Using Uncertainty to Drive Investments for Organizational Resiliency

Utilities around the world have navigated the challenges of the global pandemic by working collaboratively and taking new approaches to delivering on their organizational mission. Some are seeking ways to shift from near-term agility to long-term resiliency and sustainability. Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission's (WSSC Water) Strategy and Innovation Office (SIO) worked with their cross-departmental New Normal Taskforce (Taskforce) to think beyond the current challenges to examine emerging challenges and opportunities. Using scenario planning and virtual forums, the SIO and Taskforce identified six key business opportunity areas for investment that build from pandemic-driven insights and will position WSSC Water for success across a variety of potential futures. This effort demonstrated WSSC Water's ability to leverage crisis-based momentum and internal partnerships to move beyond near-term shocks to build resiliency for the future. WSSC Water is currently among the largest water and wastewater utilities in the nation, with a network of nearly 6,000 miles of water pipeline and over 5,600 miles of sewer pipeline. Their service areas span nearly 1,000 square miles in Maryland's Prince George's and Montgomery counties. They serve 1.8 million residents through approximately 475,000 customer accounts. Guided by their vision to be the world-class water utility 'where excellent products and services are always on tap' and commitment to ethical, sustainable, and financially responsible service led WSSC Water to form the Strategy and Innovation Office (SIO). The SIO is charged with accelerating organizational performance through strategic planning and execution, knowledge management, and organizational effectiveness. The SIO is made up of the Office of Innovation and Research, Strategic Performance Office, and Enterprise Risk Team. The Office of Innovation and Research is responsible for finding and accelerating new technologies and processes that reduce operating expenses, increase safe work practices, improve sustainability and create new revenue opportunities. The Strategic Performance Office leads strategic business planning, data analysis and process improvements. Enterprise Risk spearheads business risk assessments and mitigation planning to minimize challenges to implementation of WSSC Water's strategic business plan. The New Normal Taskforce was formed as a cross-departmental team to identify and address challenges associated with the global pandemic and operational challenges. The Taskforce included the SIO as well as representatives from human resources, asset management, diversity and inclusion, police and homeland security, finance, production and utility services departments. Throughout the pandemic, the Taskforce reviewed working conditions, business practices, and technologies to identify concepts to permanently adopt into post-pandemic operations. Arcadis was retained to facilitate a series of virtual sessions to engage the SIO and Taskforce in examining the emerging opportunities and challenges post-pandemic recovery plus ten years. This longer view was used to move beyond the current context and challenges of the pandemic to identify and to better position WSSC Water for long-term success. A key tactic in this exercise was scenario planning. Scenario planning is a method of using uncertainty in plan development and decision making. By using this tactic, leaders can make decisions or adopt strategies that play out well across several possible futures resulting in more resilient business plans. The WSSC Water-Arcadis team held a series of virtual workshops built on the key steps to scenario planning. First, the team developed framing questions that identified the most pressing challenges or questions facing WSSC Water. These questions included complex long-term topics (e.g., digital transformation, affordability, workforce development, community understanding) that do not have established or discrete solutions. The framing questions were used throughout the workshops to keep discussion anchored in the practical challenges of the utility. Second, the team developed and evaluated key national and regional trends that are outside the control of the organization but impact their decision-making. This analysis involved deep dives into nine trend areas including advanced asset management, alternative energy technologies, climate change, policy and governance, contaminants of emerging concern, customer expectations, intelligent water, revenue and pricing, as well as workforce development and upskilling. From these trends, the team selected two key themes to develop a scenario compass and four alternative future scenarios for use in the idea development sessions. Using a world café format and collaborative virtual platform, the team examined each alternative future scenario and generated ideas that leveraged existing resources to address each of the framing questions. Discussions included approaches to improve infrastructure management, operational efficiency, business continuity, workforce development, customer experience, and digital transformation. From these discussions, idea themes were identified and consolidated into potential innovation investment areas. Over 600 individual ideas were contributed through the virtual sessions which were consolidated into 19 primary idea themes. These themes were later grouped into six research and innovation investment areas including customer experience, infrastructure, stakeholders, operations, sustainability, and data & digital. Within each of these areas, the specific ideas were sequenced across three priority horizons: H1 — enhancing existing core functions, H2 — adopting new functions from partner or adjacent industry, and H3 — novel function or future aspirations. These horizon maps provide a roadmap for general exploration by the SIO. Lastly, using the six investment areas, the team developed tailored roadmaps for innovation investments regarding each framing question. The SIO will use the roadmaps to develop a strategy to assist WSSC Water leadership with investment in near-term innovation with long-term impact and reduction of risk posed by uncertainty. They will use the investment areas to assess and prioritize new ideas and technologies as well as guide decisions regarding resource allocations. The horizons within each investment area help set a cadence for needs assessments and functional requirements for external partnerships. Further, the collaboratively developed focus areas identify cross-departmental support and resources needed to implement these strategies. Lastly, the exercise provides SIO with a number of tactics that will support review of trends and alternative futures. As trends change, the updated roadmaps will provide a framework to guide revisions to investment areas or sequencing to improve organizational resiliency. In this presentation, our team will walk through WSSC Water's experience and outcomes. Participants will learn the fundamentals for applying planning tactics to leverage uncertainty and lessons learned during the pandemic to identify investment areas that will support long-term organizational resiliency.