ALPHA ENGINEERINGPower & Energy · Since 1979
These are composites, not named projects. Clients tell us things in confidence and we would rather keep it that way. If one of them sounds like your situation, the bottom of the page tells you what to send us.
A utility that wanted engineering on retainer, not one project at a time.
They make calls on assets that have to hold up for thirty or forty years, and they wanted an engineering group that already knew the system when the question came up instead of starting over every time.
We work as a standing engineering and project management partner. Requirements shift, schedules move, budgets get rewritten, and none of that restarts the relationship or the learning curve.
They call us before a decision gets made instead of after. Here is how one of them describes it:
We use Alpha's engineering and project management expertise to make informed decisions regarding some of our most business-critical assets. Their engineers have been quick to adapt to changing project requirements and schedules. We have built a valuable partnership with Alpha Engineering.
One line in the spec kept knocking him out of bids he could have won on price.
The spec called for design by a registered professional engineer. He doesn't have one on staff, and putting a PE on payroll for four or five jobs a year was never going to pencil out. So those bids went in the trash.
We do the design and seal it in the state the job sits in, then stay on through testing, startup, and commissioning. We don't hold a contractor's license and we don't bid work. It stays his job and his customer.
He prices the jobs he used to throw away. The engineering line in his proposal is a real number he can defend when the owner asks about it, and the engineer who sealed the drawings is on the floor the day the equipment gets energized.
The line kept dropping. The vendor blamed the utility and the utility blamed the vendor.
A production line was tripping and nobody would own it. The equipment vendor pointed at incoming power. The utility pointed at the equipment. That had been going on for months and the line kept going down.
We start with the wiring and grounding, then put temporary power quality monitoring on the service and wait for the next trip so we can look at the event instead of arguing about it. Most of the time the cause is inside the fence: a large motor start, harmonics off a drive, phases out of balance. Sometimes it really is the utility, and then there is a recording to take to them.
They stopped guessing. Once you know what is dropping the line, the fix has a number on it and a payback period, and that is usually what it takes to get the money approved.
We review what you send and follow up about whether we are a fit. We don't write a proposal before we understand the job.
Request an Engineering Review →You speak directly with an engineer about your situation and the next step.