Indicative Scenario Planning Projects

Project Descriptions

Part Two: Public Sector Projects

Risk Management and Opportunity Evaluation for the Panama Canal. The Futures Strategy Group’s consulting relationship with the Panama Canal goes back more than a decade. In 1997 as The Futures Group, Inc., FSG principals facilitated a long-term strategy project prior to the U.S. handover of the Canal to Panama. The Executive Planning Department of the Panama Canal Commission hired FSG principals to develop a set of planning scenarios for the future of global transportation (with specific attention to the maritime component) set in a 40-year time horizon. In preparation for the September 1997 Universal Congress on the Future of the Canal, FSG principals helped Commission executives, board members and key external stakeholders use the scenarios to identify and test new business strategies that would sustain the organization in a wide variety of operating environments. The most important issue to emerge from these discussions concerned the advisability of constructing a third set of lanes and locks to allow the Canal to handle larger ships. Though not without risks, the construction project emerged as a “robust” initiative. Canal executives presented this finding at the November 1997 Universal Congress. Two years later, the U.S. turned over the Canal to Panama in a seamless transfer of control.

In July 2008, FSG conducted a scenario-planning workshop for the executive leadership of the Panama Canal Authority (ACP), the successor organization to the U.S. Panama Canal Commission. In September 2008, the ACP participated in the first-ever U.S. Coast Guard stakeholder workshop as part of Project Evergreen.

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