Asset Planning & Management

Hi all,

I am part of a controls team for a public utility. As we are associated with a city, we must create fiscal year capital budgets, which are subject to scrutiny regarding their performance. Are there any good benchmarks or thresholds for budget vs. actuals that you would recommend? I have found that performance is most often measured at the project level, so even anecdotal practices from your organization would be helpful.

Thanks

Hello,

I also work on a project controls team for a public utility on the water/sewer side of the business and have to report on fiscal year performance just like you. For reference, we spend about $550M a year in water capital. Ten years ago that number was less than $100M a year.

A few months ago I posted a similar question looking for some performance benchmark data on spending versus forecast/budget. I didn't have any luck finding anything but did get some good feedback from Lance Stephenson and Chris Carson so maybe they can chime in here.

Historically, our spending versus FY budget wasn't great with us typically only spending about 80% of the budget for the FY. In the past four or five years we have implemented a lot of changes and now routinely spend 95%, or better, of our FY budget. We still have some individual projects that lag but we are better prepared to identify those projects early on through variance reporting and doing what we can to minimize the impact. With two months left in FY24, we are tracking right at spending 95% of our FY24 budget.

The city does approve our FY budget request but we don't report portfolio or project performance to them. We do report it to our leadership team and our board. We measure spending variance to the FY baseline budgets at various levels including total portfolio, portfolio segments (water, chilled water, reclaim water, pump stations, water treatment, etc.), and at the project level down to the month. This allows us to track spending, down to the month, versus baseline budgets to track performance and identify projects that are lagging in spending. All of our project forecasting is heavily tied to schedules so we have a robust scheduling team managing internal project schedules as well as reviewing contractor schedules for those project in construction. This is all backed up with detailed reporting, monthly project review meetings, and monthly spending meets with leadership.

I hope this helps answer your questions.

Hi all,

I am part of a controls team for a public utility. As we are associated with a city, we must create fiscal year capital budgets, which are subject to scrutiny regarding their performance. Are there any good benchmarks or thresholds for budget vs. actuals that you would recommend? I have found that performance is most often measured at the project level, so even anecdotal practices from your organization would be helpful.

Thanks

Hi all,

I am part of a controls team for a public utility. As we are associated with a city, we must create fiscal year capital budgets, which are subject to scrutiny regarding their performance. Are there any good benchmarks or thresholds for budget vs. actuals that you would recommend? I have found that performance is most often measured at the project level, so even anecdotal practices from your organization would be helpful.

Thanks