Dam safety upgrades of aging facilities are often complex and require judgement and trade-offs when developing the scope and selecting an option that provides an acceptable level of risk reduction. The Strathcona Discharge Upgrade Project used a failure mode analysis and a decision framework to make good decisions for the project. Strathcona Dam, completed in 1958, was assessed to have various deficiencies related to the age of the facility and the inability to meet current seismic withstand criteria. BC Hydro decided that the best way to address the most pressing issues was to construct a new low level outlet (LLO) that provides a deep reservoir drawdown capability to reduce potential dam safety risks, including those that could be present after the design earthquake. Because there are no widely accepted guidelines on how fast the reservoir must be drawn down or how much of the reservoir should be removed, a decision framework was developed which utilized the results of a potential failure mode analysis to select upgrade options and to refine those options as the design progressed. The potential failure mode analysis identified and characterized various dam safety related failure modes and was used to justify the selection of a new LLO to mitigate these dam safety risks. Together with numerical analyses (e.g. transient seepage analysis), the failure mode analysis results also provided support to the design decisions on the project. Various functions were examined for the new LLO in addition to reservoir drawdown, including discharge for flood release and for conveying water for a potential future powerhouse. By designing a LLO that could also provide flood discharges allowed for the conversion of the existing spillway gates to a free overflow spillway, avoiding costly seismic upgrades. The new LLO is currently under construction.