High Density Urban Utility Forum -- The First Step towards Understanding the Unique Nature of Urban Utilities"

UMS Group, a utility management consulting firm, has partnered with a small steering group of urban utility executives from across the globe to launch the first ever High Density Urban Utility Forum (HDUUF). The intent of the forum is to provide a means of pooling knowledge and assembling concrete evidence of the uniqueness of urban utilities.

Parsippany, NJ -- Top utility executives agree, urban utilities are vastly different from their smaller suburban and rural counterparts. Urban utilities are frequently held to dual standards of superior reliability and low cost -- with no room for even the smallest lapse in performance under the intense levels of public scrutiny evident in metropolitan regions. Despite the unwritten knowledge of these inherent differences, urban utilities have no credible evidence to support a case to distinguish themselves from suburban and rural utilities in regulatory matters.

UMS Group, a utility management consulting firm, has partnered with a small steering group of urban utility executives from across the globe to launch the first ever High Density Urban Utility Forum (HDUUF). The intent of the forum is to provide a means of pooling knowledge and assembling concrete evidence of the uniqueness of urban utilities.

The HDUUF is inviting high density urban utilities around the world to participate in the multi-year study. The HDUUF executive members will meet several times throughout the year to identify key strategic issues, understand global directions of the industry, discuss the quantitative and qualitative results of a focused analytical study, and convert executive strategy to operational implementation.

We have worked with a group of utility executives who understand the unique circumstances faced by urban utilities and framed a forum that will allow urban utilities to share information and insights and to amass the statistical data necessary to demonstrate their unique positions. Through the partnering of UMS Group and J.D. Power and Associates, we have the ability to help urban companies explore and expose the relationships between cost, reliability, customer expectations and customer satisfaction in ways that have never been done before," says Stewart Ramsay, Senior Vice President of UMS Group, when asked about the development of the HDUUF. Jack Shearman, UMS Group chairman and global practice leader for the firm's Regulatory Strategy Practice, adds, "In today's increasingly interventionist business and regulatory environment, utility chiefs must be able to define and quantify the cost and service level burdens that operating in a high density urban setting impose on a company, or face unacceptable risks to their regulated returns."

To date, urban utilities have not been able to justify differences in cost structure and service level performance, including reliability of system and customer satisfaction. The HDUUF is the first step in understanding the unique nature of urban utilities and making both regulators and the public aware of these distinctive characteristics.

For more information on UMS Group please visit http://www.umsgroup.com.