PROGRAM MANAGEMENT
Managing Complex Programs in PACE: Structure, Hierarchy, and Budget Control
How program-level orchestration transforms multi-project delivery – from unified governance to flexible financial control.
When an organization wins a major contract, a product launch, or a large capital initiative, the challenge quickly outgrows what individual project management can handle. Multiple teams, shared budgets, consolidated reporting, and cross-functional dependencies create a level of complexity that isolated projects – no matter how well managed – cannot absorb.
PACE Programs were built for exactly this reality. This is the first of two posts walking through how the Programs feature works in practice, using the LA28 Olympics build-out as a concrete example throughout.
01 When Projects Aren’t Enough
As organizations grow, individual projects become parts of a larger story.
A product launch spans engineering, marketing, legal, and logistics – all moving at once.
An infrastructure contract covers roads, venues, and utilities under a single master agreement. Managing these as isolated projects creates duplicated overhead, siloed budgets, and blind-spot risk.
PACE Programs solve this by providing a strategic container – a single governance layer that sits above related projects and connects everything that belongs together: team, clients, agreements, funding, documents, and a unified budget.
Everything visible. Nothing slipping through the cracks between projects.
A program isn’t just a folder of projects. It’s a governance layer that gives leadership real-time visibility without micromanaging each team.
LA28 OLYMPICS – IN PRACTICE
A large Engineering and Construction firm wins the contract for the LA28 Olympics build-out. The overall contract – worth hundreds of millions of dollars – spans venues, infrastructure, and logistics across Los Angeles. In PACE, this entire body of work becomes a single Program. Each discrete component becomes an individual Project underneath it: Transportation Roads, Transportation Rail, Cricket Stadium, Cycling Velodrome, Swimming Centre, Main Ceremony and Athletics Stadium, Athlete Village, Field Hockey Stadium, and Promotions and Decorations.
02 How a Program Is Organized
At its core, a Program in PACE is a hub that holds everything needed to run a strategic initiative. Projects inside it inherit program context but retain their own work breakdown structure, timelines, and delivery ownership.
Each project appears as a top-level node in the program’s WBS and expands into its own full work breakdown structure.
This creates a seamless drill-down experience – from program summary to individual task level – without context-switching between separate tools.
A Program Director reviewing the WBS sees the whole picture.
A project manager drills into their own scope without navigating away.
The structure flows in a clear hierarchy:
- Program – the strategic container and governance layer
- Projects – discrete workstreams, each with their own WBS and delivery ownership
- WBS Tasks – individual activities, milestones, and deliverables within each project
This hierarchy is what makes program-level reporting possible without manual consolidation. PACE aggregates upward automatically – from task to project to program – so leadership always has an accurate, current view at whatever level they need.
LA28 OLYMPICS – IN PRACTICE
In the LA28 program, the WBS top level shows the Program itself. One level down are the nine projects. Each project then expands into its own full WBS: civil works tasks, procurement milestones, commissioning activities, and handover deliverables. A Program Director reviewing the WBS sees the whole picture. The Roads Project Manager drills into their project without navigating away from the tool.
03 Two Approaches to Budget Control
One of the most powerful aspects of PACE Programs is flexible budgeting. Organizations can choose between two fundamentally different approaches depending on how financial targets are set – and both are fully supported within the same program structure.
For contract programs, budgeting tracks both cost and revenue simultaneously, reflecting the dual financial obligation of delivering work within cost while meeting contracted revenue targets.
Bottom-Up: Rolled-Up Budget View
In bottom-up mode, each project team sets its own budget. The program shows a consolidated read-only view – no edits allowed at program level – where the total is automatically aggregated from individual project budgets. This gives leadership a single-pane financial view without requiring manual consolidation or risking override of team-level decisions.
Top-Down: Budget Distribution
In top-down mode, the Program Director sets the total program budget and distributes it across projects. Each project receives an allocated envelope, and the program tracks actual spend against those allocations in real time. This model works well when financial governance needs to flow from leadership downward – particularly on large contracts where the overall ceiling is fixed.
LA28 OLYMPICS – IN PRACTICE
The LA28 program uses a top-down model. The Program Director allocates the total contracted value across the nine projects:
Transportation – Roads Cost: $85M Revenue: $95M
Transportation – Rail Cost: $110M Revenue: $125M
Cricket Stadium Cost: $70M Revenue: $80M
Cycling Velodrome Cost: $55M Revenue: $62M
Swimming Centre Cost: $65M Revenue: $74M
Athletics Stadium Upgrade Cost: $90M Revenue: $102M
Athlete Village Cost: $120M Revenue: $138M
Field Hockey Stadium Upgrade Cost: $35M Revenue: $40M
Promotions and Decorations Cost: $20M Revenue: $24M
PACE aggregates these automatically. The Program Director sees total program cost ($650M), contracted revenue ($740M), and an overall margin of approximately 12% – live, without a single spreadsheet.
04 What This Means in Practice
The structural and financial capabilities described above translate directly into operational outcomes that matter for organizations running complex programs.
- No more manual consolidation. Budget rollups, WBS hierarchies, and program summaries are generated automatically. The hours spent assembling consolidated views each month go away.
- Financial visibility at every level. Program Directors see the full picture. Project managers see their scope. Neither has to leave the tool to get the view they need.
- Governance without micromanagement. Projects retain their own delivery ownership while the program layer maintains accountability at the strategic level.
- Flexibility that matches how organizations actually work. Whether financial targets come from leadership down or from teams up, PACE supports both without forcing a single model.
One program. Multiple projects. Full financial visibility. Zero duplication.
The second part of this series covers how PACE handles deliverables, risk management, document governance, access control, and program templates – the operational layer that keeps complex programs running predictably at scale.
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