Hawksley Consulting acquires Burton & Associates

Broomfield, Colo. — Hawksley Consulting, a business consulting firm and subsidiary of MWH Global focused on developing integrated solutions for utilities, government agencies and private industries, is growing its financial services. Hawksley Consulting announced the acquisition of Burton & Associates, a St. Augustine, Fla.-based financial management services firm experienced in developing financial plans and cost recovery strategies for local governments. The 17 Burton & Associates utility and government financial consultants will join Hawksley Consulting. Additional terms of the acquisition are undisclosed.

The addition of Burton & Associates allows Hawksley Consulting to expand its range of financial services for local governments and water and wastewater utilities across the U.S. Burton & Associates adds proprietary analytics tools and other financial expertise to complement and expand existing services from Hawksley Consulting, including financial and strategic planning, asset management and technology implementation.

"Expanding our financial services is important for addressing our clients' changing needs. With limited budgets and the growing requirements to repair or replace aging infrastructure, our water and wastewater clients need to integrate their financial plans with their capital, operational and maintenance goals,” said Alan Krause, chairman and chief executive officer of MWH Global.

"Many of our municipal and utility clients are at a critical crossroads, especially when it comes to making the smartest planning and financial decisions to satisfy current and future customer needs," said Dan McConville, president of Hawksley Consulting. "That's why we're combining the financial management expertise of Burton & Associates with our existing team so that we can better support our clients through our business consulting services and innovative, decision-making tools that help them manage an increasingly complex set of issues."

For more than 25 years, Burton & Associates has specialized in providing financial management services to local governments throughout the U.S. Through multiple engagements with clients such as the City of Chesapeake, Va.; the City of Tempe, Ariz.; and the City of St. Petersburg, Fla., Burton & Associates has developed an empowering decision support process that uses a proprietary interactive Financial Analysis and Management System (FAMS-XL) tool. The tool allows the team to make the process of analyzing different potential solutions more transparent, providing instantaneous feedback for alternative scenarios and “what-if” questions.

“This will make Hawksley Consulting one of the largest, if not the largest financial services practice in the U.S. water sector, and we are very excited about what that means,” said Michael E. Burton, founder of Burton & Associates. “We are delighted to merge our successful practice with an equally successful one at Hawksley Consulting. This move gives us a platform to expand our services in terms of capabilities, technology and geography.”

Burton & Associates will operate under its existing name during the transition, but will ultimately become part of Hawksley Consulting. Burton & Associates will maintain their existing offices under the Hawksley Consulting name. As part of the financial services team, Burton & Associates staff will continue to provide utility rate studies, cost of service allocation services, utility system valuation, financial feasibility analyses, capital planning and funding analyses, level of service analysis, rate design analyses, general government financial sustainability analysis and other financial services to local governments. These services will be combined with other Hawksley Consulting expertise, including strategy and planning, risk and resilience services, asset management, technology implementation and stakeholder engagement services.