It started with someone who learns by doing.

A practical person, learning a profession

In 2025, Ellis Davis was studying project management. Ellis is a practical person. He's always learned best by doing the work, getting it reviewed by someone who knows, and improving from there.

The theory side of his studies was well catered for, with good material and good self-assessment available. What he wanted alongside it was the practical side: a way to log what he was actually doing on real work, see how it measured up, and have someone experienced look at the evidence rather than just the exam result.

He started tracking his own progress that way, and it worked. He reckoned other people would want the same thing. With the backing of Nina Davis, now our majority shareholder, he set out to make it happen.

A conversation that became a plan

Through family and friends, Ellis was introduced to Lou Hawkes. Lou had spent years in training and accreditation, and she knew what it takes for learning to be properly designed, fairly assessed and recognised. They started talking about course content, and the conversation quickly got bigger.

They went out to project professionals they knew and asked how they'd judge whether someone was genuinely good at the job. The answers kept coming back to the same thing: knowing the theory matters, but so does showing you can apply it. So they set out to build a competency framework from that practical experience, with theory and practical review sitting side by side.

Building the team

A professional body needs more than a good idea, so they went looking for people who had done it before.

The first to join was a chartered specialist with long experience of building and running professional institutions, who gave the institute a structure that could stand up to scrutiny. Craig Melhuish and Russell Shanley, both chartered, brought the framework and the course content, written from careers spent delivering projects as well as thinking about them. Ian Watson brought the industry connection, and Carl French joined Ellis on testing and customer experience.

With that team in place, the pieces came together:

• The bodyThe Institute of Project Professionals (IPP), a professional body with membership grades from Student through to Fellow
• The standardThe IPP Competency Framework, eight areas, 44 elements and five proficiency levels, written by practitioners
• PlanningA planning framework, built and refined through review with practising planners, so planning professionals get the same theory and practical review side by side
• January 2026Activate launched, offering assessed qualifications from Award to Practitioner Certificate
• March 2026Calibrate launched, the tool Ellis had wanted from the start, where people profile themselves against the framework, build evidence from real work and have it reviewed

Learning doesn't stop at a qualification

Professionals have to keep learning, and keep proving it. In June 2026 we launched Educate: short CPD courses, each mapped to the competency framework, so time spent learning shows up against the skills it develops.

Proving it in the workplace

Module Six Ltd was incorporated in July 2026 to bring it all under one roof, and Mercury 3 joined us as our founding partner.

A framework built on practical review has to be tested where the work actually happens. Through Ian, Mercury 3 brought their own project professionals on board to do exactly that, using the framework and the tools on live work and telling us honestly what holds up and what doesn't.

The team grew as the work did, and the last to join was Tom Hollis, who leads marketing and brought the experience to take what had been built out to the people it was built for. Between them, the team covers delivery, training, accreditation, governance, industry, customer experience, technology and marketing, and we draw on that expertise across every part of Module Six, from how a framework element is worded to how a product reaches a customer.

Listening to customers

While talking competency with one of our customers, a different problem came up. Project skills were one thing, but on a working site people also need the right tickets, cards and clearances, in date, before they can start. Most organisations were tracking that in spreadsheets and hoping nothing lapsed.

That conversation became Validate, launched in September 2026. It manages operational competence and authority to work, so a supervisor can see in seconds whether someone is cleared for the job in front of them.

What's next

Candidate is built and in early access, helping people take their record with them as their career moves.

It all still comes back to where Ellis started: learn the theory, prove it in practice, and keep a record that's evidenced and yours.

The people behind Module Six

Module Six is led by a founding team of shareholders, each bringing hands-on experience from their own part of the profession.