licence for MS project not propogating from template to VMs invirtual pool

Some software creates a license key based on your computer's hardware (like your motherboard) as an extra layer of security, including Windows 10 and Office.

https://video2.skills-academy.com/en-us/deployoffice/vlactivation/activate-office-by-using-mak

Each Office activation that uses MAK counts toward the activation limit. After Office is activated, no re-activation is required unless the hardware changes significantly.

This causes the issue with activation that you see when you create a new VM as the current hardware does not match the hardware of the VM it was activated on (and use caution here, as each activation counts towards the limit).

There is a cloud license for Microsoft Project available that should work (per user rather than per activation), and I would talk to sales to confirm that this will work for what you need:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/project/compare-microsoft-project-management-software