I would say so for civil, It becomes important when things go wrong, I would say on a site, all of a sudden civil engineering becomes very important. When you like push send on those submittals and you watch that email go that's special just to be able to be okay, for this one second, we're done first of all, and proud of the work that we sent out.
You know, new grads what you're getting in a classroom is awesome and that's a good base, but I also think for solar, especially being able to have that attitude of flexibility, goes a long way with, with the fast pace that we're working in Welcome back to another episode of Sounds of Solar. I'm your host, Russell Hamilton, and I'm accompanied by Prahlad Shivshankaran here. As you can see, Chris is absent from today's podcast. He is down in the Southwest doing some mountain biking.
Yeah, he definitely doesn't miss us. No, he's not missing us right now. So Pradeep, we missed you the last couple episodes. Where were you at? What was going on? I really wanted to be there for those two. I was trying my best to get all my work done, but I think I had my birthday on February 1st was my birthday. And I think once you get older, you get more projects. Well, happy birthday. Thank you. So, so yeah, but missed it, but I love the episode.
So today's episode, we're going to be focusing on the civil side of utility scale, solar projects and the ins and outs of what solar are, what the civil does. Regarding solar. And today we have on Eliza, who is one of our civil project managers. Welcome Eliza. Yeah. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here. Yeah. We're excited for you to be here. So we've had structural on, which was Chris. We've had hydrology Byron.
Now let's talk about civil, but before we get there, let's talk about your background. How did you get to this point? What got you into civil? Now tell us your journey. Tell us how you got here. So, I grew up on the East coast and I am a fourth generation engineer. So my dad's a mechanical engineer and so our house, we had an a-frame house and my dad actually in the seventies, you know, hippie parents, they installed solar on the, Oh wow. Side of the roof. And so my dad did that.
He also has a, he's got like a, a patent from 50 years ago on commercial rooftop solar, so Oh, wow. I guess, you know, full circle here. I am with a civil solar and kind of going back to my roots with, with that. I've got four children. My youngest is 12 and oldest is 18 and you can relate to having teenagers, right? Russ, you've got, I got three. So yeah, it makes for, for Busy home life.
But yeah, about five and a half years ago decided to come back to engineering and was lucky enough to end up at EVS and working in in renewables and solar. Okay. Well, let's talk about just a little bit about civil and kind of your project management responsibilities, kind of we're electrical, right? So we work with you.
I've been on projects with you specifically, but I don't exactly know all the ins and outs of, of your, of the job that you do and tell us some of the challenges and things that you do as like a project manager and how civil affects like the entire process of this, the solar project.
as you guys know, like the start, start of our projects is electrical, but when we always think it's civil side, we go first in the meetings, always sit there for 45 minutes, daydreaming 15 minutes, electrical slamming all in. Okay. Well, that's funny. Yeah, I would say so for civil, you know, I feel like that, that's It becomes important when, when things go wrong, I would say on a site, if something's not going right, all of a sudden civil engineering becomes very important.
Whether that's, you know, something happening with erosion or, or, or some kind of a design. You know, weather impacts, whatever it may be, but civil engineering becomes very important. I feel like we're kind of in the background for the most part, but as far as a project manager, it's a role that I like a lot, I get to work with a, an awesome team. That's, you know, probably my favorite part is just getting to work with all of the fun people at EVS that, that I can work with.
And how many people do you lead? We've got seven. So. Get to work with them on projects. And right now we're doing projects in California, Arizona, Texas, Nebraska, Louisiana, Florida Maryland. So we're really working all over the place. And each area has different, you know. Requirements and different topography or soil conditions. And, and so that leads to a lot of variety in what we do. And, and, you know, one of the challenges maybe, but also one of my favorite parts is some of that variety.
It's not, it's not a cookie cutter. Like here's your site, let's do the civil design. And, and it looks the same every time. Really every project is, is pretty unique in that sense. So. And what is civil design? Like, how does it start? Like, I think that's something. Since we both are electrical and, and Chris is structural, we sometimes tend to forget, like, where does civil come in and when, like, let's say we have different stages of a project, right?
