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Grid Modernization & Distributed Energy
Smart Metering
Long-cycle programs where regulation, capital, and grid reliability define the pace.
Itron
Landis+Gyr
Honeywell
Sensus (Xylem)
Inside this journey
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Pre-Discovery
Align decision roles, regulatory timing, and stakeholder constraints before deeper discovery.
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Stakeholder Alignment
Confirm decision roles, regulatory filing timeline, and what ‘good’ looks like for each stakeholder.
Alignment Questions
Why We're Having This Conversation
- What triggered you to explore an AMI refresh or replacement right now?
- Who on your team feels the pressure most—metering ops, regulatory affairs, or something else—and why does it matter to them today?
- How urgent is a regulator-facing business case for you on a scale from 'informational' to 'must file now'?
- If we leave this meeting with one concrete next step, what would a good next step look like to you?
Who Really Decides — and What Makes Them Sleep Well
- What decision-maker, if quietly skeptical, would most likely stop this project—and what would make them change their mind?
- Which stakeholders must explicitly sign off on scope, budget, and regulatory filings?
- For each stakeholder, what does 'good' look like (e.g., % endpoints reached, expected ROI, regulatory defensibility)? Please list by role.
- Which stakeholders are most likely to push back on cost vs. coverage trade-offs, and what are their primary concerns?
- How do you typically make final vendor selections—technical panel, executive sponsor decision, regulatory-facing scoring matrix, or other?
What’s Hiding in Your Meter Fleet (and Costing You)
- How many metered endpoints are in scope for this initiative, broken down by service type (electric/gas/water) if possible?
- Which meter types and vendors make up your current inventory (list top models and approximate counts)?
- What percentage of your meters are manually-read versus remotely-read today?
- Where are your existing blind spots—neighborhoods, terrain types, or customer segments—where visibility or connectivity is weakest?
- Describe the primary failure modes you've seen in your metering program (connectivity loss, battery failures, inaccurate reads, inverter/transformer issues, vendor firmware problems). Give examples and frequency.
- Which backend systems currently receive meter data (MDM, CIS, billing, outage management, GIS)? Please name systems and note any performance or scaling concerns.
- If you ran a quick health-check, which of these inventory items would you prioritize for immediate remediation?
The Commission’s Questions — What Keeps Them from Saying Yes?
- If the regulator called you tomorrow and asked 'Why should ratepayers pay for this?', what’s the single most persuasive evidence you currently have—and what’s missing?
- What is your target regulatory filing timeline and most critical milestone dates?
- Which pieces of evidence are non-negotiable for your regulator (cost-benefit analysis, pilot performance data, vendor reliability history, cybersecurity posture)?
- Who prepares and owns the regulatory filing inside your organization and what support do they need from a vendor?
- How tolerant is your regulator to phased rollouts—do they require full deployment evidence or are pilot-based filings acceptable?
If the Pilot Fails, Who Feels the Heat?
- What would failure look like for your pilot—coverage below X%, integration delays, customer complaints, or regulatory pushback—and which of those outcomes would be most damaging?
- What pilot size and geography gives you the confidence to extrapolate results for a full deployment (number of endpoints, density, terrain types)?
- What are the specific acceptance criteria for pilot success (e.g., % successful reads, battery life projection, latency, MDM throughput)? Please list target thresholds.
- How will you validate communications network performance in the field—walk tests, drive tests, lived customer reads, or remote diagnostics?
- Who will manage the pilot on your side and what does success mean for their KPIs or career outcomes?
- If pilot results require remedial work, what decision gate and timeline would you expect before scaling further?
The Network Test — Can Coverage Meet Your Toughest Neighborhoods?
- How confident are you that any chosen communications architecture will reach meters in your most connectivity-challenged areas?
- Which environmental and built-form barriers matter most in your territory (tall buildings, dense canopy, deep valleys, long rural spans)? Rank the top three.
- Have you run previous radio/network pilots or worked with other mesh/P2P vendors? What were the concrete lessons learned?
- What is your target field connectivity metric for the pilot (e.g., >95% successful hourly reads, <2% packet loss)?
- How important is network self-healing and multi-path routing versus lower upfront cost in your evaluation?
- Which vendor-provided diagnostics and field tools would you require during pilot (coverage heatmaps, per-meter diagnostics, gateway health, packet capture)?
Invisible Work: Integrations, Data Flows, and People
- If interval data started flowing tomorrow at full scale, what system or team would likely hit capacity or fail first?
- Which systems must be integrated during pilot vs. later phases (billing, CIS, OMS, ADMS, GIS, customer portals)? Please indicate timeline expectations.
- What data volumes and retention policies do you expect for interval data (granularity, retention years), and who owns that policy?
- How do you prefer integration responsibilities to be allocated—vendor delivers integration adapters, utility handles middleware, or a hybrid?
- What internal operational changes do you anticipate (retraining meter-reading crews, new NOC roles, customer call scripts), and how prepared is leadership to fund that transition?
