Robbins-Gioia rekindles program management

Robbins-Gioia LLC last month announced a products-and-services offering designed to help organizations create enterprise program management offices (EPMOs) that suit their needs.

Such an office acts as a central point of contact and oversight for an agency's enterprisewide programs and projects.

"Program management has always been a core offering [for the company], but has never been 'productized' before," said Patricia Davis-Muffett, vice president of marketing at Robbins-Gioia. "This pulls together an offering to build an EPMO for our clients."

The company can help clients build such an office in one of three ways:

n By assessing an existing office or evaluating organizationwide practices.

n By establishing an enterprise program management office in a small to midsize organization in which a single office can handle all initiatives.

n By creating a full enterprise program management office to help larger organizations tie together their program management infrastructures.

Prices start at $50,000 for the first option, $500,000 for the second and $750,000 for the third.

"For an EPMO to be successful, it has to be institutionalized," said Laura Nash, a vice president at Robbins-Gioia. For this to happen, "we find we have to mentor the staff to get them up to speed and get people used to doing things in a new and repeatable way."

More federal agencies are embracing the idea of an enterprise program management office, Nash said. "The reason we're seeing this increase is that agencies are being held more accountable."

For instance, the Customs Service developed an EPMO to oversee its 10-year modernization effort, she said.

Robbins-Gioia is well-positioned in the market, according to Anna Danilenko, a program manager in IDC's consulting services program. "One of the competitive advantages is they are project management experts," she said.

Although the Robbins-Gioia announcement has an element of marketing and repackaging, the company's competitors are likely to follow suit with their own offerings, Danilenko said. "I think the company could be considered a market-maker."