So we go 10, 30, 60. So, In our head, we always rely on you guys to give us a civil BAM so that we can get the electrical equipment out there. But what happens behind the scenes before you get the BAM, is that something you can give a BAM a buildable area map, right? Yeah. Nice job. Right. So I think Byron talked about this a little bit too, but you know, hydrology is certainly something that gets kicked off right away. And then EVS. Survey is often out there doing topo, right?
They're, they're either, you know, they're flying their drone or they're playing and getting the topography mapped out so that we can have a reliable surface. I was just, just talking to someone in survey and telling them that, you know, early stages before you get topo, sometimes you have to rely on public topo and we just had a terrible public topo where, and can, what's topo? Topography. It's just short for topography.
Yeah. Okay. So just getting your elevations of the ground elevations, but yeah, the, the one that we were working with the, the trees got captured and so the elevations would go up for a tree all over the site, which You know is is not very accurate. It's it's kind of garbage topo to work with so You know having good topo is a great great starting point. Sometimes that happens at the beginning of the process.
Sometimes it happens around 30 It just it depends on the project also having a really reliable survey Map of your parcel lines and any existing structures out. There's the mapping done You By survey called an Alta. So we get that Alta to, to work with. Sometimes that includes like FEMA information using any existing wetland information. So we take all of those existing features and, and the topo.
And then we also do some due diligence with the AHJs, the authorities having jurisdiction in order to see what kind of requirements are involved with setbacks so that we know where the equipment can go. So then that. together in what we call our BAM or the buildable area map so that we can pass that along to electrical and they can, I don't know, there was so much behind this. I thought you guys were just drawing lines, just drawing them wherever.
So how does this all relate to the big question for us? Electricals what is grading, right? So all this is going to come into. the site, correct? Right. So once we hand off that buildable area map and electrical decides where the most efficient way is to lay out the trackers, then we get that layout back as, as civil engineers. And then we start implementing grading and that lots of different types of grading. We do grading for, so we do some.
We call mass grading, which is for it could be for high water levels. Maybe there's a certain depth that or threshold that we want to meet provided by, you know, our tracker design and that has to do with the structural design. So we do some grading for that. We also do grading for the trackers. Tracker grading is helpful in that, you know, the trackers, depending on the type of tracker it is need to have a relatively flat.
Area they can't have a lot of undulation or they can have some but there are limits, right?
And those limits are determined by our tolerance that we have our tracker grading tolerance And then again that kind of coordinates with structural as far as how much allowance Civil team has for grading And the zones and the the pile sizes so there's grading for that there's grading for the inverters You know often they're requirements for the inverters to be a certain threshold above either a hundred year storm event or is that why they're all like on a mound so that yes.
Okay. And you, and you all are designing that mound, right? That's what I was going to ask is, is yeah. Okay. Yeah. So it depends on the area that you're in, what that you know, there's a free board amount or amount of space that you need above, It's typically the hundred year 24 hour storm event.
So that's mapped out by our Yep, so Byron and the water resources department gets a surface for us and then we have that that level of where We're predicting the water would be that elevation for a hundred year storm event and then civil grading you know, Based on the jurisdiction that you're in, it could be like a county requirement. It could be a structural requirement and an owner requirement.
So, kind of pick the highest or most conservative of those three and then like I said, maybe it's 12 inches above. High water level. Maybe it's 24 inches above the adjacent grade. So whatever that may be, get the grading in for that.
And then and then there's grading for balancing, which you probably, I don't know if you really get into any of that, but So basically when you're moving dirt around doing earthwork or grading for these sites, you want to make sure that it all balances out in the end so that you don't have to import dirt from other sites or you don't have a bunch of dirt leftover and don't know where to put it.
