Structured to Succeed
Three Reasons to Adopt a Project Management Office in Emergency Management
This article is part of the “Project Management in Emergency Management Playbook.
How an Office of Emergency Management organizes itself to effectively prepare its organization, government, or community for disasters is a critical decision. Organizational structures, including governance frameworks and management systems, translate strategy from concept into action. Without effective structures, even well-intentioned strategies fall short of achieving intended outcomes.
Preparedness programs, in particular, are speculative by nature, as their effectiveness is often measurable only during disasters. Therefore, preparedness activities require thoughtful management to strategically allocate resources, effectively adapt to changing conditions, lessons learned, and emerging needs, and maintain accountability to stakeholders.
One proven method within emergency management—and widely used in many other industries—is establishing a Project Management Office (PMO) to guide the organization's initiatives. A PMO is a central coordinating structure that organizes, guides, and supports projects, helping emergency management offices effectively manage preparedness activities and help emergency management organizations achieve readiness objectives more reliably. This approach delivers three primary benefits that are discussed in this article.
Clearly Defined Roles and Responsibilities
Structured Project Approval (Go/No-Go Decisions)
Consistent Operating Cadence
Clearly Defined Preparedness Roles and Responsibilities
Effective preparedness management relies on three foundational functions adapted from established management methodologies across industries:
Project Management: Managing individual preparedness initiatives with clear objectives, timelines, and resources (e.g., creating an evacuation plan or conducting an active threat exercise).
Program Management: Identifying and coordinating related preparedness projects that enhance specific disaster response capabilities such as resource management, continuity of operations, community engagement, or situational awareness.
Portfolio Management: Overseeing and strategically prioritizing all preparedness programs and projects to align them with broader organizational goals. This includes resource allocation (such as staff time and budgets), balancing competing demands, guiding stakeholder attention, and maximizing overall preparedness outcomes despite ongoing and emergent requirements.
These three management layers naturally interact with each other, and the absence of any single layer means that the other layers immediately become less effective.
Portfolio management is akin to managing an entire forest, strategically deciding which areas to plant, protect, or harvest based on overall health and long-term goals..
Program management is like managing individual groves within that forest, ensuring groups of trees thrive together for shared outcomes.
Project management is like nurturing individual trees, carefully attending to each one’s specific needs and conditions.
Together, these layers ensure the ecosystem flourishes and remains resilient.
In an Office of Emergency Management, especially one with at least a few team members, these roles might practically translate as follows:
Director as Portfolio Manager: Holds overall accountability for the organization’s entire suite of capabilities, selects new staff, manages strategic stakeholder relationships, approves project priorities, and oversees budget decisions. Directors (or their Deputy Directors) often serve as the Project Executives on their team's projects.
Program Managers: Responsible for assessing and enhancing specific disaster response or recovery capabilities, identifying preparedness gaps, proposing projects, and overseeing implementation. Program Managers frequently engage with stakeholders relevant to their capabilities and may also serve as Project Managers when projects align directly with their expertise or responsibilities.
Project Managers: Deliver specific projects aligned with defined standards, resources, and timelines, maintaining detailed visibility into challenges or emerging issues.
This management structure acknowledges necessary role overlap. In many organizations, individuals often manage multiple roles simultaneously. Program Managers may also lead projects. Directors may just be a subject matter expert on projects being developed. The primary value is in establishing clarity and accountability rather than rigid separation.
Additionally, because these management methods are broadly utilized beyond public safety, emergency managers have ample opportunities to develop these critical skills. The commonality of these roles across industries also enables organizations to rapidly scale preparedness efforts by quickly incorporating surge resources rapidly when increased attention, funding, or external support becomes available.
If you’d like help turning ideas into action and projects into capabilities, learn more about how we help businesses and public sector organizations strengthen their organization's readiness before disasters, disruptions, and acts of violence.
Structured Project Approval (Go/No-Go Decisions)
A PMO approach also enables structured project approval processes with centralized planning, followed by decentralized execution. Directors, acting as portfolio managers, approve projects and allocate resources (staff and budget) to initiatives most aligned with their office's preparedness, response, and recovery objectives.
This embodies "centralized planning and decentralized execution," empowering team members to act autonomously while ensuring their efforts are in pursuit of the organization's goals.
As described in the Marine Corps’ foundational doctrine, MCDP 1: Warfighting, effective command and control relies heavily on centralized planning and decentralized execution.
Centralized planning ensures unity of effort by clearly communicating a commander’s intent and mission objectives, establishing shared understanding, and coordinating necessary resources. Decentralized execution empowers subordinate leaders to adapt quickly, using their judgment to respond effectively to dynamic and uncertain conditions on the ground.
