JEA Integrated Water Resource Plan and Demand Side Management Strategy Executive Summary
Client: JEA
Role: Creative Direction, Graphic Design, Project Management
“This document is being used by JEA as an outwardly facing document to inform the community, their customers, and the regulator agencies to communicate how they will continue to meet their growing demands in a sustainable way. CDM Smith’s platinum deliverable was key to achieving this goal in providing a well-designed communications document that was graphically rich while conveying technical information in a simple-to-understand way.” — Shayne Wood, Client Service Leader, CDM Smith
Introduction of Brand
JEA is the largest water utility in Jacksonville, Florida and the eighth largest community-owned utility in the United States. The government agency was created to serve those who live in Jacksonville and in the surrounding communities to ensure the electric, water and sewer demands of its customers are met, both today and for generations to come. To address water resources challenges, JEA embarked on the development of an Integrated Water Resources Plan (IWRP) to comprehensively evaluate its current utility systems, analyze future water resources challenges and opportunities, and recommend strategies and capital improvement projects over a 50-year planning horizon. As part of this effort, a water Demand-Side Management (DSM) strategy was also developed to guide the implementation of water conservation measures.
JEA's IWRP Executive Summary cover.
Key Learnings
Engage with relevant visuals
Through a collaborative partnership, produce technical communication materials with appropriate photography, eye-catching callouts, easy-to-understand informational graphics, and attractive layouts to better tell the story of the project while also grabbing the stakeholder's attention, enhancing the document's readability, and increasing audience engagement.
Establish yourself as an asset
As a professional designer, you have the unique skills to transform the boring into brilliant. The most effective designs are those which are collaborated on between the project team and the creative team to develop materials that are aligned with the client’s priorities. Lead the charge in establishing creative solutions by getting involved early on in the project.
Educate to improve the situation
Many engineers and government agency staff lack an understanding of how graphic design can positively impact a technical communication document. By putting forth extra effort to educate the client, you and your team will gain a higher sense of trust with the client and the technical team—leading to greater freedom to explore creative solutions.
Cover before redesign.
Final cover design.
The Challenge
JEA was a long standing client of CDM Smith. As a result, the firm’s project manager and technical lead assigned to the client’s project wanted to deliver an executive summary that was above and beyond what their client was expecting. The document was going to be used by JEA to communicate certain project information to the public and other technical and non-technical stakeholders. Therefore, it needed to be polished and professional. Even though we were not necessarily working with the most exciting content, we had to make the document engaging enough to grab the audience's attention and retain it throughout the document. The main challenge we encountered was taking what would normally be a standard, boring, engineering document of primarily straight text and transform it into a visually appealing, engaging publication that would not only ‘wow’ the client but would impress all levels of stakeholders—technical and non-technical.
Internal page layout before redesign.
Page layout after redesign.
The Document
Clients are desiring more innovation and modern skills to communicate complex issues or technical information in ways that engage the public. JEA was no different in their request for the organization’s IWRP and DSM strategy. What we created was a 32 page booklet filled with beautiful project and location specific photography, along with infographics simplifying technical data to better connect with and engage the stakeholders. I worked with the project team, including the client, to gather photography to make the content more relevant. I also worked with the team to call out particular pieces of important text to highlight, ensuring anyone skimming the content would not miss them. In the end, JEA’s technical communication piece was something the government agency could use as a promotional tool while simultaneously speaking to the client’s and CDM Smith’s high-quality standards.
Additional page layouts after redesign.
Results
The efforts on the IWRP project not only benefited the project and its community, but also CDM Smith. Not long after the completion of the project’s technical communication document, the firm won a 7-year program management contract valued at $40 million with JEA. The client specifically commented how this level of support enhanced CDM Smith’s ability to secure the contract.
Additional page layouts after redesign.
Skill Set
Skill sets employed throughout the JEA IWRP and DSM Strategy Executive Summary includes graphic design, publication layout, and print production management. Technical programs used to build the creative are all Adobe Creative Cloud products, InDesign, Illustrator, and Photoshop.