The School of Innovation, Design and Engineering (IDT) at Mälardalen University (MDH), Sweden, has built its research environment in cooperation with industry by funding from external sources. As the number of research project has increased, the challenge to run and manage the projects is increasing. To allow researchers to focus on research rather than project management, IDT has invested in training for professional project management and designated the department for research coordination (RECO) to be the project management office (PMO), providing professional project management to research projects. RECO are now carriers of experience between different projects. RECO project managers, however, are not experts in the research conducted at the school, which is a challenge. Nevertheless, the combination of excellent research and professional project management is a success factor when it comes to handling the large portfolio of complex projects within the school. This session will present a survey among Swedish PMO, and set it in relief to how MDH improve productivity and quality in research management by adding project management competencies to the research environment at the university.