- Security & privacy: what certifications, data residency, or encryption expectations must a vendor meet for you to proceed?
Trade-offs and Red Lines — What You Won’t Compromise On
- If you had to accept one compromise to get the project moving, what would you be willing to trade off (speed, scope, budget, contractual protections)?
- What are absolute red lines that would stop a vendor from being considered (e.g., lack of scale, insufficient pilot evidence, no regulatory references)?
- How do you want commercial risk handled—performance-based payments, acceptance gates, warranty periods, or regulatory cost recovery clauses?
- Who on your team needs contractual assurances versus technical assurances, and what form do those assurances need to take?
- How do you prefer to handle unexpected field issues discovered during pilot—rapid change orders, joint war room, or formal governance escalation?
Deciding to Move Forward — Small Commitments, Big Confidence
- What would make you comfortable moving from discovery into a scoped pilot—what key evidence or assurances do you need?
- Who must be present for an internal pilot kickoff and who will be the vendor’s primary point of contact?
- What data and access can you commit to sharing for pilot scoping (meter inventory, GIS, last-mile maps, billing system test endpoints)?
- What timeline do you realistically expect from pilot kickoff to pilot completion and evaluation?
- What would you like our immediate next action to be following this discovery (e.g., draft pilot scope, sample cost model, regulatory evidence checklist)?
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Current State Mapping
Document existing metering inventory, communications footprint, IT integrations, and primary failure modes.
Current State
Starting Point: Your Metering Reality
- About how many metered endpoints are in your system today (best estimate)?
- What mix of meter technologies makes up your current fleet?
- Can you sketch the age profile of your meters (percent of fleet by age band)?
- Do you currently operate an AMI head-end or MDM platform in production?
- Roughly what percentage of endpoints already provide remote interval data (daily/ hourly)?
- Briefly describe a concrete example where your current metering setup caused an operational or regulatory problem.
Where Things Break: The Failure Modes Your Team Worries About
- If your rollout stalled at 50% completion, what single technical or operational failure would you suspect first?
- What specific failure modes have you observed in the field (select all that apply)?
- How often do these failure modes occur and at what scale (examples of frequency and percent of fleet affected)?
- Tell us about a recent incident where a failure mode caused measurable cost, customer complaints, or regulatory exposure.
- How long have the most concerning failure modes been present in your operations?
- When a failure happens, who on your team currently leads the investigation and mitigation?
The Communications Map — Where Coverage Stops and Risk Starts
- Where does your communications network literally stop reaching customers today — urban high-rise, dense canopy, hilly rural roads, or elsewhere?
- Which network technologies are currently in use for endpoint communications?
- Do you have ongoing signal-strength or coverage metrics (e.g., RSSI, SNR) collected from the field? If yes, how are they captured?
- Describe any known 'dead zone' locations and the operational impact they create (e.g., missed reads, manual reads, duplicate systems).
- What redundancy and backhaul options exist for your field network nodes today?
- How tolerant is your organization to residual non-coverage post-deployment (percent of endpoints acceptable to remain non-networked)?
Systems That Need to Talk — Integration Truths We Must Face
- What would immediately break for customers or billing if meter data stopped flowing into your billing/CIS systems for 48 hours?
- Which downstream systems must be integrated for a successful AMI (select all that apply)?
- How are integrations currently implemented (file drops, web services, real-time APIs, middleware)?
- Have you previously encountered data integrity issues between meter systems and billing (duplicate reads, timezone/timestamp drift, missing intervals)? Please give an example.
- Who owns the SLA for each integration (IT, Metering, Vendor, Third-party integrator)?
- Do you have a secure test environment and anonymized datasets available for vendor integration validation?
People, Politics, and Who’s Really Responsible
- If this AMI program succeeds or fails publicly, whose job title would be most affected?
- Who are the decision-makers and approvers we must convince (name roles and their primary concern)?
- What internal stakeholders are most likely to resist the project and why (operational, union, privacy, budget)?
- Do you have a regulatory filing timeline or commission deadline tied to this work? If so, what are the key dates?
- How does your leadership measure program risk vs. program speed—do they prioritize hitting regulatory dates or minimizing operational disruptions?
- Who will be the day-to-day internal project owner and who will be the executive sponsor (please provide role/title)?
If We Could Fix One Thing Right Now, What Would It Be?
- Imagine the regulator asked for decisive proof in 90 days — what single metric or artifact would you wish you already had?
- What pilot success criteria would convince you to scale (select up to three)?
- How much residual non-coverage would you consider operationally acceptable after pilot (express as percent or absolute endpoints)?
- What fallback or parallel operations are you willing to run if coverage lags (manual reads, hybrid billing, targeted re-deployments)?
- What internal evidence (reports, logs, historical pilots) can you provide quickly to support a 90-day technical validation?
Data, Evidence, and the Regulatory Story You’ll Need
- What types of regulatory evidence have historically satisfied your commission (select all that apply)?
- Are there specific accuracy, retention, or cybersecurity standards your AMI solution must meet?
