The paper discusses emerging professionalism issues in project management in Australia, in the context of the experiences of the Australian Institute of Project Management in developing project-management competency standards, together with processes for the certification/registration of project managers, and a reference curriculum for Australian project-management courses. In particular, the relationship between these issues and an associated project-management body of knowledge (pmbok) is explored. While the paper is essentially a progress report, it draws attention to the distinction between performance-based and attribute-based inference of competence, and it discusses how a pmbok which is based on units and elements of competency standards, and has appropriate study-guide references, has a place in the attribute-based inference of competence.