Modeling, analytics and data infrastructure that gives our clients leverage to frame the narrative
We help advocacy groups win with asymmetrically powerful analytics capabilities.
An information gap that decides debates before they start
Environmental advocates are outgunned, especially at the local and state level, where government agencies deploy complex financial, operational and ecosystem models to justify policies that harm ecosystems and ratepayers. Advocates focus on their campaigns and rarely have the analytical firepower to challenge the fact base agencies present to the public through these models. Because of this information gap, they cede large parts of the debate to polluters and resource agencies.
On top of that, most advocacy work is siloed. Even when organizations collaborate on a single issue, documents move by email or file server. The power of modern structured databases and analytical queries rarely reaches the people making the case.
We close that gap with rigorous, independent analysis that puts our clients on equal analytical footing with the agencies they face.
What we do
We build independent analysis that uncovers what agency-developed models do not reveal, using publicly available data, public records requests, and deep analysis of agency documents.
Why we exist
Agencies set the terms of public debate with models most people never see. When a demand forecast is inflated or a cost comparison leaves out the real alternative, the decision is effectively made before the public comment period opens.
Prairie Creek Labs gives the other side of the table the same analytical capability: insightful models, the persistence to pull data out of agencies, and shared digital infrastructure that lets clients and their partners collaborate around evidence rather than email threads.
With modern tooling, a small team of experts can build and continuously improve this kind of capability, shifting the work from winning a battle here and there to changing how these debates are decided.
Who we are
Mark has made a career of leading teams to build challenging analytics solutions. As a McKinsey & Co. consultant, and one of the firm's half-dozen Sustainability Fellows, he developed McKinsey's model-driven perspective on the future cost of electric vehicles, changing how the firm and its clients approached EV development.
He led software teams at large tech firms developing analytics products that used large datasets and complex models to examine and visualize physical and digital environments. At a venture-funded startup, he created an energy efficiency project development organization that used commercial-building energy models as its differentiating technology.
Mark is a Sierra Club SF Bay Chapter volunteer water policy advocate and an elected member of the Sierra Club's local executive committee in San Francisco.
BA in History, Dartmouth College
Let's talk about what you're facing
Whether you're confronting a flawed agency model, preparing comments on a major project, or need data an agency won't hand over, we want to hear from you.
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The agency or project involved, the document or proceeding you're responding to, and any deadlines. We typically reply within two business days.