Brian Barker, the CEO of recently formed Aquila Energy, is data obsessed: “Data is everything, right?” he asserts. His team of 20 or so core employees drive mountains of data up through various management levels on a given project, as the company works to position itself at the heart of the U.S. solar + storage mid-market.
To gather and analyze data, the company uses MS Project, HeavyBid, Procore, Sage and a PDCA (plan, do, check, act) program to plan, stage and execute last-mile EPC work, trimming out wasted time and effort to maximize the ROI schedule for his IPP clients. “There is no single software program that does it all,” Barker says.
While the well-seasoned team has collectively been involved in more than 2 GW of solar installs, the target market for Aquila is now the 5 MW to 80 MW range of projects that are too large for a small EPC and too small for a large EPC. This middle market will become the bulge bracket of solar soon enough, he reckons.
“We come in and assist IPPs getting through the final push on that last mile of development, through our engineering and technical expertise,” Barker says. “We don’t do the real estate part or the front-end lease agreements, or the O&M. But what happens with a lot of IPPs is that they get pretty overwhelmed. They’re buying or trying to develop their own projects, and they just don’t have the engineering or technical expertise to get through the final push.”
Adding value is what it’s all about.
“We establish what’s called a value stream track, in which we look at what value we’re providing to the customer throughout the entire life cycle of a project,” Barker notes. “We’re highly focused on value stream mapping and process mapping and efficiencies, so we really can evaluate value early on.”
Sweating the small stuff
Optimized design is something that “we’re really focused on,” Barker says. “It not only allows us to come in and get into projects early with IPPs, but it also allows us to engineer and optimize the site in a way that that a lot of developers don’t know how to do. We’re able to take that all the way through the value stream.”
Metrics for each team member’s progress in a project phase helps wring out additional value. Barker explains how Aquila Energy uses key performance indicators (KPI) to improve the process.
“You assign lead times and process times to each segment within the value stream,” Barker says. “By creating KPIs, we can set goals, like, if the process normally takes 100 days, but we want to do it in 80 days, so we ask ourselves the question, ‘How can we achieve that?’”
Aquila Energy creates what Barker calls, “scoreboards,” and the company is able to track those KPIs.
“Since we track critical path and methodology, we can actually complete projects faster for clients and put them on the grid faster to start exporting clean electrons on time — or hopefully earlier, and on budget,” Barker says. “The focus really is on schedule and quality.”
Part of the task is wrangling project chaos in the market. “Scheduling updates go into Procore, our software of choice for construction management. And we use Sage for job costing accounting, and those two integrate so they can talk back and forth. The other piece that we use is HeavyBid, a really powerful estimating tool that we use to be able to track our progress,” Baker explains.
Construction speed and safety
Speed in EPC work on a solar project can get the job done quickly, at times. “But then you may spend the next year making it right,” Barker warns.
Tracking and analyzing the time it takes for each step of an install establishes a baseline for how fast is fast enough. Scrutinizing pain points within the various tasks along the way to a finished project, then executing correctly the first time, Aquila saves time and money for the customer, Barker says.
“For example, EPCs on a lot of the smaller DG projects will have a superintendent that also acts as a safety manager and the quality manager,” Baker observes. “Whereas on larger projects, we’ll have upwards of 15 quality managers out there checking every little thing that’s being done. And we’ll have multiple safety officers, as well.”
Barker explains how the process works.
“If we’re installing a combiner, for example, we ask, ‘How long does it take to install?” Barker explains. “We ask ‘How long does it take to unpackage it? How long does it take to get an inspection on it? How long does it take to actually wire it in and do the quality checks on it?’ Let’s call it 1.7 hours per unit, and we have 35 of them on a project. When we get to the field, we’re able to actually track against time as we’re installing that combiner. And what we see is a labor [learning] curve.”
Aquila then takes that data to improve estimating and benchmarking.
“For the first couple that we install, we see that they are taking us four hours each. But as you ramp up on the project, you have a labor curve. At the end of the 35, you’re installing them in less than an hour. So we take an average and find that 1.7 hours is the right amount of time to be estimating, and we learn from it. It’s a process of continuous improvement,” Barker says. “We’re benchmarking the quality in the process that you provide to your customer with a PDCS system.”
The Western 11 first
Aquila, based in Vista, California, is focusing its initial regional footprint on the Western 11 states — from the Rockies over — to begin with, Barker says. Projects are largely centered in California, Oregon and Washington, but the company is licensed to operate in Nevada and Arizona, and is working on a license in New Mexico.
Since Barker has been certified for a Master’s License by the non-profit National Association of State Contractors Licensing Agencies (NASCLA), he can apply for a license to operate in any additional U.S. state without having to take another difficult exam first, he notes.
For staffing, “We rely heavily on our labor suppliers. We’re a part of ABC, so we’re an open shop. We provide some journeyman electricians, but in the field we may need another five or six on top of that. We’re also able to utilize apprentices and apprenticeship programs to meet both IRA and California State [labor] standards,” Barker notes.
Team unity is key to rolling out a mid-market EPC, like Aquila, from seemingly nowhere. Barker, formerly the Borrego Solar president of EPC, pulled expertise from a variety of companies to form Aquila.
“It’s pretty unique to have a team,” Barker concludes. “Aquila is still a startup, but our teams have worked together for over 10 years. It’s not just individual experience that counts, it’s experience working together. It’s extremely hard to hire one-off people and get them integrated into your system. That takes years.”
