Understanding Utility Performance Management

In order to increase understanding of Utility Performance Management, we offer the following blog as an annotated version of the presentation George Hawkins has made to our partners and stakeholders new to UPM. Please email preserve@moonshotmissions.org if you have questions about how to implement UPM in your own work!

UPM Origin Story

As George Hawkins describes in his Linkedin post, the impetus for UPM as an idea really began in budget meetings during Hawkins’s time with DC Water. As he describes it:

“Projects were sorted into priority categories — the top ones aimed at regulatory compliance and water quality absorbed nearly all the funding. One category rarely got funded: "BBP." It turned out to stand for "Better Business Practices" — projects meant to help the utility run more efficiently”.

It was a lightbulb moment for Hawkins  and DC Water CFO Mark Kim. The next year they started requiring that every project include a BBP evaluation. It reframed the utility's mindset: efficiency projects often cost more upfront, but they pay off long-term. Once DC Water started actively seeking them out, the direction of the utility shifted. Once the team saw the savings, they couldn’t keep up with the projects coming in!

When Hawkins then began to develop Moonshot Missions and the Moonshot Missions method, a big part of the origin was to find projects that help improve the balance sheet. By changing the system, the system starts delivering these projects.

Moonshot then centers their work implementing UPM around the following two questions:

• How do we take all of these ideas and turn it into a system that generates these kinds of projects? 

• How do we scale this concept to much smaller places? Essentially, what is the “UPM package?”

  
  

This has led Moonshot Missions to develop UPM and begin to roll it out to Great Lakes PRESERVE members.

Setting the Scene

Hawkins first points to what we at Moonshot do. Specifically, our work with under resourced communities has led us to a wide variety of technical, managerial, and financial opportunities. Collectively considering the team’s credentials (PEs, Certified operators, and industry partners) allows Moonshot to position themselves in answering these important questions.  

However, the funding gap keeps widening. How do we gain funding that reduces capital and operating costs? Can we encourage other funding to come into the system that would supplement ratepayer and public funding?

Utility Performance Management

Hawkins offers up an important metaphor for the current state of technical assistance by comparing it to emergency medicine. While emergency medicine is COMPLETELY necessary, it often doesn’t treat the underlying causes of patients in the emergency room. A utility performance management mindset allows us to find projects that address those underlying causes, not just the emergency triage.

That shift in thinking is the foundation of a new operating system for utilities: one that creates a feedback loop, letting communities invest in themselves without defaulting to a rate increase.

The UPM Levers

Big shifts need careful scaffolding. Moonshot illustrates this with 4 UPM levers: projects that carry upfront costs but generate real, compounding returns over time — reinvested savings fund the next round of improvement, and so on.

Infrastructure funding doesn't have to come from one place. For an innovative funding model, Moonshot looks at combinations of:

• Existing funds — ratepayer and public dollars (we still help utilities think through rate increases when needed)

• Capital banks for water — blending public funding with private capital to move projects faster

• Shared services — pooling resources with neighboring utilities to lower costs and free up capital for the investments that matter most

The UPM Workshop Series

As a means of operationalizing the UPM mindset shift, the Moonshot Missions facilitation team is beginning to launch a UPM Workshop Series. The series will offer our Great Lakes PRESERVE members, many of whom are part of small and under resourced utilities, the opportunity to operationalize the UPM model and achieve measurable results with the resources they have, resulting in a Utility Performance Management Certificate. Through 6 interactive virtual workshops, practical tools, case studies, and peer learning, participants will develop business cases, capital project lists, and a 12-month action roadmap, in addition to two in-person Adaptive Leadership sessions that help turn their plans into action.  

The workshops will be led by former utility leaders from DC Water, Madison Metropolitan Sewerage District, and Camden County Utilities Authority, alongside Moonshot’s technical team. For more details, please check out this brochure and corresponding event link. 

The Bottom Line

Without closing the gap between revenue and cost, deeper technical assistance won't be enough on its own. Larger utilities can often absorb the cost of change; Moonshot's focus is making sure smaller utilities can too. That's the combination Moonshot has built: a team that knows both what to do and how to do it.

Please join us at the “UPM: A Water Leaders Roundtable” at WEFTEC on September 26^th to continue to hone in on this conversation. And please direct all questions to preserve@moonshotmissions.org!