Nicoline Mulder is an independent consultant and founder of the ‘Mulder Projectmanagement’ consultancy. She studied Technical Management at the Technical University of Eindhoven where she is currently doing her PhD. She also obtained a Master’s degree in Work and Organisational Psychology from the Dutch Open University. These studies logically led her to the training and consultancy domain, more specifically to project management. From the start, she primarily advised organisations on aspects of project management. She was the managing director, programme manager, and one of the management consultants of a management training agency where she, in addition to her managerial tasks, developed and delivered training programmes, among which courses in project management, project communication, running a project team, and how to communicate with the client. Since 2001 she runs her own consultancy firm, allowing organisations to benefit from her personal views on project management, in particular those that are more technically oriented. Nicoline specialises in training and developing the skills of project managers and other project staff, both at the personal and the interpersonal level.

As a PhD candidate at the Technical University of Eindhoven and under the supervision of Mathieu Weggeman, for the past 18 months she has been involved in designing an evidence-based approach to project management.

She is the author of various articles and three books, the latter entitled ‘De Kleine Prinses’ (2008), ‘Help, ik heb een opdrachtgever (2005)’ and ‘Als de projectmanager gaat communiceren’ (2003).

In her  vision, the work, thought and creative processes that go into project management should always take their cue from and be guided throughout by the key values of the organisation. It is her view that when a project manages to capture the essence of an organisation, this will always improve project outcome, but this does warrant a continued focus on the client’s expectations. If client and contractor entertain a trusting relationship, there will be ample room for creativity, growth and conscientiousness. Project yields will increasingly fit in better with the stakeholder’s wishes and inspire change, with the project manager playing an active but integral part in the project’s ecology. In this project management  ‘new style’ top-down supervision and control become less prominent while attention to aesthetics can grow. ‘Smart  project management’, is the term Nicoline has coined for this new approach.