The Sewerage and Water Board of New Orleans’ (SWBNO) Board of Directors has adopted a five-year strategic plan for the utility.
Visit our planning page for a full overview.
The plan, a structured response to the utility’s challenges, will guide organizational goals, support budget development, and direct progress monitoring in the organization's long-term focus areas.
The six major focus areas of the Strategic Plan include:
- Financial Stability
- Technology Modernization
- Workforce Development and Enrichment
- Customer Service Excellence and Stakeholder Engagement
- Infrastructure Resilience and Reliability
- Organizational and Operational Improvement
“Over the last few years, we’ve established a new leadership team with the expertise and energy to change the course of our utility,” said Executive Director, Ghassan Korban. “Transformational change takes time; however, our efforts are already underway, and this plan will continue to guide our strategy, action, and accountability for the people of New Orleans.”
To ensure that existing initiatives, plans, and lived experiences were integrated in the context of the new document, SWBNO’s planning process involved input from a broad group of internal and external stakeholders. Major elements of the seven-month process included interviews, work sessions, focus group discussions, and surveys with utility employees, the leadership team, Board of Directors, Customer Advisory Committee, and external stakeholders.
“While we’ve made tremendous progress on some of our biggest challenges, we still face several years of hard work to ensure this utility is the model we all know it can be,” said Mayor Latoya Cantrell, President of the Board of Directors of the Sewerage and Water Board. “The effects of climate change, which we feel already, paired with the historic underinvestment in our infrastructure citywide has left us in an especially difficult position. This utility and its Board of Directors are dedicated to moving us forward.”
Read the full plan here: https://www.swbno.org/Projects/Planning.
The seven-month process was guided by SWBNO’s Director of Planning and Strategy and the Board’s Strategy Committee in partnership with Raftelis, a nationally recognized consulting firm who have done hundreds of public water utility strategic plans, as well as CSRS, Inc. and Square Button Group to bring local context and engagement.
“We anticipate that this Strategic Plan and the utility’s implementation plan will be dynamic documents that can be adapted as new opportunities and challenges emerge,” said Robin A. Barnes, Chair of the Strategy Committee.
“A well thought out strategic plan is a tool for sound decision-making,” said Korban. “We can build toward a future we know we want because we have taken the time to understand how to get there.”