Future of Utilities

Primeast: The Future of Utilities

Shifting landscape for the provision of services to a growing population

The world's utilities share the challenge of providing a safe, reliable and efficient supply of energy, water and other services to a global population of approximately seven billion people. Some forecasts predict this will reach ten billion by 2050. A sizeable proportion of the population in some countries still has little access to basic provisions making the macro challenge significant. In the recent past, utilities were predominantly in public ownership with a primarily regional agenda. Today the utility world is increasingly global with mergers, acquisitions and joint ventures in the private sector truly representing business as usual.

Utilities are presented with amazing opportunities in the form of technological advances and the economic pressures of a regulated but competitive market. It becomes clear that efficiency linked to creativity is very much the name of the game. With many experienced technical leaders and recent influxes of "new blood" the industry is well placed to drive essential cultural change through engaging leadership.

Primeast has been supporting utilities since the 1980s. In recent years this has been predominantly associated with:

■senior team thinking on strategic focus and culture change
■facilitation of workshops to engage managers and staff in new directions
■coaching and support to culture change programmes

The need for relentless efficiency improvement means that playing to people's strengths at all levels in the workplace is a key value-adding strategy.

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