W
hile many construction firms saw disaster at the height of the financial crisis in 2008, opting to batten down the hatches and ride out the storm – or worse during those bleak times – industry stalwart Swinerton took a leap of faith. With great confidence in the ability of its personnel to learn, adapt and perform at a peak level, the company established its Swinerton Renewable Energy division to fill a void as traditional construction sectors contracted. “We saw a lot of our traditional industries struggling through the financial crisis so we were looking for opportunities to find new marketplaces and grow opportunities for our employees. We looked at some solar opportunities, partially driven by the California Solar Initiative (rebate program established in 2006) and we saw an opportunity to go back to some of our traditional clients,” explains SRE President George Hershman. Developers brought Swinerton on board for commercial projects such as hospitals, community colleges and schools as well as Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) solar projects. “In 2010 as we started seeing the growth of utility scale projects, we really moved into that market because we had significant quantity capacity,
www.swinertonrenewable.com
Swinerton Renewable Energy | 4 a lot of equity and working capital, so doing a larger project made a lot more sense for us. So we pretty much grew through 2010 and, up until 2016, we almost doubled year over year as we started to see the market grow,” Hershman says. SRE is imbued with the DNA and pioneering spirit of its parent company, founded in 1888 during The Gold Rush. It is 100 percent employee owned and operated; has delivered 4GW of renewable energy projects; and employs approximately 600 across its EPS and SOLV groups. Headquartered in San Diego, SRE also has locations in San Francisco, Bend, OR and Raleigh, NC. SOLV, its standalone solar operations and maintenance group, formed in 2014. “I’m happy to say I’m employee No. 1 of the organization. I started the group with essentially myself and had been with Swinerton for almost 15 years when we started this,” Hershman says. “I moved over from our more traditional operations and I believe – and, I think other folks would say, it’s the strongest team in the industry. I’ve really focused on industry and policy and the execution of projects and I have a great leadership team that runs our day to day operations,” he adds. SRE works exclusively with contractorpartners Blymyer Engineering and Construction Innovations.