Value Manager and PolisMaker: UNI 11915 recognises a key role for sustainable urban transformation

The publication of UNI 11915:2023 marks an important milestone for the fields of evaluation, project management and sustainable urban transformation. The standard defines the requirements, competencies and fields of practice of the Value Manager, a professional role called to govern the value chain through an interdisciplinary and holistic approach.

This is not just the recognition of a new professional profile. UNI 11915 reflects a deeper shift: today the transformation of territories, cities, built heritage and infrastructure requires competencies able to integrate economic evaluation, quality, environmental sustainability, social impact, cost management and long-term vision. The news item published by UNI itself highlights that the Value Manager is a multidisciplinary figure, especially relevant in construction, urban regeneration and investment management across the whole life cycle of a project.

This is exactly where the connection with PolisMaker becomes especially meaningful.

From its cultural and educational foundations, the PolisMaker Master is based on a clear idea: urban transformation cannot be addressed sector by sector, but requires a way of thinking able to connect economy, environment, society, quality of living, design, law, finance, culture and governance. In the standard, the Value Manager is described as the professional able to operate in project feasibility, economic and managerial planning, evaluation of financial balance, value-chain management and intervention reporting.

UNI 11915 also clarifies that this role finds specific application in urban transformation, new construction, rehabilitation and enhancement of architectural, environmental and cultural resources, as well as in the management of real-estate assets linked to public and private investments. This is a crucial point, because it formally recognises that value does not coincide only with cost or only with financial return, but should be interpreted as the relationship between achieved benefits, quality, utility, global costs and sustainability.

In this sense, PolisMaker is not simply close to the standard: it anticipates and embodies its spirit.

The PolisMaker Master was created to educate professionals able to interpret and govern the complexity of urban transformations through a multidisciplinary approach focused on quality of living. The second-level Master explicitly integrates UNI 11915:2023 methodologies, preparing participants to assess urban projects from both economic and social perspectives and to work as Value Managers within a sustainability framework. The first-level Master also integrates the competencies required by the standard for the Specialist Value Manager profile, namely the entry-level role with a predominantly operational and tactical-managerial orientation.

The most interesting point is that the standard does not propose a narrowly technical specialist, but a professional able to optimise choices. UNI 11915 insists on the need to evaluate the relationship between Quality (Utility) and Global Cost from a lifecycle perspective, taking into account both revenues and collective benefits. This is deeply consistent with the PolisMaker approach, which places at its centre not only the physical transformation of places, but the creation of durable value for people, communities and territories.

The publication of UNI 11915:2023 therefore also has a cultural value: it recognises the growing importance of figures able to cross traditional disciplinary boundaries and connect analysis, design, decision-making and responsibility. In a context where regulation, public and private investments, sustainability goals and urban complexity require increasingly advanced tools, the Value Manager emerges as a key role for guiding regeneration and development processes in a conscious, measurable and integrated way.

For the PolisMaker Master, this standard represents much more than a technical reference: it confirms the solidity of an educational vision that has long been working to build advanced competencies in evaluation, value management and sustainable urban transformation.

Useful links

• UNI - Value Manager: pubblicata la norma UNI 11915:2023
• UNI Store - UNI 11915:2023
• AIAV - Approfondimento e contesto

For more information: polismaker@polimi.it