Utility company org chart example
A regional electric and water utility, drawn around the three things that make utilities unlike other companies: a network that must never stop, crews who work on it in the dark, and a regulator who approves the prices. Safety and regulatory affairs report to the top for the same reason.
How a utility company is usually structured
A utility is run by its operations division. Under a chief operating officer sit the control centre — the room that runs the network around the clock — and the districts, each with a manager, supervisors and line or plant crews stacked beneath. Water and electric are often separate operating divisions with the same shape; here they share a control centre and split at district level.
Beside operations sits engineering and asset management: the people who plan the network, decide what gets replaced and when, and run the capital programme. In a utility the asset plan is the business plan, so this function is a peer of operations, not a service to it. Customer operations — billing, the contact centre, metering — is the third operating line and the one customers judge the utility by.
Two functions report to the chief executive rather than to operations. Safety, because line work and water treatment kill people when the pressure to restore service wins the argument. Regulatory affairs, because the rate case — the filing that sets what the utility may charge — is the company's most important negotiation, and the person who runs it needs to say no to operations about costs and to finance about promises. Both keep dotted lines into operations, which is where their work happens.
Typical titles by level
The vocabulary these charts use, from the top down. Titles vary by country and by company; the levels don't.
| Level | Titles you'll see |
|---|---|
| Leadership | Chief Executive, Chief Operating Officer, VP Engineering & Asset Management, VP Customer Operations, Chief Financial Officer, VP Regulatory Affairs, Director of Safety & Health |
| Managers | Control Centre Manager, District Manager, Distribution or Transmission Manager, Water Treatment Manager, Asset Manager, Capital Programme Manager, Contact Centre Manager, Metering Manager, Environmental Compliance Manager |
| Supervisors | Shift Supervisor, Line Supervisor, Crew Foreman, Treatment Plant Supervisor, Substation Supervisor, Field Services Supervisor |
| Field and technical | System Operator, Dispatcher, Lineworker, Cable Splicer, Substation Technician, Meter Technician, Water Treatment Operator, Plant Operator, Protection Engineer, Planning Engineer, GIS Analyst, Customer Service Representative, Billing Analyst, contractor crews (as contractors) |
Where these charts go wrong
Utility charts go wrong by drawing the control centre under a single district, by putting safety inside operations where a restoration deadline can overrule it, by folding regulatory affairs into legal or communications, by omitting the contractors who do half the capital work, and by charting every crew member so the document runs to sixty pages nobody updates.
Questions people ask
- Who does the safety director report to at a utility?
- The chief executive, with a dotted line to the chief operating officer. Restoration pressure is real and relentless, and safety has to be able to stop work without asking the person accountable for the outage clock. Some utilities put safety under a chief risk officer instead; either way, not under operations.
- Where does the control centre sit?
- Under operations, beside the districts, never inside one. It directs all of them, around the clock, and needs the authority to tell any district what to do. Draw the dotted lines to the districts if the chart is for the control centre; leave them to the text if it is for the whole company.
- How do you show contractors doing capital work?
- As contractor cards under the capital programme or district manager who directs them, or as one card per contractor company. Half the capital work at many utilities is contracted, and a chart without them explains neither the spend nor the site headcount.
- Do electric and water utilities have the same structure?
- Nearly. Both have a control room, districts with crews, engineering and assets, customer operations and a regulator. Water adds treatment plants with their own operators and compliance; electric adds transmission and substations. A combined utility runs them as parallel operating divisions with shared support.
Other industries
- ManufacturingTwo shifts, and quality kept out of production's line.
- LogisticsDispatch runs the day; supervisors run the people.
- ConstructionOffice and field, meeting on every project.
- Software startupSquads under a CTO; product managers on a dotted line.
- NonprofitThe board on top, programmes beside the money.
- Medical practiceA clinical line and a business line, crossing at nursing.
- SchoolDepartments led by teachers who also manage.
- HotelSix divisions around one general manager.
- Marketing agencyDisciplines own people; pods own the work.
- Security & facilities servicesSites stacked under supervisors; a 24-hour control room.
- Sales teamRegions for closers, a team for openers, RevOps beside them.
- Accounting firmA partner pyramid, three service lines.
- Law firmPractice groups, and the business side that runs the firm.
- ChurchA board that governs, a pastor who leads, ministries below.
- RestaurantFront of house and back of house, meeting at the pass.
- IT departmentRun, build and secure, under one director.
- HR departmentPartners, specialists and operations: the three legs.
- Local governmentElected above appointed, and two officers who answer to the council.
- BankThree lines of defence, drawn as lines.
- Staffing agencySales desks, recruiting desks, and a back office that pays two thousand people.
- HospitalTwo hierarchies that meet at the bedside.
- Retail chainHead office, the field, and a store drawn once.
- Small businessOne owner, two managers, and the jobs the owner still does.
Or start from a structure — functional, divisional, matrix or flat — or from your own spreadsheet. The guides cover a reorg, a merger, an assistant's chart and a consultant's deliverable.
Make it yours
Download the spreadsheet, replace the names, import it — the chart redraws itself. Or start empty and drag people until it's true. Building is free at any size.