So these sites are big enough that I don't think I've ever worked on a project where we've had to import dirt or, or haul it off site, but in order to get that balance, you have to You know, run calculations and sometimes you have to put a little extra dirt in areas that didn't necessarily need grading for any other technical purpose, but, but a place to, you know, level it out and make sure that you're balancing the site. So, so for a site, I mean, these sites are so huge.
How does that calculation like work? I mean, I just think of the challenges of like multiple parcels and spanning a few miles, I could, you know, How does that calculation, what do you use to make that calculation? Yeah. So what we do is we work with our, you know, we work with the contractor and establish balance regions. So, you know, your site might have.
to 10 regions that you want to make sure that, you know, basically they don't want their trucks having to drive miles, which could be the case with these sites and how large they are. So they don't want them to have to hold their miles to another spot back and forth. Right. And that is, you know, that's money to them. So, so making sure that we're balancing within the areas that we've worked out with the client. And then another thing that.
Comes into play for civil is, is what's called shrink and swell. So when you have dirt in the ground, it's a certain size. You take it out of the ground and it actually is, is a larger size. And then you put it back in, in another spot and compact it. And you have to be able to calculate the differences between that. And in order to, you know, accurately predict what, what's going to happen with the grading and the balance.
So that, that is something, especially, I think it, I think the, the largest shrink factors I've, I've seen come into play with like the desert sites. Some of the sites in like Arizona. Is that cause it's sandy? Yeah. And then also because because of like dust control, some of the areas you have some dust control where you actually have to like water as constructions taking place so that you don't get a lot of dust just flying.
Yeah. And so when you're doing that, when you're, Adding the water, like the, the shrink, even though it's like maybe a geotechnical factor or calculation, there are some like other factors, whether you're, you know, driving over it and using a watering truck. And so, yeah, that's, that's something that civil helps to helps to predict and try to keep the site balanced. Are you using all like 3d AutoCAD when you're doing grading and stuff? Cause we don't use a lot of 3d Yeah.
So we do a lot with 3d because we're working with surfaces and AutoCAD civil 3d enables us to use those 3d surfaces and, you know, make comparisons between surfaces. We paste them on top of one another. There's just a lot more functionality in the 3d for, for surfaces then. 2d CAD. Okay. So kind of going off that is, I just was wondering, I think. Do civil folks tend to go on site visits pretty early in the project to get actual a look at the site conditions?
So versus like for us we'll go to the site after it's already been starting to be constructed But is that a thing where civil goes earlier? Yeah, that's actually a good point So early on in the process, we have like a pre what's called pre design site visit Sometimes what we do is we wait till a 30 percent plan has been Submitted and that way we, we kind of have an idea of where everyone wants to put, you know, this is where we think everything's going to go. We've got a cool thing.
Tool that we use in events and maps. I don't know if you guys have used that one where we can like geolocate our plans And so you can with these sites that are really big you can walk around the site and see with a blue dot on your plan Oh where you are with respect to like, okay, here's this power block or here's here's a basin that we wanted to put in and You know, let's, let's look here on the site and see if that's going to work or how that's going to work.
so moving forward with like other civil items that you work on. So permitting is a big one that civil is responsible for. And there's separate permitting for like the fencing as well. Right. So are, are you responsible? For fence layout, fence design for projects. Yeah. I would say permitting is a big part of the civil design. Just making sure that we work with the, the AHJs, those authorities having jurisdiction and making sure that we know what's going on. What?
You know, not only what's in their design manuals, but what is not in their design manuals. I think that's Just as important to know what they're going to be looking at for review. So Some of that does involve fencing So each county has a design modules that they that that's just online Resources that you can go and tap into not necessarily. So some of the bigger counties do have manuals. And then, so a few that I mentioned, like Maricopa County, Kern County. So Maricopa County is in Arizona.
Kern County is in California. Those both have quite a few regulations. I would say they're, they're heavily regulated counties. They've got really long review times. So those are counties where you know, having coordination with, you The the contacts at the County. And also frankly, it's just, you know, having worked there before and gone through that process, that's probably the biggest help. There are things that we learn along the line.
