Here are some essential areas to consider when hiring a project manager for your solar business:
As the owner of a solar business, hiring the right project manager for your solar business is critical for your growth and to scale your solar business. To ensure that your installations are managed by individuals with the necessary skills, experience, and expertise, you should know what to look for when deciding who should manage your solar installations. Whether you are hiring project managers with previous solar industry expertise or not, it is important to identify the key areas that will help you find the right person to manage your solar installations.
Let’s dive into these areas in detail and what that exactly means.
A proven track record
The best indicator of future success in project management is a track record of successfully delivered projects. You should define the type and size of projects that have been delivered in the past. It is important to understand whether they were delivered on time, within budget, met the required quality and scope, and how any significant risks or issues were resolved. Additionally, it is important to consider how the project manager handled stakeholders and other interested parties such as subcontractors.
Functional and industry expertise
Some project managers or organizations specialize in certain types of projects, sectors, or industries. Identifying the types of projects that have been previously delivered can be helpful in selecting the right project manager. For residential solar installations for example, it is important to hire someone who has managed a large scale of very standardized projects. For commercial solar installation, it helps to hire someone who knows how to manage permits and regulatory processes.
Knowledge of methodologies
The project management methodologies used to deliver a project can vary between the type of project. Some methodologies are better suited to some types of projects than others. You should be confident that a project manager and their team have the right level of training and experience. For managing solar projects, agile project delivery is very important. Project managers need to be very good at standardizing and optimizing processes over time. Best if they can take an iterative approach to it.
Proof of work quality
Getting reassurances of project delivery and quality built into a formal agreement with the project manager and their team is ideal. This could include bonuses if the project is delivered on or ahead of time, budget, quality, and scope. We are not a big advocate of penalties if the project is delivered late, over budget, or not to the required quality. Regular tracking and reporting on progress, excellent management of risks, issues, or other areas that could impact project delivery, and communication with internal teams, business stakeholders, and other third parties are also important.
Details of project services
Understanding what is included in the project management service is crucial. It is essential to consider areas such as managing subcontractors, ongoing administration, project management work, handling customer requests, and project delivery. Given the high number of stakeholders in the solar industry, it is important to be very precise on the responsibilities of your project manager.
Your ideal solar energy project manager profile
In conclusion, taking into account these areas will help you to be confident that the right people are in place to manage your solar installations effectively. Beyond these five areas, we’ve summarized important raw characteristics and professional experience for your ideal solar energy project manager profile:
Manage more solar projects per project manager
If you have the right solar energy project managers in place, we can help them with Kwest to increase the number of solar installations that they are managing effectively. If this is interesting to you, please schedule a demo with us.
