Programme Assurance and Replan for a UK Energy Supplier's Smart Metering Rollout

A UK energy supplier was running a multi-year SMETS2 smart metering rollout across more than 1.6 million domestic meter points, with regulatory installation obligations under Ofgem's licence framework. The programme had fallen materially behind plan: field installation throughput was running below contracted capacity, billing and settlement defects had built up across the in-flight estate, and the executive committee was receiving conflicting reports from the field operations partner, the head office programme team and the data and billing function. With Ofgem reporting cycles approaching and the supplier's licence obligations under scrutiny, leadership needed an independent, evidenced view of where the programme genuinely stood, what was achievable in the remaining window, and which interventions would actually move the dial. The previous attempt to replan from within the programme had been overtaken by events within weeks of publication.

Intology was appointed as independent Programme Assurance Director, reporting directly to the Chief Operating Officer with a dotted line to the board's regulatory committee. We started with a rapid evidence-based diagnostic across field operations, head office delivery, data and billing, customer experience and supplier governance, producing a single integrated picture of programme health within four weeks. The replan was rebuilt bottom-up from validated field installation capacity, planned recruitment ramp-up, meter availability constraints and seasonal access patterns rather than from a target-led top-down number. Billing and settlement defect remediation was lifted out of business-as-usual and run as a discrete recovery workstream with its own clear exit criteria. The supplier governance model was tightened with a milestone-linked commercial framework and joint daily operating cadence covering installs, defects and exceptions. Regulatory reporting was rebuilt around the new evidenced baseline, with a clear narrative shared proactively with Ofgem.