Municipalities are under growing pressure to deal with climate risks while also managing aging infrastructure, limited budgets, and everyday service needs. Many communities know what problems they face, but find it harder to decide how to set priorities, pay for projects, and plan work over time without putting core services at risk from putting off replacements.

This three-part online training series helps municipalities build climate-resilient capital plans that are practical and grounded in risk, levels of service, and real financial limits. The focus is on making clear, defensible decisions, not on perfect or ideal solutions.

Delivered through three facilitated online workshops, participants will learn how to bring climate risk into capital planning while staying aligned with existing asset management processes: 

• Understand how capital decisions affect levels of service across different types of assets
• Prioritize capital projects based on risk to service, not just asset age or condition
• Recognize and explain trade-offs between adaptation, renewal, growth, and regulatory needs
• Build capital plans that match real staffing, funding, and political limits

Moving beyond project lists

This workshop series directly addresses the reality that not everything can be done at once, and that there isn't enough funding to do all of the work by considering: 

• Increasing costs of maintaining and adapting services as climate risks increase
• Cases where risk cannot be fully reduced in the short term
• Non-capital ways to reduce risk, including:
  - Operational changes
  - Emergency planning and preparedness
  - Planning or regulatory actions that help avoid future costs
  
  

When projects need to be delayed but still carry near-term risk, participants will learn how to identify practical risk-reduction measures to put in place until full upgrades are possible.

Hands-on learning and outcomes

Through practical exercises and guided discussion, participants will use their own priority projects to develop a draft five-year, climate-informed capital financing plan that includes:

• Priority projects
• Expected funding sources
• Deferred work and the risks that come with it
• Short-term risk-reduction actions
• Impacts, where applicable, on debt, reserves and municipal revenue.
  
  

This deliverable is intended to support council discussions, funding applications, and internal planning decisions.

Who should attend

This training is suitable for municipal staff working in asset management, engineering, finance, planning, or climate adaptation, CAOs and senior managers involved in capital planning and budgeting and councilors looking for a clearer picture of infrastructure trade-offs and climate risk

No technical background is required. The focus is on clear decision-making, good governance, and practical next steps.