Strategic Plan Development for a Municipal Utility
ScottMadden partnered with a municipal utility to develop a forward-looking utility strategy that addressed infrastructure risks, workforce turnover, and capital allocation amid regulatory and economic uncertainty.
Prioritization
Co-developed six strategic priorities and 23 initiatives to drive execution of the new strategic direction
Team Alignment
Achieved cross-tier alignment among board, executive leadership, and senior management on key priorities
Scenario Workshops
Guided the organization through a scenario-based planning process to support informed, resilient decision-making
Challenge
ScottMadden’s client, a municipal utility providing electricity, gas, water, wastewater, and fiber services to its customers, had not updated its strategic plan since 2020. It was facing new challenges across the organization due to aging infrastructure, workforce turnover, changes in local economic conditions, and regulatory uncertainty. The utility also had to make several important capital project planning decisions in the next six months. The executive leadership team recognized they needed expert support for municipal utility strategic planning to establish the right priorities and inform decisions about resource allocation over the planning horizon.
Process
- ScottMadden led the team through a rigorous municipal utility strategic planning process that began with 10 executive and board interviews to identify strategic themes, planning assumptions, and key business drivers
- Afterward, ScottMadden facilitated a scenario planning for utilities workshop to weigh possible future scenarios and potential impacts to the organization for each strategic theme
- Next, ScottMadden co-developed six top priorities with accompanying core actions and contingencies for each of the themes using structured municipal utility strategic planning methodologies
- Lastly, ScottMadden developed a framework in partnership with the client and aligned on the implementation roadmap for utility strategic plan development outcomes
Result
- Generated a common understanding of the breadth of challenges facing the organization and the readiness of its utility strategy to confront them
- Developed six new strategic priorities with 23 related strategic initiatives, informed by scenario planning for utilities, to execute the strategy
- Aligning leadership around the utility strategy direction with the board, executive leadership, and senior management
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