- Please list any formal standards, regulatory citations, or evidence formats required (e.g., UTC, ANSI, NERC, local code).
- How transparent do you want pilot results to be in public filings (full dataset vs. summarized outcomes)?
- Who on your team will prepare or sign off on regulatory submissions for this program?
Next Steps — Concrete Pilots and Pragmatic First Moves
- If we had a 90-day pilot budget, where would you want to focus it to most de-risk the program?
- What pilot scale feels compelling yet practical (number and type of endpoints)?
- Which success metrics should we track daily vs. weekly vs. at pilot close (examples: read rate, latency, packet loss, reconciliation error)?
- Who must be included in pilot governance (roles to invite to daily/weekly standups)?
- What would an acceptable pilot timeline look like (phases and milestones you expect)?
- What immediate support or artifacts from us would make you comfortable moving to a pilot (coverage model, test plan, SOW, sample contracts)?
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Outcome Discovery
Define target outcomes, pilot success criteria, regulatory evidence needs, and measurable acceptance signals.
Discovery Questions
Quick Snapshot — What's Top of Mind?
- Give us a one-sentence summary of why you're exploring AMI outcomes now.
- Which immediate trigger best describes this program?
- Who is sponsoring this effort inside your organization (select all that apply)?
- What target timeline do you have for pilot start and for a first phase of rollout?
- What outcome would make you personally feel this engagement was worth the effort?
- How confident are you today that your current metering & communications can meet the regulatory and operational needs driving this project?
If This Fails, Who Pays the Price?
- Imagine we roll out and only reach ~50% of endpoints — how would that outcome materially affect your organization and regulatory position?
- Which of these consequences worries you most if coverage or acceptance targets are missed?
- How long could the organization tolerate running two metering systems before decisive action would be required?
- Who internally would be the most vocal critic if the pilot failed to meet expectations? Please name role(s) and the likely critique.
- Have you previously paused or scaled back a rollout due to connectivity, integration, or data concerns? If yes, tell us what happened and the root causes.
What Success Actually Looks Like (Be Brutally Specific)
- If we came back six months after the pilot ended and you were ecstatic, what three measurable outcomes would we point to?
- Which of the following acceptance metrics must be demonstrated for pilot sign-off?
- For each metric you've selected above, what numeric threshold must be met (e.g., 95% connectivity)? Please list metric → threshold.
- Which single metric will carry the highest political or regulatory weight for acceptance?
- How long must the metrics be sustained to be considered stable (continuous period)?
- What exception tolerance are you willing to accept (percent of endpoints outside thresholds) before intervention is required?
The Pilot: Truth or Illusion?
- Are we designing a pilot to prove the vendor’s claims, to build regulatory confidence, or primarily to buy time—what must the pilot genuinely achieve?
- Which geographic and service environments must the pilot include to be credible?
- What pilot size would you consider persuasive (number of endpoints)?
- How long should the pilot run to generate defensible, seasonally-aware evidence?
- Which internal teams and external parties must sign off on pilot outcomes before they are used in a filing or executive briefing?
- What specific failure modes do you want the pilot to intentionally stress-test (describe 2–3)?
Regulatory Evidence That Will Stand Up in Public
- If a skeptical commissioner asked for proof of your claims, what single piece of evidence would make them stop probing?
- Which documents and deliverables will be required for your filing?
- Who will own the economic and regulatory rationale in the filing?
- What level of auditability do you need for pilot data (raw records, aggregated reports, third-party verification)?
- Are there specific public concerns we must preemptively address with the evidence package (select all that apply)?
- Would you accept vendor-collected evidence alone, or do you require neutral or third-party validation for regulatory filings?
Who Holds the Keys? Decision Dynamics and Political Hotspots
- Which person, role, or committee could single-handedly stop or derail this program if they felt surprised—who do we need to bring along early?
- Which stakeholder groups must be involved in pilot planning and acceptance (select all that apply)?
- What non-negotiable concern does each core stakeholder typically bring (briefly summarize per group)?
- How do procurement or past vendor experiences influence internal trust and willingness to accept vendor-provided evidence?
- Is there an external stakeholder (commissioner, city council, major customer) whose timeline or view creates special pressure or opportunity? Please identify and describe.
- How do you prefer we surface tough trade-offs to executives—data-driven dashboards, scenario presentations, or joint table-top exercises?
Data, Integration, and Acceptance Signals
- Are we confident the data pipeline will remain reliable under real-world stresses (billing spikes, firmware storms, partial network loss)?
- Which systems must be integrated for a pilot to be considered representative?
- What peak message rates, daily data volumes, or ingestion profiles should the MDM/head-end demonstrate during the pilot? (give numbers or ranges)
- Which end-to-end functional tests must pass before pilot acceptance (pick all that apply)?
- What tolerance for delayed or missing messages is acceptable for billing and for operational decision-making?
- Who will be accountable for remediation when integration failures occur during pilot—vendor, utility, or shared? Please explain briefly.
- Would you accept staged integration (limited billing pushes or shadow billing) as pilot proof, or do you require full end-to-end billing validation?
