Strategic Plan Development for a Municipal Utility
ScottMadden partnered with a municipal utility to develop a forward-looking strategic plan that addressed infrastructure risks, workforce turnover, and capital allocation amid regulatory and economic uncertainty, drawing on its comprehensive expertise in municipal utility strategic planning.
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. The organization was facing new challenges across multiple service areas due to aging infrastructure, workforce turnover, changes in local economic conditions, and regulatory uncertainty. The utility needed utility strategic plan development support to make several important capital planning decisions in the next six months. The executive leadership team recognized they needed expert guidance on municipal utility strategic planning to establish the right priorities and make informed decisions on resource prioritization over the planning horizon.
Process
- ScottMadden led the team through a rigorous and complete utility strategic plan development process that began with 10 executive and board interviews to identify high-priority 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 next steps for implementing the utility strategic plan development outcomes
Result
- Generated a common understanding of the breadth of challenges facing the organization and the utility’s degree of readiness to confront them through comprehensive scenario planning for utilities analysis
- Developed six new strategic priorities with 23 related strategic initiatives to execute the strategy, demonstrating the value of expert municipal utility strategic planning facilitation
- Achieved alignment on focus and direction with the board, executive leadership, and senior management through proven utility strategic plan development processes
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