Case Study: USPowerGen

Mission: To provide Human Resources and Organizational Consulting for USPowerGen’s first $1 billion acquisition of three NYC-based power plants.

Company Background

Background USPowerGen owns and operates fifty-eight generating units at six facilities with a total capacity of over 5,000 Megawatts (MW). USPowerGen subsidiaries sell their energy and capacity into the NYISO and ISO-New England deregulated markets. USPowerGen is led by a management team headquartered in New York City. Equity investors include affiliates of Madison Dearborn Partners LLC, the family of Ray L. Hunt of Dallas, Texas, which controls Hunt Oil Company, and a significant number of financial institutions, as well as the management team. A predecessor of the Company ("USPLLC") was started in 2003 to acquire US merchant power projects and other unregulated power assets.

Engagement

Our engagement began in December; the company had to begin doing business as the new entity by the following February. Our responsibility was to build an entire infrastructure in less than 100 days. This first phase in the relationship involved managing the contraction of the company from 5,000 employees to 500, most of whom were unionized. Our priority task was to lead the entire Human Resources mandate for the newly forming company. This included designing similar or better employee benefits, and negotiating with union leadership to gain their buy in and approval. We designed and began implementing the entire employee benefits infrastructure, including sourcing 401K and insurance plan vendors, and setting up all of the administrative and regulatory structures while simultaneously functioning as the acting HR department. We also managed the recruitment of other core infrastructure groups which were urgently needed, such as: Accounting, Finance and Information Technology. It’s important to note that although there were other consultancies engaged by this client, our assessment was the largest and most complex, and our consulting team was the smallest - two individuals performed the entire engagement.

Results

We met all of the consulting requirements we were engaged to provide and we enabled USPowerGen to become a fully functioning entity within a 100-day timeframe. We lead the entire HR, Benefits and Payroll transition for the original team of acquiring investors. We recruited key talent and grew the full-time operating staff from 5 to 50. People Strategies, Inc. has been credited with being a vital factor in this company’s successful formation, transition and growth.

Read Comments from USPowerGen clients:

Nigel Bradly, Director, Bradly Consulting Ltd, Former Program Manager of the USPowerGen Acquisition

Mark Sudbey, Chairman and CEO, USPowerGen

Read commentary from our Consulting Partner:

Renita White-Simmons, Executive Director, Human Resource Services, Brooklyn College