The Optimization and Technology Solutions Group brings a shared cost-and-value lens to the technology and process bets every utility is making, so members buy and build with the benefit of each other’s experience.
Every utility is making the same cost and technology bets, often without knowing what the utility down the road already learned from making them. The group brings a shared cost-and-value lens to those decisions, and it works across the Center’s other operational programs, so the due diligence one utility does becomes diligence every member can lean on before committing capital.
The charter is plain: collaborate, share, and benchmark the cost-saving initiatives member companies are considering, with the goal of reducing cost in operations, maintenance, and capital while maintaining safety, reliability, and customer expectations.
The group began inside the Power Delivery Committee as the Cost Optimization Subcommittee, and took its current name in February 2026 to reflect where the conversations actually go: the practical ways utilities are using technology to improve the business. Today it is one of the six standing programs of the Center for Operational Excellence.
Members put the initiatives they are actually considering on the table and benchmark them across operations, maintenance, and capital.
The 2026 theme. Practical technology choices, from work management platforms to cloud services, weighed with peers who have already run the evaluation.
The evaluation one utility does becomes evaluation every member can lean on before committing capital.
The group’s newest workstream is the Work Management System Working Group, launched in early 2026 to benchmark work management practice for electric distribution. A robust work management system supports the safe and efficient prioritization, scheduling, execution, and completion of work, and affordability runs straight through it.
The working group compares practice across the full lifecycle, from prerequisite management and resource allocation to financial accounting and productivity measurement, so members can see where their own systems stand and what better looks like.
The standing committee this group grew out of, and still works alongside.
The operational arm the working group runs inside, one of six standing programs.
The technology evaluation work a cost-and-value lens sharpens.
One utility membership opens this working group and every other committee and program to your whole organization. Bring the bet you are about to make, and leave with the benefit of 44 peers who have seen it before.
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