PM Network - February 2015

Cultivating Community

The PMO’s strategy has helped DTE deliver projects that benefit both the company and its customers—without increasing costs.

“By using effec-
tive project manage-
ment, we’ve been
able to successfully
improve customer
service while hold-
ing our cost and our
rates flat for a long
period of time,” Mr.
Kurmas says. “That’s
improved us relative
to other geographies around us. It’s benefited our customers and the communi-
ties in which we live.”
By updating infrastructure and encouraging economic development, the
organization also fuels its own future growth. The M1 Rail project, for example,
aims to construct a streetcar line along 3. 3 miles ( 5. 3 kilometers) of Woodward
Avenue, Detroit’s largest thoroughfare. DTE Energy and the Michigan Depart-
ment of Transportation kicked off construction in July 2014, with the project
expected to wrap up in late 2016. The streetcar line, funded through a wide-
reaching public-private partnership, is expected to spur a flurry of business
activity in downtown Detroit.

“That rail is going to connect the various community and neighborhood
activities up and down Woodward Avenue such that it will drive brand-new
businesses into vacant buildings,” Mr. May says. “It will create the opportunity
for small businesses to flourish. And those businesses should be a driver for the
neighborhoods just beyond to flourish.”
As part of its Neighborhood Revitalization Project, DTE has repaired over
19,000 streetlights and is moving many businesses and buildings off the city’s
outdated system and onto its grid.

“Those efforts are specifically aimed at increasing load for DTE Energy. The more vibrant the city is, the better that outcome will be,” Mr. May says. “But it’s also very rewarding to be in a community that is becoming safer, becoming more well lit, becoming a place where you’d like to live and play and enjoy yourself.” PM