Simulation of Proposal Evaluation Activities in a Regional Operational Programme Vassilis C. Gerogiannis, Kleanthis Sirakoulis and Pandelis G. Ipsilandis Department of Project Management, School of Business and Economics, Technological Education Institute of Larissa, Larissa, 41110, Greece ABSTRACT The Regional Operating Programme of Thessalia (ROP-Th) is one of the 24 operational programmes (13 regional and 11 area specific) funded by the 3rd European Community Support Framework (CSF), the aim of which is to reduce the gap in economic development between Greece and the other member states of the European Union. The total budget of the CSF dedicated to the ROP of Thessalia is almost 1 billion euros. Administration of the ROP-Th is the main duty of the Programme Managing Authority (PMA), a public regional authority which is responsible to proclaim, evaluate and monitor hundred of projects that implement the ROP’s objectives and priorities. This paper presents a simulation model to support the PMA in order to perform management and scheduling decisions on initial ROP’s purchasing activities (i.e., setting-up calls for proposals, proposals receipt and eligibility checks, proposals evaluation and generation of contracts). The objective of the simulation model is to help PMA management to exploit efficiently all involved human resources (proposal evaluators) in the evaluation process by correlating simulated data with actual data based on the programme history. Simulation can be applied to estimate delays and identify, in quantified terms, the effects of re-engineering the purchasing process. Keywords: Business Process Simulation, Programme Management, Project Management. 1. INTRODUCTION The Regional Operating Programme of Thessalia (ROP-Th) is one of the 24 operational programmes (13 regional and 11 area specific) funded by the 3rd Community Support Framework (CSF) the aim of which is to reduce the gap in economic development between Greece and the other member states of the European Union. Its priorities focus on investment in natural, human and knowledge resources. While the main priorities of this development programme were defined in cooperation with the European Commission, the selection of projects and their management are solely the responsibility of the Greek national and regional authorities. According to the implementation provisions, a programme managing authority (PMA) has been designated and operates at each region in Greece. PMA is responsible for informing potential beneficiaries, select the projects and generally monitor programme implementation. The ROP-Th has a total budget of almost 1 billion euros for the period 2002-2006 and it is divided into 5 main axes of action (sub-programmes), which are further divided into a total of 37 measures (Figure 1): productive environment (sub-programme 1), integrated rural development (sub-programme 2), quality of life (sub-programme 3), exploitation of the region's central geographic position and promotion of the region as a "network junction" (sub-programme 4), and development of human resources (sub-programme 5). The total budget of the CSF dedicated to the ROP-Th involves community support funds (563,38 million euros), investment funds from the public sector (187,79 million euros) and funds from the private sector (177,66 million euros), creating total resources of 928,66 million euros [8]. Programme’s structural funds mainly finance improvement of the region's transport connections, rural development, business competitiveness, environment and urban development. The PMA is responsible for managing the operational programme and the on-going evaluation of projects. Potential beneficiaries of each programme, both in the public and private sector of the economy submit their proposals, following a public call for expression of interest. Projects are approved by the PMA after a selection and evaluation process. During the first two years of the programme operation 378 projects were selected and they are currently at different stages of progress. This paper presents ongoing activities of a project that aims to develop and deploy information technology tools within the case context of the PMA. In particular, the project aims to introduce a business process simulation approach in order to specify and monitor: (i) call preparation, setting-up and announcement of calls for proposals for all sub-programme measures, (ii) proposals registration, eligibility control, evaluation and generation of contracts and (iii) management of the programme implementation and monitoring of projects’ results. Generally speaking, information technology tools and techniques apply to logistics, manufacturing, commercial, administrative, procurement, workforce planning and project management operations of today’s corporations to improve throughput, minimise production-cycle times, reduce the number of resources and costs without effecting quality of provided services [7, 9]. Numerous of these tools offer the possibility of exploit the benefits of simulation techniques [4]. The emphasis within organizations is to become more process oriented and to focus on core business processes [2]. This has led to an increased interest in modelling and simulating business processes. Advantages of business process simulation (also referred to as discrete-event simulation) include the visualisation and performance analysis of complex processes and the possibility to quantitatively examine alternative scenarios for a process execution [6]. As far as the project management field is concerned, discrete-event simulation can be used either in simulating the project product or the project implementation in terms of time, cost, human resources and other parameters. In addition, application areas of simulation include project management training and education. The reader is referred to [3] for a recent survey. One of the outcomes from this research project is a simulation model which helps in investigating potential benefits by applying different manpower management and operational procedures during the proposal evaluation process of the ROP- Th. The project followed a systematic step-by-step approach [5, 10]: (i) review, identify and map PMA proposal evaluation