What Would Make You Pull the Plug — and What Would Make You Scale
- What single event during the pilot would force leadership to stop the program immediately?
- Conversely, what single positive indicator would justify accelerating scope toward full deployment?
- List your top three measurable go/no-go triggers the project team must use at decision gates.
- Which kinds of cost overruns or schedule slips would be tolerated vs. which would trigger escalation or redesign?
- Who must attend and sign the formal go/no-go decision meeting (roles, not names)?
- How should pilot lessons be captured and fed into rollout planning so we don't repeat mistakes?
Practical Next Steps — Small Commitments That Move the Needle
- What is the smallest, lowest-risk deliverable we can agree to now that will materially de-risk your decision?
- Which initial deliverables would you value most to lock in next (select up to three)?
- Who will own scheduling and tracking of those deliverables inside your organization?
- When can your team commit to providing the first set of access/data needed for vendor testing (meter lists, GIS, head-end access, etc.)?
- What concerns would prevent you from committing to an initial pilot start date today (list top 2)?
- Are you open to a short, neutral technical audit or readiness review before pilot kickoff to reduce perceived risk?
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Solution Experience
Validate how the AMI platform delivers those outcomes using customer-specific scenarios for pilot connectivity, MDM scale, and regulatory proof points.
Experience Meetings
- Solution Experience Alignment (Pre-Work Validation)
- Pilot Connectivity Scenario Workshop
- MDM & Head-End Scale Validation
- Regulatory Evidence & Filing Walkthrough
- End-to-End Customer Scenario Validation & Acceptance Run
- Seller to generate draft evidence artifacts (reports, CSV exports, executive summaries) based on pilot data for customer review.
- Quantify the consequence (cost/time/regulatory risk) tied to the current state.
- Agree one-sentence future state (outcome) that the experience must prove.
- Introductions & Meeting Objectives
- Schedule on-the-ground field test dates and identify field leads for each test area.
- Recap Target Endpoint Scale & Traffic Profile
- Validate that the head-end and MDM can ingest, persist, and serve customer data at the agreed scale and pattern.
- Confirm end-to-end integration behavior with billing and OMS and that outputs meet downstream format/latency needs.
- Prove regulatory auditability via demonstrable logs and evidence exports.
- Agree remediation plan and timeline if load tests reveal gaps.
- Customer to provide representative sample datasets (interval files, meter IDs, billing formats) for load/replay testing.
- Seller to run a scoped load test replicating customer traffic and deliver test reports including system metrics and error logs.
- Integration owners to schedule an API/connector test window and agree on mapping reconciliations.
- Document and assign remediation actions for any performance shortfalls with owners and target dates.
- Commission Requirements Recap & Consequence
- Produce a one-to-one map from regulatory filing requirements to pilot artifacts and reports.
- Validate sample evidence formats meet utility and commission expectations.
- Assign owners for evidence production, review, and final sign-off with timelines.
- Customer regulatory lead to provide the commission filing checklist and any precedence documents.
- Create and validate one-sentence current state that everyone agrees is accurate.
- Agree and document sign-off authorities and dates for each evidence artifact ahead of filing.
- If needed, schedule an additional short-run pilot to collect missing evidence items and re-test metrics.
- Context & Scenario Readout
- Demonstrate the end-to-end proof that the agreed future state is achievable for each prioritized scenario.
- Obtain explicit, scenario-by-scenario acceptance or an agreed remediation list with owners and dates.
- Finalize pilot acceptance criteria and obtain authorization to proceed to SOW/pilot execution or to schedule remediations.
- Customer to provide formal acceptance or list of remediation items for each scenario within 3 business days of the session.
- Seller to produce a session report mapping observed metrics to acceptance criteria and list remediation tasks with owners.
- If accepted, execute pilot SOW sign-off and schedule the pilot cutover window; if not, schedule remediation tests.
- Archive all evidence artifacts and register them to the regulatory evidence catalog with assigned owners for filing.
- Confirm required data, participants, and schedule for connectivity, MDM, and regulatory proof activities.
- Customer to provide meter inventory extract, sample billing data, and connectivity heatmaps for target pilot neighborhoods.
- Customer to designate SME attendees for connectivity, IT/billing, and regulatory evidence and share contact info.
- Seller to draft one-sentence current/future state statements and circulate for written confirmation prior to live sessions.
- Schedule the sequence and dates for the connectivity, MDM, and regulatory sessions based on participant availability.
- Quick Recap of Agreed Current/Future State
- Agree the set of customer-specific connectivity scenarios to be executed in the pilot.
- Define quantitative pass/fail metrics for connectivity and self-heal behavior for each scenario.
- Demonstrate network behavior that directly proves or disproves the future state for at least one representative scenario.
- Obtain explicit customer confirmation on acceptable mitigations for any scenario that does not immediately meet thresholds.
- Customer to confirm and prioritize target streets/neighborhoods for field pilot and provide access/permits if needed.
- Seller to prepare scenario-specific simulation artifacts and recorded field evidence mapped to acceptance metrics.
