VOL 87 | FEB 2026
Our People, Our Strength
Getting to know Mel Sykes
What are the key challenges and opportunities you anticipate and how do you plan to overcome these? My PMs are required to manage open and honest customer communication which can be challenging where timelines or quality expectations are not met by the Company. At the same time, PMO needs to ensure the wider business fully understands the resulting commercial impact of customer dissatisfaction, such as delayed payments or financial damages. From an opportunity perspective, our pipeline is looking extremely favourable. The initial ‘win’ of T26 (Royal Navy) has led to an impending batch two award (4 additional RN Frigates) and discussions have commenced for Batch 3 (Norwegian Navy). In addition, the initial T26 contract led to the Australian T26 award with batch two being priced. All other deliverables (MCMV, Ancilia, MTATS, AW Ships, LSAP) are well placed for follow on contracts. As PMO, we need to evolve, remain flexible, and develop to adapt to these challenges and opportunities. I am confident that as a team, we are well set to do this. What are your core leadership principles? /How do you motivate and inspire your team? I see leadership principles and team motivation sitting hand in hand. Feedback is essential both good and bad. I need my team to feel motivated and have trust in me. We must celebrate the wins and learn from the times that have not gone so well. I often must remind myself that you cannot boil the ocean – giving the team clear and concise goals to achieve is essential. I am a true believer that you must lead by example – there is nothing worse than a team member not understanding what their manager wants of them. How do you foster a positive and productive work environment? I want my team to enjoy what they do and appreciate the bigger goal of enabling capability to create a safer world. I make every effort to engage with the team outside the work environment – It is important that the team appreciates that what they do makes a difference. Chess is a relatively small company but plays a key role across a wide range of defence capability to an extremely varied customer base. We should all be proud of what we do.
What are your main
responsibilities? I am responsible to the Chess Maritime customers to ensure that our contracted deliverables are with the customer on time. As a line manager of four Project Managers, I function as a point of escalation for both internal and external stakeholders.
Can you describe a typical day in your current role? My day can be extremely varied; there are no 2 days alike – there are customer meetings daily throughout the programme. I try to prioritise and support areas in which I see issues realising/arising – I simply cannot attend them all. The customers are extremely varied, it is not unusual to attend calls with French, Italian, Spanish, Australian, Malaysian, Indonesian, Dutch, Belgian and Danish stakeholders!! Sometimes 4 or 5 on the same day. How do you see the company evolving in the next 3-5 years? I have been with Chess just over a year now – I am sure everyone will agree that in that short time, there have been some significant changes (to say the least). I genuinely believe the company is now well set to face the challenges that the world is currently experiencing. In a previous life, I spent 28 years in the military – whilst there have been conflicts throughout that time, I do not think that we have seen such volatile activity so close to home as we are experiencing now. The so what of this is that all allies are increasing their military capability and Chess need to be ready, in all respects, to support existing and new customer requirements.
marketing@chess-dynamics.com
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