Services

Strategic planning and position papers
Business requirements and use case definition
Scope of Work (SoW), preliminary engineering and concept design development
Request For Proposal (RFP) development and evaluation
Risk assessment and evaluation
Merger and Acquisition (M&A) due diligence including investigation and audit
Contract preparation, review and vendor evaluation

Business case and proposal development including financial options analysis and profitability studies
Talent acquisition and coaching of technical professionals
Governance benchmarking, continuous improvement and operational excellence including asset management (ISO 55000), cyber security (CIP, AESCSF), project management (PMBoK), process audit and modelling, contracting and delivery strategy, talent management and implementation planning

Approach

Informed

Our approach is pragmatic and considered, adapting relevant frameworks such as ISO 55000, PMBoK and ITIL to our clients’ needs.

This, combined with utility experience across many jurisdictions, technologies, products and vendors; We provides an informed approach to policy, strategy, operations and project delivery decisions.

Independent

We are technology and vendor agnostic. We will collate, discuss and feedback your requirements to prepare strategies, plans and solutions that are independent and tailored to our clients’ business objectives and priorities.

We prepare documentation and advice that is researched, referenced and structured to tell your specific story for the target audience.

Responsive

We understand our utility clients’ business, priorities and challenges from hands-on experience and personal interest.

Our boutique nature allows us to be responsive to our clients’ changing needs, to inject diversity of thought when needed to deliver quality documentation on time, every time.

About

A2A Consulting was established in 2019 by Matt Acton, when he identified a need for an informed, independent and responsive service to utilities and their partners. This was especially true for the evolving Operational Technology and telecommunications requirements for distribution utilities undergoing a green transformation.

Matt was formerly a regional manager and consultant for the Engineering News Record’s #1 ranked power engineering firm in the United States. Matt has also previously held management and engineering roles at power utilities (public and private) in the US and Australia.

With strong business acumen and hands-on international experience in asset planning, engineering and design, project delivery, operations, IT, regulatory and finance; Matt is able to connect internal groups and across multiple industries, sectors and partners to broker deals and consult on:
• Private telecommunications networks including LTE, optic fiber and MPLS
• Information Technology / Operational Technology (IT/OT) convergence
• Protection, automation (SCADA) and industrial control systems including Distribution Automation, Distributed Management Systems (DMS) and Distributed Energy Resource Management Systems (DERMS)
• Renewable and distributed energy resources (DER)
• Smart grid, grid modernization and grid transformation
• Smart cities and Internet of Things (IoT)
• Peer-to-Peer transactions and energy trading via blockchain
• Workforce automation and mobility
• Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI)
• Asset Management Systems, Enterprise Asset Management (EAM), Geospatial Information Systems (GIS) and Work Management Systems
• Data management and analytics