- Customer to approve measurement windows and success thresholds for each scenario.
- Current State Statement & Validation
- Select & Prioritize Customer-Specific Scenarios
- Scenario 1 — Connectivity Live Run
- Evidence Catalog: Mapping Needs to Artifacts
- One-Sentence MDM Future State
- Tie Connectivity Outcome to Consequence
- Load Test Design & Success Metrics
- Show Sample Reports & Export Templates
- Define Metrics & Acceptance Criteria
- Consequence Quantification
- Demonstration: Network Simulation & Self-Heal Proof
- Sensitivity Analysis & Worst-Case Evidence
- Future State One-Sentence Definition
- Demonstration: Scaled Ingestion Replay
- Scenario 2 — MDM Ingestion & Billing Flow
- Data & Scenario Requirements
- Field/Live Data Walkthrough
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Solution Scope
Specify meters, network coverage, head-end and MDM modules, integration responsibilities, pilot scope, and success metrics.
Scope Configuration
- Supply and Ship Smart Meters
- Install Residential Smart Meters
- Install Commercial Smart Meters
- Install Mesh Communications Gateways
- Deploy Neighborhood Mesh Repeaters
- Commission Mesh Network and Provision Endpoints
- Provision Meter Firmware and Security Keys
- Deploy Head-End System
- Install and Configure Meter Data Management (MDM)
- Integrate MDM with Billing and OMS
- Enable Remote Connect/Disconnect Services
- Activate Outage Detection and Voltage Monitoring
- Perform Field Meter Replacement and Decommissioning
Scope Questions
Supply and Ship Smart Meters
- What is the total quantity of meters to be supplied for this phase (or pilot)?
- Which meter types/form-factors are required?
- What is the target delivery timeline for meters?
- What delivery model do you prefer?
- Do you require kitting, labeling, or special packaging per installation type?
Install Residential Smart Meters
- How many residential endpoints are expected in this installation phase?
- What is the typical site access complexity for residential installs?
- Will installations require customer appointments or can installers perform drive-by installs?
- Who will perform residential installations?
- Describe any special site conditions or customer communications needs (privacy, health concerns, tenant access).
Install Commercial Smart Meters
- How many commercial endpoints are included in this scope?
- Which commercial meter capabilities are required?
- Do commercial installs require planned outages or coordination with facility managers?
- Will on-site calibration, certification, or witness testing be required at install?
- Please list any site-specific constraints for commercial installs (meter rooms, restricted hours, PPE).
Install Mesh Communications Gateways
- Approximately how many gateways are required for the planned coverage area?
- Preferred gateway mounting locations?
- What backhaul options are available or preferred for gateways?
- What power supply options exist at proposed gateway sites?
- Are environmental or hazardous-area rated enclosures required for gateway installations?
Deploy Neighborhood Mesh Repeaters
- What is the target repeater density or approximate number per neighborhood?
- Which terrain/landcover best describes the deployment area?
- What siting approvals or attachments are required (municipal permits, pole attachments, private property)?
- Preferred powering approach for repeaters?
- Are there existing utility assets available for mounting repeaters (poles, cabinets, substations)?
Commission Mesh Network and Provision Endpoints
- Do you expect commissioning to be field-led, remotely managed, or a hybrid approach?
- What is the minimum acceptable connectivity rate for commissioning acceptance?
- Which provisioning methods are preferred for endpoints?
- Do you require integration of commissioning data with GIS/asset registry?
- Is a drive-test or dedicated coverage mapping campaign required prior to final acceptance?
Provision Meter Firmware and Security Keys
- Will meters require vendor or utility-specific firmware customization?
- Who will manage the security key lifecycle (provisioning, rotation, revocation)?
- What firmware rollout strategy do you prefer?
- Do you require signed firmware, secure boot, and cryptographic attestation evidence for regulatory compliance?
- Please list any regulatory or organizational compliance standards that govern firmware/security (e.g., NERC, state-level requirements).
Deploy Head-End System
- What deployment model do you prefer for the head-end (HES)?
- What is the expected initial and long-term scale the head-end must support?
- Are high-availability and disaster recovery requirements specified?
- Will the head-end need to integrate with existing NMS/SCADA or other operational systems?
- Are there role-based access control, audit logging, or security certifications required for the head-end?
Install and Configure Meter Data Management (MDM)
- Which deployment model is preferred for MDM?
- What data retention policy is required for interval and billing data?
- Estimate expected daily data ingestion volume or choose a range.
- Which systems must MDM integrate with (select all that apply)?
- Do you require advanced analytics, custom KPIs, or bespoke reporting from MDM?
Integrate MDM with Billing and OMS
- Which billing and OMS systems must be integrated?
- What integration cadence is required for billing data exchange?
- Who will be responsible for building and validating integrations?
- How would you classify the data mapping complexity for billing and OMS (field-level, transformations, complex business rules)?
- What acceptance tests or reconciliation criteria must integrations pass?
