West Monroe Partners has appointed Will McNamara, a Project Manager Professional (PMP), has recently joined the firm’s Chicago office as a Senior Manager in the Energy & Utilities (E&U) department. McNamara will oversee the debut of a new service offering providing regulatory support and key stakeholder relations services to the firm’s utility clients.

Tom Hulsebosch, managing director of West Monroe Partner’s E&U practice, says McNamara “adds a significant regulatory, community-relations, and key stakeholder management capability…as well as substantial hands-on experience guiding utility clients through the many regulatory and public-relations challenges that are becoming such a prominent consideration for Smart Grid deployments. We are seeing a significantly higher engagement from all of the utility stakeholders, which if not managed properly can negatively impact a utility’s AMI/Smart Grid program.”

McNamara has extensive regulatory and legislative expertise with more than 15 years of energy industry policy-making, project management, expert testimony, and stakeholder-relations experience. McNamara also has a long background in developing smart grid/AMI policy and managing business plans and regulatory filings that enable utilities to achieve regulatory and community support for their project initiatives.

Prior to joining West Monroe Partners, McNamara served as a Senior Principal Consultant at KEMA. His duties included assisting utility clients such as Duke Energy, Consolidated Edison, Los Angeles District Water & Power, San Diego Gas & Electric, the Southern California Public Power Authority, and the Snohomish Public Utility District in managing their AMI/smart grid deployments.

Earlier in his career, McNamara served as Regulatory and Legislative Policy Manager for Sempra Energy, where he developed the corporate policy response to energy-related matters before the California Public Utilities Commission, the California Legislature, and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. McNamara is also a published author, having written an account of the California energy crisis.

McNamara says, “My current perspective is what I refer to as the ‘second wave’ of utility AMI/ smart grid deployment, utilities across the U.S. facing increased regulatory and public challenges. This is a particular concern among smaller and mid-sized utilities that are still formulating their initial deployment strategies. One benefit we have is to learn from the experiences of the utilities that are further down the deployment path. I believe performance benchmarking, as one example, will become a very important and strategic tool in the regulatory environment going forward.”

For more information on West Monroe Partner’s work within the utility industry, visit www.westmonroepartners.com/utilities.

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