In 1887, Indianapolis civic leaders came up with the idea of operating a natural gas company as a Public Trust, solely for the benefit of customers and the community. Today, this Trust lives on as Citizens Energy Group, a broad-based utility service company, providing natural gas, thermal energy, water, and wastewater services to about 800,000 customers and thousands of businesses in the Indianapolis area. Citizens Energy Group’s vision is to fulfill the promise of the Trust to serve its customers and communities with unparalleled excellence and integrity.
In August of 2011, Citizens Energy Group acquired wastewater and water assets from the City of Indianapolis. This acquisition increased Citizens Energy Group’s capital project budget from $30 million to $300 million. Prior to the acquisition, Citizens Energy Group outsourced a lot of their work to sub-contractors and managed their projects manually in Microsoft Excel and through vendor-provided project schedules. This significant increase in capital from the water and wastewater acquisitions necessitated the need for tools that would allow projects to be managed internally. Also, the rapid growth of managing single-year projects to now managing multi-year projects solidified the group’s decision to purchase tools that could scale to their requirements. Primavera Unifier and Primavera P6 Enterprise Project Portfolio Management have allowed Citizens Energy Group to move away from manual processes adding more credibility, transparency, and standardization to a strictly regulated industry.