Location California
Services Advisory
Project Value Confidential
One of the largest utility companies in California is undertaking a multi-year, multi-billion-dollar capital program to maintain and enhance its high level of customer service while increasing sustainability and safety throughout its system. Specific projects involve the utility’s transmission systems, distribution systems, substations, automation and controls, and more. The utility selected Hill Advisory to establish a program management office (PMO) and help guide the efficient planning and delivery of capital improvements.
The Hill PMO team is providing a variety of advisory services to help optimize organizational performance and governance and guide the utility company through its capital program. Our professionals are responsible for developing portfolio-wide governance frameworks and RACI definitions to clarify roles and responsibilities, evaluating processes and policy to promote consistency across business units and departments, reviewing organizational structures and resource allocation to identify capacity constraints, and identifying opportunities to improve collaboration, training, documentation practices, and integration across the capital program. Hill’s services help the utility’s engineering and program delivery teams transform capital program processes across financial analysis, scheduling, document control, and reporting. To guide the organization through change, Hill also creates communication protocols, coordinates training, aligns stakeholders through governance meetings, and promotes transparency throughout transition periods. Additionally, Hill is monitoring procurement, design, construction, and related activities to help the utility overcome any challenges and facilitate on time, within budget delivery.
Hill recently led an initial maturity assessment for the capital program. As part of this engagement, we assessed organizational readiness, process maturity, technology utilization, and collaboration across four engineering portfolios. Our comprehensive, evidence-based approach combined structured interviews, document reviews, workflow analysis, and maturity scoring using a five-level qualitative scale. Following the assessment, we provided actionable recommendations on the consolidation of templates, the establishment of centralized lessons learned repositories, the delivery of PMO governance handbooks, and the standardization of tool usage, all of which strengthened the utility’s ability to mitigate risk and streamline program decision making.
