Capital of Finland, The City of Helsinki, provides services to its nearly 666,000 citizens in many different areas of life. From healthcare to urban planning, from schools to urban transportation and housing to metropolitan infrastructure, not forgetting the ever-growing range of digital services. Many of these duties are the responsibility of the Urban Development Division of the City of Helsinki.

The Urban Environment Division runs over 100 projects in its development portfolios, in addition to numerous construction and infrastructure projects. Involving, in one way or another, most of its 1,700 staff, as well as a large number of commercial partners, suppliers and subcontractors.

There is a steady shift going on towards “projecfication” also in the public municipal organisations, and project management has become a true profession.  Projects, portfolio management and even management by projects have risen up to the agenda of senior management in the City of Helsinki. The leadership is showing firm support for developing Project Management Culture in the Urban Environment Division.

The project management processes have a solid foundation, and good standard methods and structures. The enthusiasm of the staff at the Urban Environment Division and the good ground for development inspired the search for a good tool or methodology that would provide both a clear snapshot of strengths and a vision of key areas for improvement.

The PMO function in Urban Environment Division is developing hand in hand with the exploitation of the results of the IPMA Delta® assessment. The key team in driving the implementation of the results of the IPMA Delta® Assessment are the PMO builders: Mrs. Elsa Paasilinna, Head of Digitalisation and Development Services, Mr. Mikael Eklöf, Head of PMO unit and Mr. Juho Taskinen, Head of Network Management Unit and Mrs. Tia Kokkonen. PMO Development Manager.
Leadership support is ensured through close cooperation and sponsorship of the senior management, Executive Director Mr. Ville Lehmuskoski and Administrative Director Mrs. Silja Hyvärinen.

“The IPMA Delta® assessment was an excellent fit for our situation. It allowed us to gather a huge amount of information and insights from project professionals in our organisation. The highly experienced IPMA Delta® assessors analysed and summarised a large amount of information into a useful and usable format on us to base our PP&PM development. The IPMA Delta® analysis did not (fortunately :-)) produce any major surprises. Instead, it helped us to structure many of the cause-and-effect relationships in our PM activities and to see the “Forest for the Trees”. We understand that the IPMA Delta® assessment is only the starting point for the next steps in our development. However, IPMA Delta® offers a very steady ground to build on. The assessment results really help and guide us to take new steps forward, based on the suggestions for development and road-map that we have received from IPMA Delta® assessment.”

IPMA Delta® assessment at the Urban Development Division of the City of Helsinki was organised by Project Management Professionals Finland (PRY), Led by Dr Reinhard Wagner as the Lead Assessor, Mr Jarkko Stenfors as co-assessor and Mr Joxi Kaaja as the IPMA Delta® Manager.

The on-site visits were performed on November 2022 at Urban Environment Division headquarters in Helsinki, Finland.

The Urban Development Division of the City of Helsinki was granted The IPMA Delta® Competence Class 2 Defined certificate (“There are defined PM standards, structures and processes in place which are partially applied in the organisation”).

Written by:
Joxi Kaaja,
IPMA Delta Manager
Project Professionals Finland