Enable Remote Connect/Disconnect Services
- Which customer segments will be enabled for remote connect/disconnect (RCD)?
- Are there legal, safety, or tariff approvals required before enabling RCD?
- Should RCD be integrated with existing work order or customer service systems?
- What manual override or safety interlocks are required for connect/disconnect operations?
- What is the maximum acceptable command-to-action latency for RCD operations?
Activate Outage Detection and Voltage Monitoring
- What outage detection latency is required for acceptable performance?
- What voltage monitoring frequency and thresholds are required?
- Should outage and voltage events automatically integrate with OMS for restoration workflows?
- Which notification channels and escalation paths are required for outage/voltage alarms?
- What acceptance metrics define acceptable detection accuracy (e.g., percent correct, false-positive rate)?
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Mutual Commit
Agree commercial terms, regulatory filing deliverables, pilot acceptance criteria, and project governance.
Agreement Modules
- Statement of Work (SOW)
- Master Services Agreement (MSA)
- Commercial Terms & Pricing Schedule
- Payment & Milestone Schedule
- Pilot Acceptance Criteria & Test Plan
- Regulatory Filing Deliverables
- Project Governance & RACI
- Service Level Agreement (SLA) & Remedies
- Data Processing Agreement (DPA) & Data Ownership
- Integration & Responsibilities Matrix
- Equipment Supply, Lead Times & Warranty
- Installation & Field Services Agreement
- Change Order & Scope Management
- Acceptance Signoff & Go/No-Go Report
- Exit, Termination & Transition Plan
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Deployment
Operationalize rollout with readiness checks, enablement, and outcome validation.
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Pre-Deployment Readiness
Confirm data migrations, system access, installer plans, pilot learnings, and mitigation plans for connectivity risks.
Readiness Questions
Quick Check‑in: Your Deployment Snapshot
- How many metered endpoints are in the scope for the upcoming deployment phase?
- What is the target start month for field installations in this phase?
- Who from your team is the operational owner for deployment day activities (title or role)?
- Which of these best describes your current rollout model for this phase?
- What percentage of your service territory has a validated coverage map for the chosen communications technology?
- Briefly describe any regulatory filing or evidence deadline that will affect this phase.
What If Half the Meters Never Talked to Us?
- How would you react operationally and politically if 30–50% of installed endpoints did not report reliably after installation?
- Which of these historical issues best explains your biggest connectivity worry?
- How tolerant is your organization to a residual non‑reporting rate once the pilot ends?
- If coverage gaps appear, which mitigation options would you consider acceptable?
- Tell us about a past connectivity failure you still worry about—what happened and what were the consequences?
Where Your Data Lives — and What You’d Lose If It Didn’t
- Which systems must receive interval data in real time or near real time from the MDM/head‑end?
- What are your current data retention and archival requirements for interval reads and event logs?
- Have you performed a data migration dry run (schema mapping, volume test) in your lab? If so, what failed or surprised you?
- Which of these integration risks worries you most about cutover to the new platform?
- Describe the team and access model for systems that will need credentials, VPNs, or firewall rules changed during cutover.
Installer Reality: How Field Teams Will Actually Get It Done
- What would a failed week of installations look like to you—missed appointments, safety incidents, or unacceptable rework?
- Which contractor or crew model do you believe will deliver the best installation quality for your geography?
- What percentage of customer households do you expect to refuse or postpone access for health, privacy, or other reasons?
- How do you plan to verify installation quality in the field (random QA, 100% verification, post‑install drive test, customer feedback)?
- What training or credential gaps exist today for crews who will touch smart meters, and how long would it take to close them?
Pilot Learnings: Are We Truly Ready to Scale?
- If the pilot taught you only one hard lesson about scaling, what would you expect it to be?
- Which pilot KPIs were most important to your regulators and stakeholders?
- Which pilot scenarios did you run to validate edge cases (high-rise buildings, remote rural clusters, industrial meters, network congestion)?
- What pilot results would cause you to pause before scaling, and what results would make you confident to proceed?
- Who on your side will be responsible for analyzing pilot telemetry and deciding whether to accept pilot evidence for regulatory submission?
If This Went Perfectly — What Would Change for Your Team?
- Imagine six months after phase cutover: what looks, feels, and measures different compared with today?
- Which operational metric would you celebrate as proof the deployment delivered value?
- What regulatory evidence package would be required to close the docket and demonstrate success to the commission?
- If you could pick one outcome to protect above all else during deployment, which would it be?
- What would success look like for frontline crews six months post‑deployment?
Contingency Workshop: How We'll Handle the Mess
- If a major connectivity island is discovered during the rollout, what time window is acceptable to restore service without regulatory fallout?
- Which fallback measures would you authorize immediately if coverage issues threaten billing or safety signals?
- What is the governance path for activating emergency funds or changing scope when an unexpected field problem increases cost?
- Who needs to be notified within the first 4 hours of a severe pilot or deployment failure (roles or titles)?
- Describe a communication plan you'd find acceptable to keep regulators, senior leadership, and field teams aligned during a major issue.
