Introduction

Planet is the largest Greek consultancy with more than 18 Million Euros of annual revenue. A member of Sesma, Planet has been strongly involved in the organization of the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens. Christos Giannakopoulos, President, Managing Director and co-founder of Planet tells us about this exceptional project in the history of his consultancy

Mr Giannakopoulos, you are the President of Planet, a consultancy we talked about in our columns when you bought Ernst & Young a few years ago, and I remember that I issued a headline that read «Planet takes over Ernst & Young in the Balkans». It seems that the consultancy has very well developed since then.

Christos Giannakopoulos : Absolutely. We are now about 150 people some of whom remain from Ernst & Young, the East Europe branch of which we acquired in 2001. Basically our activity is splitted in 4 service lines:

- First the Management Consulting Services;
- then the IT Consulting Services;
- third the Development Consulting Services which encompass the technical
assistance to governments and public services to develop policies, define
investment programmes and manage them in relation with the European
Commission Directorates, as well as Europeaid support for 3rd countries and
the community support framework programme for the Member States.
- and finally we have a last service line named Engineering Management
Services for the provision of services regarding infrastructure projects such as
roads, buildings etc.

Having a remarkable track record in the successful implementation of large scale projects in the area, covering a wide range of expertise and providing our clients with integrated services under our strong brand name of PLANET makes us attractive partners for international players-leaders in their markets- that are interested in activating in Greece and the Southeastern Europe. The consortium we built with KBR strongly involved in the preparation of the Olympic Games in Athens is an example of our international alliances with key players.

May we have an idea of what you have been involved in?

Christos Giannakopoulos: We have primarily been involved in ATHOC, the Athens Organizing Committee for the Olympics 2004 with which we had 3 big contracts worth 10 millions Euros over 3 years and covering first the Monitoring of the Transportation Project (roads, tramway, airbound railway...) with Halliburton as a main partner; secondly the Monitoring of the Olympic Village (construction, timing...); and third the Monitoring of the Media Village implementation.

Did you also have responsibilities at the national government level?

Christos Giannakopoulos : Right. We have been involved in the Ministry of Public Works on a big contract worth 8 Millions Euros over 3 years for Managing the Implementation of 6 Stadia for Athletic venues. We have also been involved in a support to the Ministry of Public Order. Our involvement included the Design, and Scheduling of the Security System. ..
Finally we were involved in the project management of a large scale project of ISAP aiming at the renovation and organisation of the Airbound Railway.

Was Athens as a town directly involved in the process of preparation?

Christos Giannakopoulos: Yes and we have been working directly with the Municipality of Athens for the Monitoring of the Preparation of the City hosting the Olympic Games (define roles, schedules, manage value, clearing, improvement...) and for the «General Planning», a very important task!

So we can understand that all of this took 3 years. How did it impact your consultancy activity?

Christos Giannakopoulos: First of all it led to a significant increase of our revenues in the Engineering Management Services Branch. It also enhanced our expertise and experience in project management of large scale projects of significance complexity, gave us the opportunity to strengthen our international alliances with key players and strengthened our leadership not only in the home market, but in the broader geographical area as well.
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A quarter of your activity is to disappear after the Games. So how do you see the future?

Christos Giannakopoulos: We have had the feeling of this nearly one year ago so we have prepared ourselves to enter other markets, namely South Eastern Europe: Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia & the rest West Balkans. We do plan to have a bureau in these many different countries, so that our activity in them will be locally supported and also have a local presence, since we do not see these markets in an opportunistic basis but under a long-term orientation as an extension of our home market. We have had similar project in the aforementioned countries in the past too but now we do implement a much more systematic approach. We identify all the projects that cover our interests from an early stage, we know the environment and special conditions of each country, we have recognised the local & international “big players” on each of them and we have started establishing stable relationships with them. Furthermore, we have created a network of collaborating experienced international & local experts, we have trained ourselves so that we have a “winning” proposal strategy for each project and thus we are expecting several projects in the region till the end of the year and in the coming years. The results up to now are quite positive, given that only in 2004 we have already won as leaders of strong international consortia 4 international projects, the total budget of which exceed the amount of 8 million Euros. I hope that in a following conversation of us we will have the chance to say more about this activity of ours, as well as our business goals and achievements in all business areas of ours.

Words collected by Bertrand Villeret
ConsultingNewsLine
Athens Astir Palace Vouliagmeni 22 October 2004