There are other jurisdictions where, you know, counties or cities or parishes and Louisiana, it's a parish. Sure. where they don't have any information online. They don't necessarily have anyone in planning and development or engineering that's going to review plans.
And so those are a little harder, you know, they may not have requirements, but you still Like we're still needed to do our due diligence and then you rely on state Requirements as far as how you're designing and and good engineering practices, but it is harder to find stuff like that out I know just recently reaching out to the parish in Louisiana. They had You know, trying to figure out, okay, any setback requirements and making sure we're doing our due diligence.
They had pointed us in the direction of the police jury. So I was like, all right, I guess I'll call the police jury and see what they have to say about this. So trying to connect with the right people super important. Make sure that we've got those requirements taken care of. Let's talk a little bit more about, I know you wanted to, to talk on you're the training manager also for civil here at EVS. And I see you doing your lunch and learns. Is it every once a month? Is it every other week?
Yeah. So, I think before I was a project manager, I was actually helping out with the training and, and I'm currently the civil training manager and that's been a fun role, I think you know, it's definitely evolved. I feel like. You know, five and a half years ago, our civil department was small enough that we were meeting around a ping pong table for our department meetings. And, you know, Noah Waterhouse was the only project manager. We'd all line up at his door for questions.
And, you know, it's definitely changed since then. We've got a larger department and with, you know, each year we're hiring more individuals and a lot of these individuals don't have a background in solar and I'm sure in electrical, you might be doing some of the same recruiting and hiring great people, but need to, you know, train good, good designers, but need to be trained in, in solar and some of our standard operating procedures or, or design procedures that we do.
So having a program where things are organized and we've got lots of resources. That's been a focus in the last few years. And so it's been great. So, from every, every day when I work on projects, a lot of the days are standard, like, you know, it's, it's, everything's moving smoothly. There are days where. You know, I hit roadblocks and I'm unable to like figure out a solution or something in the design has changed and we're not able to accommodate it.
I'm sure civil has a lot of those instances as well. Is there an experience like that you can share with us where you hit a roadblock and you know, you're against time and you're trying to figure it out, but, and how did you kind of go about that? Maybe share, share an example with us. Yeah. Recently we were working on a project in Texas and most of the.
Counties or jurisdictions in Texas have very few regulations, but this county this county was different and had a standards manual with their standards design manual for for engineering and stormwater design. And so, working with that county, we, they had not. Had any solar projects in their county before and sometimes the regulations that are there for civil engineering and stormwater management Are are geared toward commercial or residential?
projects and and oftentimes that AJ or the The county won't really know what to do with these stormwater or these solar projects as far as like and You know, should we enforce this? Should we not? Like, how do we regulate the, how do we count panel imperviousness?
You know that, so that's something that was a little hard because, you know, I felt like the, the county was having a hard time figuring out how they were going to regulate and review this project and we, from a design standpoint, you know, We were like, okay, this project might actually not be feasible if we are required to do the same things that you would do for a residential project.
It was a big deal where, you know, our, the client and owner were, you know, we were involved in the discussion there on, on what to do next. And so we, we met with the County. We actually went down there, met in person and tried to work out this is our design approach. This is what we've done in other, other nearby counties. This is, we propose, and they were able to help us as far as. getting that understanding of where we were coming from.
They were wanting the project to move forward I think they were just in a tough spot where they didn't know how to review or regulate it And so by us going down there and talking to them we were able to apply for a variance And it moved the project along so that you know Helped everyone out, kind of relieve some stress on our part as far as the design and we were able to move forward. Are those meetings usually like a Senate hearing?
Because that's what I've heard, where you're like, they're just sitting high up on the table and they're posing questions and EVS is just answering. Is that how it is? No, this one was very informal. It was just, you know, us meeting with their planning and development supervisor in a, Small room and just kinda, so it's all relaxed and then just, it's just more of an education process, I guess.
