DAVE DONALDSON

As a Senior Design Engineer, my job is to provide Technical Support to our customers that are installing solar equipment for the first time. We help customers deal with Electrical Code, requirements of the solar equipment manufacturers, and the expectations of Inspectors at the customers' site. In order to accomplish this, we generate a document based on the customer's Plans, which we call the Custom Install Guide. It is highly detailed. For example, it specifies how to lay out the wiring for the solar panels, as well as the wire type, gauge, color, and length. Any equipment that is not included in the Solar Kit needs to be purchased by the customer. All of this additional equipment is specified in the Custom Install Guide, with a picture of the component, and a link to an online vendor to purchase it. The Custom Install Guide is one of the things that differentiates us from our competition. Our customers LOVE it. The majority of our customers have never installed solar before. Yet, we have a 100% success rate of getting our customers' projects completed, as well as passing their Inspections. As you can imagine, this is a significant accomplishment. The Custom Install Guide is instrumental in achieving this success.

When I was first informed I would be receiving help from a contractor based offshore, my first concern was there being a language barrier. The concepts that I deal with are complex, and need to be clearly understood. To my relief, Francis has excellent English skills. In fact, there is not even a trace of an accent when speaking with him. A year ago, we began working together to generate Custom Installation Guides for our customers. Francis has not installed solar himself, but came up to speed quickly. He is very bright, and motivated to understand the entire process.

The Wiring Diagrams for the Custom Install Guides are NOT generic. Each one is specific to that customer's project. Each one needs to be drawn using the Plans as a template. This takes a high degree of skill, not only with the drawing program, but to understand what is in the Plans and how to interpret them. Francis developed the skill set to do this much faster than I anticipated. These drawings are combined with other information gleaned from the Plans, and incorporated into the Custom Install Guide. A set of Plans will have approximately 17 pages, with lots of fine details. It is confusing and intimidating to the uninitiated. To know where to look among the many pages of a set of Plans, and pull-out the exact information needed, is very important. Francis now has developed this skill to the point he can actually spot errors in the Plans, so they are caught before they impact the customer.

I used to spend several hours each day working on Custom Installation Guides. Now, Francis generates them. He and I spend a few minutes reviewing each one. This is a huge time savings. With his terrific attention to detail, the quality of the Custom Installation Guides has remained as high as when I did them myself. To date, he has generated well over 200 Custom Installation Guides. That frees me up to concentrate on other Technical Support solutions for our customers. Even with all the COVID-related lock-downs, Francis was able to work from home and there was no drop in productivity. He is a very hard worker, and has a wonderful attitude.

We have been very happy with Francis' efforts to achieve our corporate goal of providing the best Customer Experience with their solar projects. As our company expands, we will be coming back to NextPhase for additional staff.