Management Consultant, Utility Performance Improvement

About Upperform Partners

Upperform Partners is a boutique management consulting firm that serves regulated electric and gas utilities exclusively. Our clients invest heavily in engineering and assets. We help them build the management systems that convert that investment into operating results: performance metrics traced to the outcomes leadership cares about, and the processes, decision rights, escalation paths, and accountability that keep improvement going after our team leaves.

We call those management mechanisms wiring. Wiring covers leadership capability, alignment, motivation, processes and programs, enablement, and organizational norms. When a reorganization or a new program underperforms, we look for the cause in the wiring and correct it there.

The Work

We are hiring consultants to staff active engagements with large investor-owned utilities. Current assignments include:

• A department-level performance system for a transmission and distribution capital organization. The team decomposes enterprise outcomes such as reliability and cost into leading metrics a department can move, then sets up the monthly review in which leaders act on each measure and check the result the following month.
• An effectiveness and efficiency assessment of an electric operations organization. The team tests whether the organization's wiring produces its intended outcomes across power delivery, generation, and capital delivery, and determines unit by unit whether each needs a structural rebuild or a rewiring.
• An operating model for a gas integrity management risk program. The team designs the information flows and decision rights that turn identified pipeline threats into differentiated field controls.

What You Will Do

• Diagnose performance gaps through field observation, interviews, process walkthroughs, and operating data, and trace each gap to its cause in the management system.
• Build value driver trees and scorecards that connect lagging outcomes such as SAIDI, unit cost, or leak rates to leading measures with a named owner.
• Map and redesign core processes, including work management, capital portfolio management, risk assessment and mitigation, and performance review.
• Define decision rights and escalation paths so that information produced in one group changes what another group does.
• Design and run pilots against a measured target, then transfer the method to the client's people so they can sustain it.
• Write client deliverables and present findings and recommendations to utility directors and executives.

What We Look For

• Five or more years working in or for a regulated electric or gas utility, in operations, asset management, work management, capital delivery, integrity management, or performance management.
• Performance improvement work you personally led, with a measured before and after. Lean, Six Sigma, reliability-centered maintenance, or a comparable discipline applied in the field counts.
• Processes or management systems you designed that others adopted and kept using.
• The ability to build metrics from first principles: define the outcome, decompose it, test each candidate measure for impact and measurability, and assign ownership.
• Fluency with operating and financial data in Excel. Power BI or a similar tool is a plus.
• Clear business writing. Much of the job is putting a complex finding on one page an executive can act on.
• Familiarity with PHMSA distribution integrity management (DIMP), damage prevention, or T&D reliability indices is a strong plus for some assignments.

Details

Location: Remote
Travel: About 25% annually
Engagement type: Full-time employee or independent contractor

Job Types: Full-time, Contract

Pay: $50.00 - $250.00 per hour

Work Location: Remote