Focus for Associated’s Strategic Advisory Services: Resilience Fortified. Value Reimagined.

The world continues to evolve at a rapid pace. As uncertainty and extreme climate events increase, risks to our communities have never been more significant. Strategic thinking, agility, and resourcefulness are essential to manage these risks, improve resiliency, and better prepare for the future.

re·sil·ience |  rə-zil-yən(t)s
n. the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; the process of adapting in the face of adversity

for·ti·fied |  f˙or-tə-fīd
adj. provided with additional protection

Resilience Fortified 
Resilience considers not only short-term needs, but also long-term sustainment of those needs.

To be resilient, we must consider all risks and uncertainties to help improve decision-making, build foresight, and plan for the unexpected. 

Organizations are subject to increasing pressures to fortify resilience. Leaders and managers are now challenged to look for new, strategic approaches to their vision and strategy - essential in providing alignment and line-of-sight to goals and objectives. Key considerations include governance; integrated asset planning considering the entire asset life cycle; value and level of service for all stakeholders; and community resilience and sustainability, including preparedness, adaptation, response, and recovery. Risk-based decision-making, balancing investment with “all-hazards” risks, is a critical tool to manage uncertainty. We consider social, economic, environmental, and infrastructure risks, including aging assets and their vulnerabilities.

Developing and successfully implementing new, strategic approaches to improve resilience also requires coordinating the activities of an organization across departments and disciplines. Our approach evaluates both bottom-up and top-down considerations, macro and micro approaches, as well as effective change management, to fortify organizations, their assets and services, and our communities for the present and the future. 

Value Reimagined
“Value lies in the eyes of the beholder.” With this in mind, it is critical to establish, understand, and acknowledge how value is defined by an organization and its leadership, as well as by stakeholders, such as investors and employees, and customers and the community. 

Reimagining value provides an opportunity to fortify resilience. Our approach considers an organization’s governance, including transparency, accountability, and efficiency. We help leaders improve decision-making, balancing risk and return on investment. We work with clients to establish agreed levels of service considering equity and affordability. We can assist to optimize assets, extending service life and prioritizing rehabilitation and replacement. We work in consultation with our clients’ operations, maintenance, and management team to plan and determine the right approach, considering sustainability, resilience, and energy to reduce environmental footprint, fortify community resilience, and reimagine value.

We apply tailored approaches that consider the unique needs of each client to help fortify resilience and reimagine value for their organizations, assets, and communities. Our Strategic Advisory Services experts take a collaborative, holistic approach with clients and stakeholders to provide strategic advice, support, and guidance through transparent, multi-criteria decision analysis, and identify resilient and sustainable solutions that maximize value. Our experienced team brings expertise in strategy and governance, asset management, climate adaptation and mitigation, community resilience; including disaster preparedness and recovery, energy, sustainability, data intelligence, and integrated management systems, complemented by local and global experience in infrastructure, water, transportation, buildings, energy, and the environment.

We collaborate with you to solve today’s problems, consider tomorrow’s challenges, and fortify resilience to shape a better future.

About the author

Shane Thompson, MBA, P.Eng., CEM is our Manager, Strategic Advisory Services in Alberta. He has over 20 years experience providing strategic advice and leading infrastructure projects to improve resilience and value for both private and government clients in North America and Australia.