Who Signs Off and How: Decision Rights, Filings, and Timelines
- Who must approve a go/no‑go decision for full scale‑up after pilot — list the decision roles and their approval threshold?
- What regulatory filing milestones are immovable, and which dates have some flexibility?
- What governance forum will oversee deployment risks and change requests (Steering Committee, Technical Working Group, Incident Command)?
- When a technical change is proposed during deployment, what level of documentation and testing do you require before approval?
- Who will be the public point of contact for regulatory queries during deployment?
Operational Handoff: Training, Staffing, and Long‑term Support
- How confident are you that operations teams can work at the expected velocity after cutover?
- Which long‑term support model do you prefer for post‑deployment operations?
- What training formats will actually stick with your crews and ops teams (classroom, hands‑on field labs, train‑the‑trainer, eLearning)?
- What SLAs do you require for network availability, telemetry delivery, and incident response post‑deployment?
- How would you like to receive ongoing health and performance reports (dashboard cadence and format)?
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Deployment Enablement
Schedule phased rollout tasks, assign owners, coordinate field teams and communications, and track regulatory milestones.
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Validation Checklist
Verify pilot performance, network coverage thresholds, integration tests, and go/no-go criteria for each phase.
Validation Questions
Getting Started — Tell Us Who You Are in This Story
- Which of these best describes your role in the AMI decision today?
- Briefly, what is the single most important business question you want this AMI program to answer for your leadership team?
- Where are you in the decision timeline right now?
- Who will be the final approver for capital spend on this AMI program?
If Half the Endpoints Went Dark, What Would You Feel?
- If a significant share of endpoints lost connectivity during rollout, what would be the immediate operational consequence you fear most?
- Where in your service territory do you already see the worst connectivity or read-rate issues?
- How often have you experienced partial network failures or sustained low read rates in past pilots or live systems, and for how long did those issues persist?
- What percentage of endpoints losing service would you consider a program showstopper (i.e., trigger a pause or redesign)?
- Tell us a concrete example of a location or situation where past wireless or telemetry projects failed to meet expectations—what happened and why?
What’s the Hidden Cost You’re Quietly Carrying?
- How much do you estimate annual cost is for manual meter reading and exception truck rolls today (order of magnitude)?
- Roughly what percentage of your customer base is still on manual or estimated reads?
- How often do billing disputes or regulatory inquiries arise that you believe are linked to lack of interval or accurate reads?
- Describe one specific operational task that costs you more time or money today because you don’t have interval data (e.g., outage detection, theft investigations).
- When you think about the workforce impact—meter readers, field crews—what emotion comes up (loss, relief, uncertainty, opportunity)? Please explain.
When Regulators Knock, Do You Have the Story?
- If the public utility commission asks for evidence that a TOU rollout is cost‑beneficial, which part of that filing worries you most?
- What specific regulatory milestones or filing dates are driving your schedule (list dates or quarters)?
- Have you previously submitted a regulatory filing for AMI or advanced metering pilots—what evidence did regulators accept or reject?
- Which types of pilot evidence would carry the most weight in a hearing (rank or select all that apply)?
- Who on your team would lead the regulatory narrative and who would be the technical point for evidence collection?
What Would a Pilot Need to Prove to Shut Down Doubt?
- If a pilot could only show one thing to change minds, would you rather it prove coverage/reach, MDM/head-end scale, or regulatory evidence—and why?
- What pilot size (endpoints) and geographic mix would you consider credible for demonstrating real-world performance?
- Which pilot metrics would you require to pass before recommending scale (select up to five)?
- What acceptance thresholds would you consider realistic for those metrics (e.g., read rate 95%+, latency <5s)?
- How would you like pilot results presented to stakeholders—raw datasets, dashboards, independent third‑party validation, or a combination?
What Integrations Keep You Up at Night?
- Which backend systems must this AMI platform integrate with for go‑live to be meaningful?
- Which of those integrations has been historically the slowest or most painful for your team, and why?
- How mature are the APIs or interfaces on those systems (select one)?
- What data volumes or retention policies must we design for (messages per minute, retention years)?
- Which party should own integration testing and cutover responsibilities in a phased rollout?
Who Holds the Keys—and What Would Win Them Over?
- If one stakeholder could veto the program, who is it and what would their single biggest objection likely be?
- For each stakeholder group below, what would ‘good’ look like to them? (Select groups you want to map and then describe.)
- Which stakeholder concerns are mostly emotional (fear of job loss, reputational risk) versus technical or financial? Please identify examples.
- Who is your program champion internally, and what resources or authority do they control?
- How do you prefer we surface stakeholder feedback during a pilot—weekly briefings, dashboards, workshop reviews, or written summaries?
Imagine the Day This Works — What Changes?
- Picture operations 12 months after a successful phased roll‑out—what two things have improved most for your team?
- Which new use cases would you immediately pursue once interval data is reliable across most endpoints?
- How would success be measured quantitatively at 6, 12, and 24 months (pick metrics you’d track)?