This balance ensures that organizational actions remain strategically aligned while maintaining the flexibility essential for operational success.
For projects to move from proposal to execution, it's common to document critical elements in a project scoping document, slide, or email, typically including:
Project Leadership: Names of the Project Executive, Project Manager, and key staff assigned.
Project Description and Purpose: Clearly stated task (what needs to be accomplished) and purpose (why the project is being pursued).
Definition of "Done": The specific conditions that must exist for the Project Executive to accept the project deliverables and formally close the project.
Key Dates and Milestones: Project timelines and significant milestones coordinated across the broader portfolio.
Budget (if applicable).
Risks: Explicitly identified factors that might prevent the project's success, enabling proactive mitigation or response strategies to address these issues early.
Projects are generally proposed or mandated from two directions:
Top-Down: The director, executive team, or policy group identifies priority projects they expect to be completed in the upcoming project cycle.
Bottom-Up: Program managers propose projects to close identified capability gaps within their areas of responsibility.
Yet regardless of the pathway, final approval is always a responsibility of the Director or portfolio manager. This ensures thoughtful prioritization based on clear criteria such as urgency, anticipated project impact, alignment with available funding, political considerations, and internal capacity. Additionally, centralized approval helps balance the demands placed on stakeholders and partners across multiple programs, preventing overload and fatigue.
As an example of how portfolio, program, and project management concepts facilitate cross-industry learning opportunities, consider how venture capitalists identify and select companies to fund—projects before they enter their portfolio—outlined in this article from a venture capitalist discussing their investment evaluation approach: The Four Pillars of Venture Investing
Finally, while decentralization empowers individual team members and project managers, accountability mechanisms—such as regular project check-ins and progress reporting—ensure that project execution remains aligned with the broader strategic direction. This balanced empowerment fosters both agility and accountability as projects are completed and as organizations advance their readiness.
Provides a Consistent Operating Cadence Through Portfolio Reviews
A third key benefit of a PMO is the establishment of a systematic preparedness operating cadence through regularly scheduled portfolio reviews. Once projects have been approved and initiated, these recurring sessions provide Directors with regular visibility into the ongoing progress of all active projects, without resorting to micromanagement or random check-ins.
Portfolio reviews typically occur monthly or at key intervals (such as week three of a six-week project cycle). During the review, Project Managers brief the leadership team on critical aspects of their projects, including:
Project Goals and Scope: Restating the original purpose, intended outcomes, and identified risks to ensure projects stay focused and prevent unintended scope creep or shifting expectations.
Schedule: Progress against the originally defined timeline.
Staffing: Clarifying who is assigned, their roles within the project, and their general level of commitment to the project.
Budget: Current financial status compared to the original plan.
Completed Work and Next Steps: Clearly outlining recent achievements and upcoming objectives.
Issues and Support Needs: Highlighting challenges or barriers encountered, along with requests for support or decisions from leadership to address them.
This structured approach enables early identification and resolution of challenges, with the Director holding clear decision-making authority. Additionally, it provides Directors, especially in smaller offices, with a systematic method to temporarily surge resources into projects during critical events like exercises, large-scale meetings, or urgent planning sessions, ensuring team members receive timely support without undue strain.
Further, this cadence promotes organizational agility, allowing swift adaptation to new priorities or unexpected demands. Rather than adding tasks haphazardly, the structured review explicitly manages workload balance, with Directors making informed decisions on task reassignment or timelines.
Portfolio reviews also capture continuous learning, directly informing future strategic and operational planning. Insights gained from each session—including successes, challenges, and solutions—can directly inform future preparedness planning, help refine strategic direction, and strengthen organizational capabilities over time.
Ultimately, the PMO’s structured operating cadence provides the predictability, adaptability, and clarity necessary for sustained preparedness, responsive resource management, and effective project execution.
In Closing
Adopting a PMO structure offers emergency management offices the organizational clarity essential to navigating uncertainty and frequent shifts in priorities. Rather than continually reacting to urgent but disconnected demands, a PMO empowers offices to remain agile yet focused, strategically adapting as new information and emergent needs arise
By clearly defining roles, establishing project approval processes, and maintaining a regular operating cadence, the PMO framework creates an environment of calm, intentional action—replacing reactionary firefighting with the deliberate pursuit of prioritized objectives. In doing so, it empowers project managers and staff to innovate, fully develop, and successfully complete projects aligned with organizational goals. Ultimately, offices that embrace the PMO approach position themselves not only to enhance preparedness but also to achieve greater organizational resilience and lasting effectiveness.