Facilities Management at the City of Calgary kicked-off a process to develop a longer-term Corporate Facility Portfolio Plan in order to prioritize 10-year focus areas and investments. Given that this longer-term planning was operating in a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous environment, it was challenging to anticipate the range of possible futures that may unfold over the next 10, 20 or 30 years. As such, Facilities Management engaged Creative Futures to use a customized strategic foresight approach to ensure the Facilities Portfolio Plan anticipated the range of possible short and long-term disruptions. 

Our Approach:

• Creative Futures conducted research and horizon scanning to clarify key trends for facility planning in public and private sectors.

• Using this research, Creative Futures created a set of Future of Facilities scenarios for Calgary.

• Creative Futures hosted workshops with 5 service areas to understand how their individual facilities’ needs may be impacted in the different scenarios, and how their existing 10-year plans may need to adjust to be more robust.

• Based on these workshops, Creative Futures summarized key insights to inform the future-focused assessment report, and developed a future-focused screening tool to support the Corporate Facilities Portfolio Plan.

Results:

As part of this project, six critical uncertainties were identified that would significantly impact the Corporate Facilities Portfolio Plan. These were integrated into the planning process, and incorporated into the final presentation to City Council in 2022.