The Earthquake and Project Management

Protezione civile, i.e. Civil Protection, the Italian government agency that handles disasters and mass events, has had to face a number of emergencies over the last decade, from earthquakes and floods to the Pope's funeral. How is Civil Protection capable of managing these huge events and the people affected by them? The answer is relevant for all those firms organizing the management of projects, which are relatively autonomous structures having defined objectives and time-horizons. The shortening of product lifecycle, the growing complexity of organizations and the need to manage frequent changes in them have contributed to the spread of this flexible, but often problematic, organizational form. A critical aspect concerns the mechanisms in place for the accumulation of knowledge and the sedimentation and spread of learning. The lack of continuity between one project and the next makes the transfer of the lessons learned in project management particularly complex.

In our research study, conducted in collaboration with Andrea Prencipe of Università G. D'Annunzio, we examined how Civil Protection keeps track of its organizational memory in handling disasters and other emergencies, leaving enough room for organizational flexibility so that it can adapt to each specific situation. The first element is the continuity of the roles which individuals are called to fill and which remain stable for each event category. The stability of the role system enables Civil Protection to develop skills and competencies through the professional experience of each individual called to take on a given role.

The second mechanism is a career system which allows to develop competencies across various roles and build a common background of professional experience having several counterparts in other local and national organizations periodically involved in the management of emergencies. These networks of relations based on shared professional experiences contribute to maintaining continuity across projects and are fundamental to nurture the inter-organizational coordination capacity needed to re-utilize and effectively adapt operational procedures. Procedures constitute the last element in the organizational memory of Civil Protection. Differently from what one might expect, these are extremely lean, insofar as they are checklists of elements to be dealt with expeditiously and outputs to be produced on time. However, these procedures are integrated in output archives that keep track of the procedures implemented in previous emergencies, a form of project database that can be retrieved when needed. The solution for a new emergency is developed partly combining and partly varying on the outputs developed in previous situations identified as sharing similar features.

The experience of Civil Protection suggests that defeating project amnesia requires an integrated approach. Hard organizational memory provides input that supports the problem-solving process of individuals within an appropriate career system that empowers each person to develop skills and networks of relations. This creates a basis of continuity and condensed experience that enables creative adaptation in the management of the specifics of each project.