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Zak Cutler

Senior PartnerToronto

Serves electric and gas utilities, energy companies, and infrastructure owners and investors on issues related to capital investment and strategy

Zak is a leader in the Electric Power & Natural Gas Practice and leads energy work across Canada. Based in the Toronto office, he serves a range of clients in the oil and gas, electric power, and natural gas space on operational, capital, strategic, and financial topics.

Zak also works with infrastructure clients across North America, primarily in the areas of strategic asset management, public-private partnerships, and strategy.

Examples of Zak’s recent client projects include the following:

  • supporting the merger of two oil and gas producers, working to drive the process, exceed synergy targets, and ensure safe, uninterrupted operations
  • helping a gas utility coordinate its response to a disaster impacting 10,000 customers, including working with field crews to execute capital replacement and restore customers, developing and managing data analytics to guide the response, and creating a strategy to help engage with stakeholders
  • conducting a review of a large integrated utility’s capital program to increase capital productivity by improving capital planning, reviewing design specs and standards, improving execution, and lowering costs through better procurement
  • leading the diligence—including operational, construction, and stakeholder assessments—of a greenfield pipeline development to prepare for a multibillion-dollar investment

Published Work

The plant as a product: Hyperscaling green capex,” McKinsey & Company, September 2023

Reducing embodied carbon in new construction,” McKinsey & Company, October 2022

Resetting capital spending in the wake of COVID-19,” McKinsey & Company, June 2020

Education

Queen's University
BComm, strategy and finance