The Regions Of RINA’s New Operating Model
RINA’s growth hinges on a strategic balance between expansion and maintaining leadership in competencies. The company is active in major sectors - such as energy, marine infrastructure, mobility, real estate, space&defence and industry - each offering immense growth opportunities. For example, the “Hydra” project, aimed at producing green steel using hydrogen, exemplifies how RINA, not only responds to global megatrends, but also pioneers their definition. The ability to expand into new markets and sectors has enabled RINA to build meaningful relationships with existing and prospective clients, broadening its service offerings and geographical presence. RINA further differentiates itself in the competitive landscape with its ability to operate alongside clients in any context, capable of solving complex problems while providing end-to-end services. Winning high-value contracts, such as those for the Chicago Transportation Authority’s red line metro extension or the Oman-Abu Dhabi rail line, was facilitated by RINA’s high competence and international credibility. This distinct approach ensures ongoing business development, highlighting the importance of a strategic focus on competence, client proximity, and internationalization.
Geographic expansion, particularly in promising markets like the USA, the UK, Latin America, and the Middle East, along with continuous investments in India and Asia, are integral parts of the plan, while consolidating leadership in Italy remains a crucial strategic aspect. The overall goal is to achieve almost 2 billion euros in organic revenue by 2030, with a 20% EBITDA, supported by an average annual employee growth of 8%.
The strategic plan identifies several streams that will significantly contribute to achieving the Group’s goals:
KNOWLEDGE COMPANY
RINA’s new operating model implementation is embodied in a clear positioning as a “Knowledge Company,” enabling RINA to simplify its value proposition and enhance stakeholder understanding of its technical capability and expertise.
All the markets RINA operates in are currently experiencing transformations. Clients need to change work systems, machinery, products, supply chain etc., and RINA is one of the few companies globally with the necessary functional competencies. The tight coordination of all business functions by geographic area has allowed RINA to delve into its offered competencies, mapping them and dividing them into macro competency families. Today, the framework model allows for much greater efficiency by pooling competencies that were previously fragmented across various geographic areas and belonged to distinct vertical structures. Consequently, transversal global groups have been created, agnostic to geographies, with competence being their common denominator.
The Role of Practices
RINA’s new operating model has led to establishing Practices, which are the summation of the company’s technical competencies across various consulting disciplines. The Practices address RINA’s development and positioning needs in the competitive context of different regions and technical disciplines. The pooling of competencies within the Practices has enabled RINA to manage projects of a significantly larger scale than when competencies were fragmented across different operational units.
CLIENT-CENTRIC MODEL
With a client-centred approach, RINA has developed organizational solutions that enhance responsiveness to client needs. To align the new organizational model with client centricity, RINA has created new agile management groups, starting with the identification of 11 Key Accounts and the appointment of dedicated Key Accounts Managers, and the definition of 8 new Regions – homogeneous across Businesses and Functions – boosted by the launch of the Regional Leadership Teams. Alongside the above, selected initiatives have been launched, for example, the Growth Council ensuring continuous strategic alignment between all parts of the organisation and guaranteeing that business decisions harmonize with client needs across various regions. This new organizational structure allows RINA to anticipate and manage the growing market uncertainty and volatility.
The Dual Role of the Supply Chain
The Supply Chain plays a dual role in RINA’s Client Centricity objectives. Firstly, properly activating the supply chain supports strategy implementation, making RINA more responsive to client needs and evaluation criteria. As the Supply Chain function implements chains that add resilience and robustness to RINA’s market offerings, it achieves the goal of client centricity. Today, the most perceived risk by large international companies is that of the supply chain. In this sense, RINA plays a key role for clients, mitigating risk. Furthermore, the Supply Chain is RINA’s window to the world, bringing in numerous innovative insights, ideas, new opportunities, and partnerships that open new business frontiers across different markets. Therefore, the Supply Chain also fuels business development and functions as a transmission belt for new ideas and corporate initiatives.
