The municipality of Rüschlikon is planning to build a district-heating network that makes use of lake water as a source of heat. Working on behalf of the municipality, we developed various operating models to account for the network’s planning, realization, and operation. To arrive at our models, we first assigned the various functions – business operation, investments, financing, technical tasks, and commercial tasks in various coherent combinations – to the municipality of Rüschlikon and prospective partners. We then supported the municipality in its efforts to recruit suitable partners for the realization of the selected model.