When the doors to King’s Cross station opened in 1852, it would have been impossible to imagine that 47m people a year would one day pass through them.

Now, a £500m redevelopment of the station is well under way and Bruce Kirk-patrick is proud to be a part of it. He is the project manager for Network Rail’s restoration of the train shed roof and refur-bishment of the platforms. He is in charge of a team of 24, two groups of contractors and a budget of about £100m.

“It’s an incredibly challenging project,” he said. “I have to consider the stakeholders, the contractors and the public, so I have to plan my jobs before I even think about putting a spade in the ground, but it’s what gets me out of bed.

“To think that in five years’ time I can walk through that station and think my team built that – I can put my name to it – is an inspiring feeling.”

It’s this kind of job satisfaction that is making project management such a fast-grow-ing area. A recent review of the industry by Arras People, a project-management specialist, estimated that there are now almost 80,000 project managers in the UK, with salaries of between £45,000 and £65,000, and with top earners taking home about £100,000.

With The Apprentice still fresh in our minds, the title project manager may feel familiar but what exactly does it mean? Lindsay Scott, a director of Arras People, said: “A project manager is the person who directs a team to get a job done in a controlled manner using the best tools and processes available.”

It is a role that has evolved into a profession in its own right recently with the development of industry-backed qualifications and formally recognised methodologies.

As yet there is no accredited body, though the Association for Project Management is applying for that status. But one of the surest indicators of the role’s validity as a career path is the seriousness with which employers are taking the recruitment of top project managers.

At Network Rail the skills of staff members such as Kirk-patrick are so crucial that last year it offered 70 recruits the opportunity to study for an MSc in project management. They attend either University College London or Warwick University before going on to a job in one of its big projects.

Adrian Thomas, head of resourcing at Network Rail, said: “The scheme is part of the major investment in our railways over the coming decade. “We’ve got £35 billion to spend over the next five years so we have decided to invest in training people in the skills most relevant to what we are planning.

“These recruits will get academic instruction in the project-management tools they will need throughout their careers, as well as exposure to real projects. The vast majority of our first-year intake willstart jobs with us in September.”

Academic qualifications in project management are a fairly recent development but they are growing in popularity. Leeds Metropolitan University offers a degree and it has seen its undergraduate intake double this year.

Nigel Smith, the university’s senior lecturer in project management, said: “The great thing about studying project management at undergraduate or postgraduate level is that you know you will go on to use about 90% of what you learn.

“I was a mechanical engineer and a designer before I became a project manager but I understand the discipline much better now I’ve examined it academically. Our graduates go on to work in areas as diverse as IT, finance, engineering, construction and local government.”

Ian Molyneux, 22, is on the postgraduate project-manage-ment course at Leeds Met and has benefited from the flexibility of the industry. After a first degree in architecture, an area hard hit by the recession, he has now secured a job as a project manager for a computer science company. He will take it up as soon as he graduates in September.

“If I hadn’t taken this decision I would have been unable to find a job at all,” he said. “But studying project management has enabled me to make a sideways move into IT, which has been less affected by the economic downturn. It’s everything I want in a job. I like working under pressure, working with people and constantly getting new projects. There’s always going to be change and you are always developing and seeing new things.”

But the graduate route isn’t the only option for prospective project managers. Before it became a degree choice, many people got into the profession by being in a managerial role and being given a project as an additional responsibility.

Secondments are a particularly good way for those already established in their careers to develop their project management skills and, while many sectors are still battling the pressures of the economic downturn, there is one project that simply has to go ahead – the London Olympics.

John Nicholson of the Olympic Delivery Authority is project manager for the aquatics centre and said the games will present countless opportunities for project managers at all levels.

“We are a fair way down the line of delivering infrastructure now,” he said, “but there is still an enormous event to stage and there will be myriad opportunities available, from managing the installation of temporary structures to running events and overseeing security.

“And as stress levels rise the closer we get to 2012, the more need there will be for project managers who can steady the ship.

“There will also be a huge amount of work beyond the games as the site is converted into facilities that will be part of the Olympic legacy and there is no more exciting project you could wish to be part of.”

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