INNOVATION AT SCALE
The third pillar of RINA’s Strategic Plan focuses on innovation, aiming to create the conditions to make it scalable. It includes from the automation of existing internal processes and the digitalization of the service offering, to developing new services/businesses, working on ‘eco-system’ initiatives in partnership with other industrial champions.
RINA’s challenge with this pillar is to transform knowledge into a “scalable” service, meaning repeatable and applicable in various situations.
THE CHALLENGE OF TALENT ATTRACTION AND RETENTION
In 2024, RINA hired 1500 people, diligently pursuing a delicate mission across sectors and geographies: seeking and growing competences. Diversification certainly benefits RINA by ensuring skill availability across geographic areas, also facilitated by the new organizational model.
Regardless of team operational locations, RINA enjoys the flexibility to create skill-aggregated groups. In terms of attraction, RINA’s hallmark is talent mobility, allowing employees to start in one department and continue an innovative journey in another geographic area or business sector.
Additionally, RINA executes projects of such significance that they attract high-profile individuals. Consider what it means for an environmental engineer to work on an Environmental Impact Statement for a gold mine in Mongolia or a transport engineer working on driverless metro projects? 80% of RINA’s current 6,200 workforce holds degrees, and 90% of those are STEM graduates (the remaining 20% are primarily site personnel, inspectors where degrees are unnecessary).
THE IMPORTANCE OF INCLUSION
RINA firmly believes in and invests in inclusion, mainly on two fronts. The first is gender equality. RINA has devised a focused plan for the next three years addressing the gender pay gap, both in preparation for the EU directive effective June 2026 and to balance a historically predominantly male organization with female personnel only in administrative roles.
Currently, women represent 30% of the workforce, slightly above average benchmarks as virtually all are STEM graduates, but RINA aims for further progress.
Addressing the gender pay gap entails action at all levels, as it doesn’t account for role seniority, sector affiliation, or professional profiles. However, RINA’s fundamental principle is not to compromise merit. Working towards gender balance means investing in raising awareness to overcome biases and ensure equitable recruitment processes, always presenting shortlists with candidates from both genders under equal starting conditions.
The other front on which RINA works in terms of inclusion is elevating non-Italian personnel to higher organizational levels, preventing career discrimination based on nationality.
ENTERPRISE RISK MANAGEMENT MODEL
RINA’s enterprise risk management model-updated in 2024-includes 12 Top Risks, potentially causing disruptive effects on company operations. These Top Risks, in turn, have subcategories called Risk Factors, grouped into four risk types: operational, financial, compliance, and contextual.
These categories encompass, for instance, cybersecurity, geopolitical, legal, reputational, compliance, human capital, and sustainability (ESG) risks, among others. For each identified risk, RINA implements a series of specific mitigation actions to bring the risk back in the safety (ALARP) zone.
RISK PASSPORT: OPERATIONAL RISK MANAGEMENT
Since 2024, significant efforts have been made to disseminate the Risk-Based approach throughout the organization, to make it an integral part of the corporate culture and decision-making processes.
For this purpose, RINA has developed and implemented the Risk Passport. It is a tool that adopts a risk-based approach and is based on an objective, qualitative, and quantitative assessment of data and information related to business opportunities exceeding certain thresholds.
Starting from the “Key Info” of the business opportunity, it carries out an economic and financial analysis and a risk analysis, where operational, legal, reputational, compliance, finance & tax risks associated with the contract, client, partners and suppliers are evaluated and mitigated, when and as necessary.
The analysis is carried out jointly by the proposal manager from the businesses and Corporate function pivots from Administration and Finance, HR, Supply Chain, Health and Safety, and Security.
This governance mechanism proved a powerful tool, bringing the risk-based mindset into the organizational tissue.
HIGH GROWTH BUSINESS AREAS
In the Marine sector, where RINA holds tactical strength, an explosion is anticipated in the New Buildings segment, encompassing all new constructions. This is already evident in the volumes and rapidly growing business. Alongside this, the conversion and upgrade sector is also expected to grow significantly. In response, RINA has decided to invest heavily inorganically to fully seize the opportunities. Consequently, a substantial business leap is expected in this sector starting in 2026.
