Long Range Planning: Key to Successful Pipeline Capital Programs, Maintenance, and Regulatory Compliance

Ideally, long range financial plans should be completed approximately every five years. It is difficult to accurately predict factors such as inflation, customer base, exact capital needs and general economic conditions more than five years out. Therefore, even if long range planning efforts span over 10 years, the long range plan is often obsolete after a few years. Long range financial planning is a process which involves several steps as shown in Figure 1. First, a facility master plan is required to ascertain the extent of facilities required for expansion, upgrade and rehabilitation of a utility. Usually master plans extend over a 20 or 30-year period and contain much more than the near term (5 or so years) capital facilities needed.