No. Yeah. I have had a judge though, be, you know, when, when we're asking for, okay, who do we talk to about reviewing this project? And one county said, oh, it, it's gonna be Judge Soandso . Okay, here we go. So it wasn't in the Yeah, we didn't the job profile. Yeah. We didn't have to go to the courtroom, but he was in charge of the boring across the road, so, Mm-Hmm. you know, . Yeah. I think it's interesting that you bring that up because I feel like.
A lot of standards for electrical well, solar is still fairly new industry and a lot of the standards that people have been using for the last 20, 25 years come from other industries and they try to apply it to solar, which it just doesn't make sense. So it's interesting to even hear that like HJs are still struggling with, you know, we haven't done a solar project here before, so we don't, you know, we're requiring you to have storm drainage.
For what we would do for commercial residential, which just doesn't apply. So it's interesting that like it, it, it's the whole scope of a project of a solar project that we're just on the leading edge, having to educate clients, HGAs and owners on the standards that you would typically use for commercial industrial application will not apply here, or even a substation application wouldn't apply for a solar site. So it's interesting to hear it goes all the way from.
The AHJ and permitting, you know, to electrical. Yeah, sure. So, I've got a question for you. is there are certain things that I do that I really enjoy that may be like, give me a lot of, you know, pride or I'm really proud of something I've done. And maybe other people don't really care about it, but I really do. And it's kind of one of those things that gets, gets me excited for the job.
You know, what, what is it that you do that you get really excited for, or you're really proud of that you've, that you, that you do. There are probably a few things. I feel like one thing that's super exciting and maybe this is the same for you guys, but you know, when you like push send on those submittals and you watch that email go out the door and you can feel good about like. You know, we had great QC, we had good design meetings along the way.
We were able to send out a really good product. I feel like that is you know, that's special just to be able to be like, okay, for this one second, like we're done first of all, and like proud of the work that we sent out. And I think another one would be doing site visits, you know, once in a while we're called out there like, Hey, we've got, this issue and this is what we're seeing on site.
And being able to go out there and kind of talk through those, you know, those problems and come up with some potential solutions to help out the site team so that they can move forward with their work and, you know, the community. schedule for installation or whatever it may be can, can move forward. I think that that also, you know, it's a great feeling to be able to, to be helpful that way. Is it different when you're an engineer versus a manager?
Cause sometimes as an engineer, I'm always solution focused, but I think managers, maybe they're like, okay, if my team's happy. That's a, that's a win for me. Is that, is that something? Yeah, no, I think it's the same, you know, like I'm a mom and when my kids are happy, like it makes me happy. So, you know, I think that can be applied as far as, you know, having a happy team helps to have a happy project manager. And luckily my team's so good. Pretty awesome.
So I feel like, you know, shout out to the castaways team cause they they make my job a lot easier as far as, you know, very little drama going on. So it's a good group to work with. I know we spoke about training and I'm curious to know what you're looking for in interns or new hires coming in. I'm sure like what you're looking for now was probably different from what you were looking for in a civil engineer maybe 10 years back. What, what is it that you're looking for today?
Yeah, I think for a civil engineer, like.
You know, new grads think, you know, what you're getting in a classroom is awesome and that's a good base, but I also think for solar, especially being able to have that attitude of, of flexibility, think of maybe not knowing what's, Coming up next week and being able to, you know, we talked about that solar coaster all the time, you know, things change rapidly as far as, okay, we're doing this project where, okay, we're on hold we're moving up this middle date, I
think there's a lot of change going on. And so, someone who has an attitude. Good attitude and, and is able to be flexible goes a long way with, with the fast pace that we're working in. Also just being willing to learn new things.
I think You know, like you said, there's a lot of new technology out there and new opportunities to learn different methods to do things and, and also just being curious having that, you know, creative mindset where you're curious about, you know, you know, could I do this differently? Is there a better way to do this instead of, you know, getting a workflow and just, you know, this is how I'm going to do this every time I think just thinking beyond that.
