It's Not all Numbers: How Boise Translates Levels of Service into Decision Making Criteria for Capital Planning

The City of Boise's (City) water renewal utility, Water Renewal Services (WRS), has used a Business Case Evaluation (BCE) tool to inform capital project alternative evaluation and selection across their facilities since 2016. This tool monetizes alternative lifecycle costs across capital, operation, maintenance, and replacement activities, as well as potential future risk costs associated with the consequence of not meeting organization-wide goals. In 2020, the utility adopted formal level of service (LOS) goals through their Utility Plan, and since then has been working to further define strategies, measures, metrics and targets to help translate the LOS goals into decision-making criteria. Given that the BCE is the most formalized decision-support tool in the organization, and informs the largest investments made by the organization, WRS recognized the need and opportunity to update their BCE tool's evaluation criteria and associated operating procedures to align with the refined levels of service and ultimately create greater line of sight, transparency, and defensibility behind how overarching commitments and levels of service help inform capital project selection and prioritization. In June 2022, the City engaged Brown and Caldwell (BC) to update their BCE tool. The team improved user experience and drove tool adoption by refining usability and standardization, and translating levels of service goals into qualitative, quantitative, and monetizable criteria to inform capital project alternative evaluation. The tool update resulted in: Documented alignment between LOS goals and risk measures used to evaluate capital project alternatives Updated risk criteria and monetization factors with data sources and data update protocols A more approachable and transparent user interface with clearly documented assumptions and data sources Improved efficiency and defensibility of the decision-making process This presentation will discuss the approach and results of the BCE tool update, outline how to translate high-level LOS goal language into quantifiable and monetizable evaluation criteria, and highlight opportunities for scaled application across other strategic initiatives and organizations. The presentation will also provide the opportunity for other utilities and municipalities to consider how a BCE may help translate organizational values into decision-making criteria to support consistent application of LOS or other priorities throughout projects related to climate goals, utility resilience, employee experience, and more. Three learning objectives include: Understand how to develop risk metrics and monetization factors for your levels of service and / or organization-wide goals. Learn about approaches to align capital project alternative development with organizational priorities such as climate resilience and employee experience. Recognize common pitfalls to avoid when attempting to monetize evaluation criteria as part of a Business Case Evaluation.