Paul Fitzpatrick, Chief Operating Officer at Identity, draws on the agency’s track record at COP28, Expo 2020 and beyond to make the case that operational architecture, not creativity or budget, is what separates successful expo delivery from everything else.
There is a particular kind of pressure that only comes with a World Expo. You feel it the moment you walk a site in the early planning phase — the scale of what is being asked, the number of governments with a stake in the outcome, the complexity of managing hundreds of participating nations, millions of visitors and a host country whose international reputation is riding on every single day of the programme.
I have worked in complex, high-stakes event environments for my entire career. Nothing quite matches the operational intensity of a World Expo.
The architecture nobody sees, but everyone depends on
What separates successful expo delivery from everything else is not creativity, budget or ambition, though all three matter. It is the operational architecture underneath. The command and control structures. The workforce planning. The crowd modelling. The security and emergency frameworks built long before anyone arrives on site. The decisions made in the planning phase that most people never see, but that determine whether the visible experience works at all.
At COP28 in the UAE, we managed a multi-government, diplomatically complex environment at a scale that few organisations ever encounter. The lesson from that delivery, as from every major international event we have worked on, is that operational excellence is not a support function. It is the product. When it works, nobody notices. When it fails, nothing else matters.
The expo format demands something different
A World Expo compounds this pressure in ways that are unique to its format. You are not delivering a single event. You are delivering a sustained, months-long operational programme, with different nations presenting on different days, VVIP movements woven throughout, media running continuously, and visitor volumes that fluctuate dramatically. The operational model has to flex, not just perform. Resilience is as important as efficiency.
Through our group company EPG, Lead Operational Consultancy for Expo 2020 and Concept Master Plan advisory partner for Expo 2030, we carry institutional knowledge of the BIE framework that is genuinely rare. We understand how host country agreements translate into operational obligations, and we know where the pressure points emerge in the run-up to opening day. As an agency, we have seen where well-intentioned plans meet the reality of delivery, and we know how to close that gap.
Start early, or start again
For Expo 2027 Belgrade, the operational challenge is significant. Serbia is hosting one of the most complex international showcase events it has ever staged. The question every host nation faces at this point is the same: do we have the right operational partner in place, early enough, to protect that ambition all the way to delivery?
The answer is not found in a proposal. It is found in a track record.
Operational excellence at a World Expo is built across years of planning, not weeks of execution. The organisations that get this right start early, bring in partners with direct expo experience, and treat operational planning as a strategic discipline, not a procurement exercise. That is the standard we hold ourselves to, and the standard we apply on behalf of every client we work with.
