Large Georgia Water Supplier Refines Organizational Goals with Transparency and Stakeholder Input

The CCMWA Level of Service Goals Update is the 2026 winner of the Small Projects Engineering Excellence State Award in Georgia and a recipient of a National Recognition Award presented by the American Council of Engineering Companies.

From left, CCMWA Director of Engineering Rita Neely, Freese and Nichols Engineer Casey Porter and CCMWA Engineer Tom Guinn accepting the 2026 American Council of Engineering Companies of Georgia Engineering Excellence Award for Small Projects at the Georgia Engineering Awards March 6 in Duluth, GA.

Serving nearly 1 million residents through 10 wholesale customers, the Cobb County-Marietta Water Authority (CCMWA) is Georgia’s largest purely wholesale provider of drinking water. Recently, their customers were invited to collaborate with CCMWA staff on the latest iterations of service goals.

Since 2012, the organization has used Level of Service Goals (LOSG) for guiding decisions regarding infrastructure, operations, planning, system performance evaluations and capital investments. However, this is the first time the goal-setting process included structured and documented customer input (coordination with 10 other utilities that purchase the water).

The result was improved and objective operational goals, aligning CCMWA’s internal focuses with customer needs and cost expectations.

Incorporating Customer Feedback

For more than a decade, CCMWA’s LOSGs were developed internally, focusing on technical and regulatory priorities. They are used to set capital budgets and have a substantial impact on the overall cost of services.

A Strategic Plan objective was enacted in 2022 when CCMWA set out to adopt clearly defined goals incorporating direct customer input. For example, how much resiliency is enough? Are any failures tolerable if the cost to remove all risk is exceedingly high?
Freese and Nichols partnered with CCMWA on the latest LOSG update to help navigate these questions.

Setting New Goals

The update:

  • Offered customers multiple ways to voice their priorities and be heard
  • Documented the process for a clear and transparent history of goal development
  • Simplified and made measurable goals for objective decision-making regarding capital planning, operations and regulatory compliance
  • Set forward-thinking goals accounting for cost impacts to customers

The process was transparent and collaborative.

Freese and Nichols facilitated:

  • Peer-benchmark surveys in which CCMWA’s existing LOSGs, customer contract terms and regional requirements were compared with similar public utility wholesalers in the Southeast U.S.Collaborative workshops with CCMWA staff, developing a draft Level of Goals that considered how financial and operational changes would impact the organization and its stakeholders.
  • Engagement with CCMWA customers (utility directors and their leadership teams), where participants could provide written feedback on each LOSG via a personalized and private feedback form. In collaborative workshops, customers provided verbal input and heard from other CCMWA customers and staff on responses to the suggested changes.
  • Development of an innovative feedback database which condensed and streamlined input for facilitation of workshops, boosting transparency and understanding.

Additionally, Freese and Nichols adapted the utility’s existing Capital Improvement Plan (CIP) scoring tool to include scoring tied to the new LOSGs, aligning their CIP projects with the recent goals update.

The LOSG update was completed in July 2025.

Redefining Goal Setting

The collaborative goal-setting process strengthened relationships and built trust between CCMWA and its customers. It also positioned the regional public utility to prioritize investments, justify future rate changes and adapt to future system change demands.

CCMWA’s latest LOSG update has already been used to:

  • Defer near-term capital projects that did not advance the new LOSGs for immediate cost and time savings
  • Adjust CCMWA’s approach to distributing boil water advisories to prioritize fast response times

This approach to goal setting not only included customers in the planning and decision-making process but also enhanced transparency and communication between CCMWA and its customers, supporting sustainable water service delivery for the future.

Video courtesy of ACEC Georgia