Being early in my career as a consultant, I haven’t had many experiences with project management or dealing with clients directly. However, one experience I had last year is worth sharing. My firm was contracted to produce a local area plan (LAP) for a local government on Vancouver Island. As part of the LAP, we were tasked with creating energy density maps to show the municipality its spatial distribution of current energy consumption. As a planning and decision-support tool, we used these energy maps to show the client what their energy and emissions could like in 25 years under business-as-usual, and what it could look like under an aggressive energy and GHG reductions scenario.
The energy density mapping process was complicated as we were learning it for the first time and the client was nebulous about what they wanted. However, we eventually had a meeting with the client to discuss these maps and determine what their expectations were, the level of complexity needed, and what the assumptions were, or needed to be. The meeting allowed us to reach a mutual understanding of the technical components and requirements of these maps. Thereafter, we had regular communication with the client about the energy density maps which greatly improved the understanding on both sides and allowed us to produce a product that they were very happy with.