On you know, how to make a better design or how to make a process faster. I think, you know, one of the cool things about EVS is just the diversity that we have here. And I feel like that diversity leads to it, you know, not everybody has the same background or the same skillset. You know, we've got somebody in water resources that's super at programming. Right. And you wouldn't really think, okay, we're That's not on the checklist of hiring someone in water resources.
Like they must be able to, you know, be fluent in Python. Right. But it's a skill that's actually, you know, super handy at trying to help our department in making some of these CAD processes that are repetitive, go faster and that way we can spend more time on design. So that's an example of somebody who, Maybe it wasn't the cookie cutter. Like this is the checklist of what you need, but has had a big impact on our department.
Is that changing how you guys have your, your list of requirements now that you're seeing people with different backgrounds have A lot more influence. Are you guys actively doing something like having a new checklist saying, okay, maybe Python is something that a new person coming in should probably have. Is that some, is that the way you guys are thinking? Or I think it's more of just keeping an open mind, right?
I feel like, you know, Noah, five and a half years ago was, he had an open mind about like this mom that's been at home for 10 years. And so having an open mind to somebody who might not, be that cookie cutter, like designer right out of school, like maybe they've got practical skills in construction, And then they'll be able to hop in and really, know exactly what our designs are going to do out in the field because they've been doing it for a number of years as they've worked in construction.
So I think just having an open mind and looking for those with, diverse backgrounds. I like that because I do agree here at EVS. The different diversity that we have. we try to find what is it that you're good at that might be a little bit different and then allow you to be creative with that. I have some people on my team that have a different background.
I have a person who's got a background in high tech and so he's really good at programming and obviously we're looking at automation options and it's just one of those things he can do all sorts of engineering things. But not everybody can do the programming that he can. He can self, he can teach himself new language, program languages like in a weekend. And then figure out how to use that to automate certain things.
And so, EVS allowing him to be creative and look at different solutions, it's definitely helping progress what we're doing here at EVS, I definitely agree with what you're saying. Not every background needs to be a cookie cutter and EVS is willing to look beyond a list of this is what you need. And, oh, this is a different thing you can bring to the conversation. Yeah. We should have them get together with our water research. We have.
Okay. Yeah. Any final thoughts, anything you want to throw out there to us electricals that we don't know about civil. yeah, no, I, you know, one of the great things about EVS, I think is just. Being able to have a great relationship with people who are working in different departments. I think it's nice to You know, we just gathered this week for our Pi Day event.
just getting to see people on a regular basis and get to know them and it makes for better communication, I think overall, and just being able to coordinate and jump on a call or talk to someone candidly about, about something that's coming up on a project. I feel like it's a little less contentious, I guess, when you can have those good relationships. I one thing EVS does very, very well is builds relationships internally and externally. And, and you're right.
It, it makes communication much better. Once you know somebody in personal level, you're less likely to be more irritated, I suppose, with them or let that irritation show. So, yeah. And I also think the education, I think between cross department education that we try to, you know, incorporate here, I think goes a long way when we can learn about, you know, why you don't want to move the trackers when we've got the perfect base and location, you know? Right.
So when we know the why's behind it, we can kind of work with you or when you know, like, Hey, this, this space and has to go here because of X, Y, Z. And you guys understand that it, it just helps us to to make those, those changes and have those. Okay. connections in order to to work, to move projects forward. Yeah, it's a good point because then it's like lessons learned for future projects, right?
It's like maybe we okay I have this interaction with you and you're like we need the basin here or maybe Probably saying we can't move our stuff over here and then we know why and then maybe the next project we work on together We talk about it really early. Yeah, you know and can take that lesson learned and I mean I learned about basins the hard way So because I just put trackers Next thing, you know, this is over shouting at me. Where's my where are you? What am I going to put my base in?
So then I had a really deep dive and figure out what a basin is. What's it actually doing? Okay. How much space do you need typically? So yeah, yeah, yeah. I got to share, right?