Owner's Engineering | Challenges & Adding Value to Solar + Storage Projects

What are the 𝗯𝗶𝗴𝗴𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗹𝗹𝗲𝗻𝗴𝗲𝘀 for OE's in large-scale 𝘀𝗼𝗹𝗮𝗿 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗷𝗲𝗰𝘁𝘀? How do 𝗢𝘄𝗻𝗲𝗿’𝘀 𝗘𝗻𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 (𝗢𝗘) services 𝗮𝗱𝗱 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗹 𝘃𝗮𝗹𝘂𝗲? We sat down with Sean Orsburn, PE, Senior Project Manager for Pure Power's OE Team, to get his expert take. 

• Ensuring contractors adhere to project plans 
• Identifying NEC violations & safety risks early 
• Preventing subpar materials from jeopardizing performance 
• Translating inspections into long-term cost savings 

As an extension of the owner's internal team, our OE services help mitigate risks and optimize project success over the 25+ year lifecycle.  Watch now to hear Sean's insights!

Transcription:

So what are some of the most common challenges that you face in large-scale solar projects? One of the biggest challenges we have is just ensuring that the contractor is providing the materials that were expected in the project. With any project changes are made during the life of the project. There are substitutions or availability issues in the market. However, when those changes are made, frequently they're made with subpar components or things that aren't rated for the application they're trying to use it for. Ensuring that the plan set that was agreed upon in the contract is what is being built to. How does Pure Power's approach to OE add value to a solar project? Our goal as the owner’s engineer is to be an extension of the owner. We want them to feel like we are a part of their internal team, that we're just an extension of them at all steps of the way. From a value standpoint, we want to ensure that our services align with what they would feel like they're paying for somebody in-house. But generally, how we provide value is when we are doing our reviews of products, of the drawings, or doing the inspections of the facility, our findings translate to real-world dollars in savings for the owner in the long term. So when we call out NEC violations or safety issues or installation issues based on the drawing plans, that might not be something that shows up immediately to the client, but in the next five, ten years they're going to see failures of their site that's going to translate to downtime or material loss, things of that nature. So, just from a CapEx and OpEx perspective, each little item we find has a real dollar amount attached to it over the 25, 35-year life cycle of these projects.