Case study: the Milan Expo

Organisations often group projects together when they have similar aims or objectives. Grouping these projects together to make p rogrammes also has the advantage of making them more efficient to manage.

You will now examine the example of the Milan 2015 Expo to see programme management in practice. The Expo (or exposition) is a World Fair celebrating innovation and achievement by various world nations. The World Expo is held every five years. The city of Milan in Italy hosted the event from 1 May to 31 October 2015.

The organisers of the Milan 2015 Expo divided it into two sub-programmes. One of the programmes was a group of direct projects and the other was a group of indirect projects.

Direct projects

The organisers formed a programme of direct projects because all the individual projects shared common outcomes and objectives. They were also directly connected with the planning of the event. Direct projects were under the responsibility of Expo S.P.A (a limited company) and included infrastructural work for:

• preparing and constructing the site where they would host the event

• connecting the site to the territory by providing transport infrastructure and services to facilitate access to the main Expo site

• raising Milan’s accommodation capability for participants, and corporate and individual clients

• improving communication and technology.

Indirect projects

The projects in the indirect programme were grouped together because these were not immediately connected with hosting the Expo, but were influenced by the event being hosted.

When Milan applied to host the event, these indirect projects were not included in the budget costings. Indeed, some of the projects were already in progress. These indirect projects were funded from capital not directly related to the Expo. In the documents proposing Milan as a host city, these types of projects were described as connected with the Expo but not dependent upon the event. Examples of these projects included the construction of the underground and highways. These indirect projects were not under the control of the Expo organisation but were funded and managed by a separate society.

Analysis: the Milan Expo

In academic literature, there has been much discussion about a universal definition of a programme. It has been suggested that the one provided by the Project Management Institute is sometimes too narrow.

An alternative definition of a programme is:

The Milan Expo 2015 conforms to this definition as it was comprised of a series of projects which were planned, executed and managed appropriately in order to reach the deadline established. All these sub-projects were related, because if one of them was not accomplished, the whole success of the event could be jeopardised. Furthermore, the projects were managed all together by a structured organisation: Expo Milano S.P.A.

The organisers of the Milan Expo 2015 did not execute the sub-projects themselves. Instead, they selected and appointed specialist sub-contractors through a bidding phase and they put the sub-contractors in charge of realising all the necessary infrastructure.

In this case, the organisers deliberately limited their level of control to managing the interface between sub-projects. They did not focus too deeply on the control of a single activity or work package. The reasons for this are twofold:

1. The subcontractor relationship

The realisation of a single task is delegated to the subcontractor, not to the main organisation. Therefore, strict and direct control could be difficult to manage and could cause difficulty in the relationship with the subcontractor. Having close and direct control over a partner is, in fact, more critical than in a single organisation. This is because the relationships between partners are more formal and structured, meaning this level of control can be seen as too invasive.

2. The scale of activity

Due to the huge number of activities involved in a programme, it seems logical that the organisation in charge of managing an exposition (which is similar to the top level management in a normal enterprise) works on aggregate data. They prioritise the realisation of the entire sub-project instead of managing directly the execution of a single task.

Please refer to the glossary to check any terminology you are unfamiliar with: Glossary of Project Management Terms

Coming up....

In the next section you will learn about the challenges of programme management.