- What organizational shifts would you need to support that future state (training, role changes, new hires)?
- If you could lock in one long‑term guarantee from a vendor to reduce your risk, what would it be (coverage SLAs, warranty periods, performance payments)?
What’s Standing Between Us and a Confident Yes?
- If you had to name the single biggest barrier to moving from pilot to full rollout, what would it be?
- How much additional evidence (time or sample size) would make that barrier tolerable?
- Which mitigation approaches do you prefer for high‑impact risks (select all that apply)?
- What decision cadence and governance would you need to feel comfortable granting a phased go/no‑go (committee frequency, data package contents)?
- Realistically, when could your organization commit budget for a pilot if all technical and regulatory questions are satisfied?
Practical Next Steps — How Would You Like Us to Help?
- Which of these immediate next steps would be most helpful to you right now?
- What format do you prefer for an initial pilot proposal—detailed technical plan, executive one‑pager, or combined package?
- Who should be on a short working group from your side to accelerate next steps (names and roles or departments)?
- Are there legal, procurement, or compliance timelines we must align with before proposing contract language?
- Finally, what would make you feel respected and heard during the pilot process (communication cadence, transparency, escalation path)?
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Success
Confirm achieved outcomes, finalize regulatory evidence, capture lessons learned, and maintain a shared channel for issues and enhancements.
Success Reviews
- Final Acceptance & Outcomes Confirmation
- Regulatory Evidence Handoff & Filing Review
- Lessons Learned Retrospective
- Operations & Support Handover (Shared Channel & SLAs)
- Continuous Improvements & Enhancement Roadmap
Issues & Enhancements
- Operationalize a shared channel for issues, enhancements, and governance with an agreed meeting cadence.
- Assign filing responsibility and confirm filing timeline and point of contact.
- Capture mitigation plan for any identified evidence gaps and a communication plan for the regulator.
- Deliver finalized evidence files (signed test reports, connectivity heatmaps, cost-benefit appendices) to the utility's regulatory lead.
- Prepare an executive summary tailored to the commission language for inclusion in the filing.
- Set a date for a follow-up to address any regulator IRs (information requests) post-filing.
- Framing & Pre-work Review
- Document a prioritized, owned list of process and technical improvements to apply to future rollouts.
- Preserve and distribute successful practices as playbook updates.
- Ensure consequences are explicit for significant failures so prioritization reflects real impact.
- Publish the retrospective report with owners, impact estimates, and target remediation dates.
- Update the deployment playbook and training materials to incorporate agreed changes.
- Schedule a follow-up checkpoint to verify implementation of top-priority improvements.
- One-sentence Future State for Operations
- Ensure operations team has full access to systems, runbooks, and training to operate the platform reliably.
- Establish an agreed SLA and escalation path for operational incidents.
- Introductions & Objectives
- Create the shared collaboration workspace and configure ticketing workflows and access rights.
- Deliver operator credentials, runbooks, and recorded trainings to the utility team.
- Publish SLA and escalation matrix and schedule the first operational review meeting.
- Purpose & Decision Criteria
- Produce a prioritized 90-day enhancement roadmap with owners and measurable success criteria.
- Define governance and funding approval path for larger change requests and regulatory-driven updates.
- Agree pilot approach for high-risk/high-value enhancements with acceptance criteria tied to operational outcomes.
- Publish the prioritized roadmap and assign owners and target dates for the 90-day sprint.
- Open pilot charters for selected enhancements with defined measurement plans.
- Schedule the quarterly governance review and invite cross-functional stakeholders.
- Validate that each agreed success metric has been met with documentary evidence.
- Obtain formal stakeholder sign-off or capture explicit conditional acceptance criteria.
- Identify any critical remaining risks and assign mitigation owners with deadlines.
- Agree the timeline and owner for transitioning from pilot/rollout to steady-state operations.
- Produce and circulate an acceptance record signed by named stakeholders.
- Create tickets for unresolved issues with owners, impact rating, and target remediation dates.
- Schedule production cutover milestones and communications to customer service and billing teams.
- Purpose & Required Deliverables
- Confirm the regulatory package meets the commission checklist and identify any remaining evidence needs.
- One-sentence Current State
- What Worked Well
- Current State of Evidence
- Current Improvement Backlog Review
- Data & System Access Handover
- Consequence Summary
- Support Model & SLA Definitions
- Review of Key Evidence Artifacts
- Impact & Effort Estimation
- What Didn't Work & Root Cause Analysis
- Roadmap & Pilot Planning
- Outcome-by-Outcome Acceptance Review
- Consequence Mapping
- Shared Channel Setup & Governance
- Gap Analysis & Consequence Discussion
- Governance Cadence & Funding Path
- Live Validation of Representative Scenarios
- Improvement Backlog & Prioritization
- Filing Owner & Timeline
- Training & Knowledge Transfer
- Outstanding Issues & Mitigation Plan
- Playbook & Knowledge Transfer Updates
- Approval & Version Control
- Reporting & KPI Dashboard Handoff