top of my finances. So I'm very good at planning and budgeting and estimating for finances and so those kinds of skills helped me, and that was due to a lot of life experience. 

But time management is one skill that I honed in the military. It’s key to an operation or a mission because you need to manage every bit of your time wisely and make sure you’re always doing something of value. It’s definitely the biggest skill I’ve brought over from the military.

[J] Ok, interesting. Do you suggest that people looking to get into this space do project management courses?

[W] Yeah, absolutely. 

 I have scrum master qualifications and Kanban qualifications. A great one is the Associate PM Project Management Qualification (APM PMQ), I don’t have this qualification, but it’s a great one for service leavers to consider.

To me, Kanban is the Swiss army knife for managing projects because it talks about limiting work in progress, so you can start finishing rather than start doing. It helped my team increase our output drastically. 

Kanban is something I'd really recommend to most service leavers to bolt onto a project management qualification as well because it can apply to anything.

[J]  That’s really helpful. Based on your journey, and everything that you’ve learned, is there anything you’d change? 

[W] Knowing what I know now, I probably would have taken a more direct path to project management, and I would have explored it a lot earlier. But my path was dictated by massive intrinsic motivators, like having a family and a mortgage. 

Overall though, I wouldn’t change anything about my journey. It’s all been a life experience. My time travelling during my military career and my first role has paid me dividends in this job. I now know how to be resourceful when I don’t have direct access to a team member or the business unit required for a project.  

I think all of my experiences have shaped me into who I am now.

[J] Lastly, do you have any tips for people wanting to make the switch to project management?

[W] Absolutely. 

Firstly, you need an understanding of what industry you want to go into. That will dictate the qualifications you want to consider. Do your research, get that understanding of the industry and the courses and how you can apply all that to your role. The best way you can do this is through networking. 

Secondly, network with project managers and let them give you insight into what it’s really like doing this job day in and day out. This will help you understand whether this is the right job for you. All this gives you a picture of whether you see yourself enjoying every aspect of project management, even the boring parts. 

Finally, practice. If this is your first time doing project management formally, do a course, do whatever, but apply your experience and your qualifications to a mini project. During COVID, I built my fence. I did a full project management plan, overkill, obviously just to build a fence, but it allowed me to exercise my theory into practice, which helped me later on when I applied for project management roles.  

[J] Brilliant. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me Wayne. 

[W] It's a pleasure. I enjoy doing these things and helping people - It’s why I became the Project and Programme Management collective leader on Redeployable. So if anyone needs guidance at all, feel free to reach out to me at any point and we can jump on a call. 

Key Takeaways:

Networking: It’s key. Meeting people in the project management space can help you get insight into the field. And you never know, you might help land your first (or next) PM role. 

Understand your transferable skills: Your military experience gives you skills that make you stand out. t. Time management, leadership and even strategic thinking come naturally to you and make for great project managers. 

Be open to lifelong learning: Like Wayne, you might not need a formal project management qualification to succeed, but be open to it and the experiences you could gain from it. . You should also be open to smaller courses to add to your experience, so you can tackle different kinds of project management and understand which route is best for you. 

Practice: Apply your skills and knowledge to small projects, both personal and ones within your current role. This helps you get that hands-on experience and gives you the confidence to try it out on the job. 

So if you’re heading into a role in project management, then good luck. You’ve got the skill set, you just need to plan your route. If you’d like to connect with Wayne and learn more, then join the Project Management Collective on Redeployable. On there you’ll get access to veteran experts, newbies, and everyone in between - each with different experiences and perspectives that will help you in your career.