Digital-twin investment roadmap

A digital-twin program is easy to scope and hard to sequence. Cal Water needed a roadmap that started where the ROI was, not where the technology was prettiest.

Problem

California Water Service runs distributed infrastructure across hundreds of sites: pumps, treatment plants, distribution networks, and customer service points. Digital twin is a real lever for an operator at that scale, but only if the buildout is sequenced against ROI rather than shopped feature-by-feature. The risk is a generic twin that nobody trusts and nobody operates.

Approach

Led the strategy work to identify and rank digital-twin investment opportunities across the utility. Mapped the operational stack (predictive maintenance, remote operations, customer-facing data) against the value each use case unlocks and the cost to stand it up. Translated the result into a phased roadmap with concrete first-year wins and a longer arc that builds toward a fuller twin.

Outcome

• Ranked digital-twin opportunities across predictive maintenance, remote operations, and customer-facing data
• Phased roadmap sequenced for early-ROI delivery, executive-ready
• Investment thesis the operations team can run against year over year