In the Energy sector, both inspections and strategic feasibility studies play a crucial role within RINA’s business framework for supporting clients. The company has also committed to substantial investments in digitalizing some services to grow organically in terms of profitability.
Regarding Infrastructure and Mobility, RINA aims to expand its international footprint by pursuing two strategies: increasing business in regions where it currently has a minimal presence, and strengthening engineering practices, including non-organic growth through targeted acquisitions of competent personnel.
In the Industry sector, RINA will focus in particular on Aerospace & Defense, planning to develop it into a robust unit with significant investment in venture building and strategic partnerships.
For Certification, RINA aspires to lead the market in the digitalization aspect of certification as a Digital Passport. To this end, substantial investments are underway to expand into more challenging supply chains, demonstrating RINA’s capability to tackle complex fields, such as the space economy, where Italy has a strong presence.
The Real Estate segment significantly interacts with RINA’s core sectors like Infrastructure and Mobility, enabling the offering of integrated solutions with a Smart City perspective. Certain peculiarities of Real Estate activities can easily transfer, with minimal adjustments, to other businesses, such as port or fleet management. RINA aims to perform as effectively abroad as it does in Italy. It is leveraging the channel to market, which can utilize regional infrastructure support to open Real Estate opportunities in other countries. RINA has established real estate operations in Germany and the United Kingdom. The strategic objective is to accelerate growth in this sector, with a particular focus on a structured and targeted expansion into the rest of EU, Middle East, and United States market. This will be driven by leveraging key account relationships and deepening market expertise to capitalize on emerging opportunities.
RINA CONFIRMS ITS ROLE AS A STRATEGIC PARTNER FOR COMPANIES TRANSITIONING TO SUSTAINABLE ENERGY SOLUTIONS, DESIGNING, SUPPORTING, AND VERIFYING THE IMPLEMENTATION OF DECARBONIZATION PLANS AND INITIATIVES, UTILIZING ITS KNOWLEDGE AND INNOVATIVE TECHNOLOGIES.
LEVERAGING MULTIDISCIPLINARY EXPERTISE ACCUMULATED THROUGH EXPERIENCE IN VARIOUS SECTORS - FROM ENERGY TO INFRASTRUCTURE, MARINE TO REAL ESTATE - THE COMPANY INCREASINGLY POSITIONS ITSELF AS A REFERENCE POINT FOR OPTIMIZING PLANTS, INFRASTRUCTURES, AND WORKS, SHARING ITS KNOWLEDGE AND EXPERIENCE.
THE TESTING, INSPECTION & CERTIFICATION (TIC) SECTOR IS EVOLVING, AND RINA IS LEADING. NEW COMPLIANCE PRACTICES RESPONDING TO TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCEMENTS AND THE UNDERSTANDING OF AN EVOLVING INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY, AND NATIONAL REGULATORY LANDSCAPE, INCLUDING ESG AND DIGITAL REALMS, ARE AREAS WHERE THE COMPANY IS ALREADY LEADING.
RECENT YEARS HAVE SEEN GROWTH IN MARKET SEGMENTS CHARACTERIZED BY HIGH TECHNICAL CONTENT AND STRONG INTERDISCIPLINARY COMPLEXITY, INCLUDING SUBSEA, AERONAUTICS, SPACE, AND CYBERSECURITY. RINA BOASTS ESTABLISHED COLLABORATIONS WITH CLIENTS IN THESE AND OTHER SECTORS, HAVING POSITIONED ITSELF PROMINENTLY IN DEVELOPING RELATED VALUE CHAINS.
OVER THE YEARS, RINA HAS DEVELOPED SIGNIFICANT EXPERTISE BY WORKING ON VARIOUS URBAN TRANSFORMATION PROJECTS: FROM INFRASTRUCTURE TO TRANSPORT, REAL ESTATE TO BUILDING REHABILITATION. THE MIX OF TRANSVERSAL SKILLS NATIONALLY AND INTERNATIONALLY ENABLES THE GROUP TO ASSERT ITSELF FURTHER IN BOTH LARGE PUBLIC TENDERS AND WITH PRIVATE CLIENTS.